--- Doug Pensinger <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A39500-2003Aug9.html > > Exerpt: > > "At issue was Iraq's efforts to buy high-strength > aluminum tubes. > The U.S. government said those tubes were for > centrifuges to enrich > uranium for a nuclear bomb. But the IAEA, the > world's nuclear > watchdog, had uncovered strong evidence that Iraq > was using them for conventional rockets...
Further excerpt: >>To gird a nation for the extraordinary step of preemptive war -- and to obtain the minimum necessary support from allies, Congress and the U.N. Security Council -- the administration described a growing, even imminent, nuclear threat from Iraq. >>'Nuclear Blackmail' The unveiling of that message began a year ago this week. >>Cheney raised the alarm about Iraq's nuclear menace three times in August. He was far ahead of the president's public line. Only Bush and Cheney know, one senior policy official said, "whether Cheney was trying to push the president or they had decided to play good cop, bad cop..." >>...Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair conferred at Camp David that Saturday, Sept. 7, and they each described alarming new evidence. Blair said proof that the threat is real came in "the report from the International Atomic Energy Agency this morning, showing what has been going on at the former nuclear weapon sites." Bush said "a report came out of the . . . IAEA, that they [Iraqis] were six months away from developing a weapon. I don't know what more evidence we need." >>There was no new IAEA report. Blair appeared to be referring to news reports describing curiosity at the nuclear agency about repairs at sites of Iraq's former nuclear program. Bush cast as present evidence the contents of a report from 1996, updated in 1998 and 1999. In those accounts, the IAEA described the history of an Iraqi nuclear weapons program that arms inspectors had systematically destroyed... >>..."There will always be some uncertainty about how quickly he can acquire nuclear weapons," Rice added, "but we don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud..." When I asked last year for hard evidence of SH's direct threat to the US (as justification for going to war), I was asked if I wanted 'the evidence to be a mushroom cloud over New York or Los Angeles,' (as best I recall); IOW, nuclear threat was cited as justification for pre-emptive war. Like the 'trump' of comparing to Nazi anything, a RL threatening of nuclear war is the ultimate trump. We've been led through the nosering, people. Read about the white paper of October 2002 in this article. "Literary license" my gluteus maximae -- that belongs in fiction writing, not official policy explanations. Debbi __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
