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→Paul Wolfowitz
:::Comments? [[User:RobS|RobS]] 23:28, 24 April 2007 (EDT)
:::Comments? [[User:RobS|RobS]] 23:28, 24 April 2007 (EDT)
:::: There is has been the accusation of a conspiracy between oil companies which the President is related to, the Saudi goverment, and other such theories. The argument for war that was mentioned in the Vanity Fair article does not have any of these. Look at Wolfowitz's statement "Wolfowitz: There have always been three fundamental concerns. One is weapons of mass destruction, the second is support for terrorism, the third is the criminal treatment of the Iraqi people. Actually I guess you could say there's a fourth overriding one which is the connection between the first two. Sorry, hold on again." -- These were the reasons to go to war, not just WMD. By focusing on WMD and only on WMD as was done and selectively choosing the intelligence to present (and ignoring the intelligence that said there were no WMDs), there was a misleading of the American population as to the reason to go to war.
:::: Wolfowitz then said "''The third one by itself, as I think I said earlier, is a reason to help the Iraqis but it's not a reason to put American kids' lives at risk, certainly not on the scale we did it. That second issue about links to terrorism is the one about which there's the most disagreement within the bureaucracy, even though I think everyone agrees that we killed 100 or so of an al Qaeda group in northern Iraq in this recent go-around, that we've arrested that al Qaeda guy in Baghdad who was connected to this guy Zarqawi whom Powell spoke about in his UN presentation.''" -- In other words, the lack of support of terrorism was debated (and later shown to be correct - there was no connection), and to help the Iraqis was valid but not enough of a reason alone to go to war. Thus we heard 'WMD' repeated over and over again as the reason, even though there was evidence that the source for the WMD project was not reliable and there was no evidence that Sadam had an active WMD program. As to Zarqawi's relationship with al Qaeda read [http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5280219/site/newsweek this Newsweek Article]
::::<blockquote>But just last week, in little-noticed remarks, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld conceded that Zarqawi’s ties to Al Qaeda may have been much more ambiguous—and that he may have been more a rival than a lieutenant to bin Laden. Zarqawi “may very well not have sworn allegiance to [bin Laden]," Rumsfeld said at a Pentagon briefing. “Maybe he disagrees with him on something, maybe because he wants to be ‘The Man’ himself and maybe for a reason that’s not known to me.” Rumsfeld added that, “someone could legitimately say he’s not Al Qaeda.”</blockquote>
:::: (a year later from the Wolfowitz interview).
:::: Thus, the questions to answer:
::::* Was the intelligence on WMDs known to be lacking or bad by those pushing it? [http://www.wmd.gov/report/report.html#chapter1]
::::** Alternative reading: Was the assumption for "There are WMDs in Iraq, find intelligence to prove it" the case (read the paragraph begining "Rather, they were the product of poor intelligence collection..." from the above link).
::::* Were there other reasons that lead to going to war that contributed to but were not sufficent?
::::* Given the poor intelligence and unconvincing other reasons, was the case for war in Iraq deceitful?
::::--[[User:Mtur|Mtur]] 20:32, 25 April 2007 (EDT)
=== Jack Abramoff ===
=== Jack Abramoff ===