WILL BUSH RESIGN IN DISGRACE NOW?

I'M NOT GOING TO SAY WE TOLD YOU SO, BUT...


From BBC News: Report concludes no WMD in Iraq

AND

From Rueters: CIA Report Finds No Conclusive Zarqawi-Saddam Link

HOW many of us saw that this was probably the case before the USMil invaded Iraq? Too many to list.

How many people thought the US should invade Iraq?

Far fewer people but the only one that mattered was Bush... and he was wrong.

Shouldn't he resign in disgrace for:

1) leading a superpower to war on false pretenses?
2) sending over 1000 USGIs and 12,000+ Iraqi civilians to their deaths?
3) breaking International Law, going against the UN Charter and the US Constitution?
4) lying continuously about the situation in Iraq, including a Saddam/Zarqawi connection?
5) for playing us all like fools and for selling out our morals (including the morals of you hardcore Republicans out there)?

This is absurd. If Bush were a Democrat you know he'd be impeached by now. Hell, Clinton got impeached for lying under oath.

Is this Bizarro World, or what?



From BBC News:

Last Updated: Wednesday, 6 October, 2004, 18:34 GMT 19:34 UK

Report concludes no WMD in Iraq

Iraq had no stockpiles of biological, chemical or nuclear weapons before the US-led invasion, the group hunting for such weapons is set to report.

But the Iraq Survey Group (ISG) is expected to suggest that Saddam Hussein intended to resume production of banned weapons when he could.

US President George W Bush has again defended last year's invasion of Iraq.

He said the risk of Saddam Hussein passing WMD to terror groups was "a risk we could not afford to take".

Addressing supporters in Pennsylvania, Mr Bush said that after the 11 September 2001 attacks, the US had to look for sources of WMD (weapons of mass destruction) available to terrorists.

"We had to take a hard look at every place where terrorists might get those weapons," he said.

"One regime stood out. The dictatorship of Saddam Hussein."

Before the March 2003 invasion, the Bush administration cited WMD as the main reason for overthrowing the Iraqi regime, asserting that Saddam Hussein posed a serious and immediate threat.

But later on Wednesday, chief US weapons inspector Charles Duelfer is expected to tell the Senate Armed Services Committee that Iraq did not possess WMD at the time of the invasion.

"I still do not expect that militarily significant WMD stocks are cached in Iraq," Mr Duelfer is expected to say according to prepared testimony obtained by Reuters news agency.

That verdict has been widely anticipated since the former head of the ISG, David Kay, resigned in January, and following the leaking of a draft copy of the report last month.

'Clandestine schemes'

UK Prime Minister Tony Blair said the ISG report showed that Saddam Hussein had planned to develop WMD.

"I welcome the report because I think it will show us that it is far more of a complicated situation than people thought," Mr Blair told reporters during a trip to Ethiopia.

"It is also clear that there was every intention on Saddam's part to develop weapons and that he did not have any intention of complying with the UN resolutions."

Earlier, the UK Foreign Minister Jack Straw, speaking in the Iraqi capital Baghdad, said: "The threat from Saddam Hussein... [was] even starker than we have seen before."

Iraq's Deputy Prime Minister, Barhem Saleh, said anyone who doubted that Saddam Hussein had WMDs only needed to visit Halabja - where the former Iraq dictator had gassed thousands of Kurds.

"We know Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. He used them," Dr Saleh said, adding that in his view Saddam Hussein was himself a weapon of mass destruction.

'Definitive'

US government officials told the New York Times that the report would include new evidence that Saddam Hussein had planned to break UN-imposed sanctions and renew the production of banned weapons.

The officials, speaking anonymously, said the report would detail efforts by Iraq to bypass sanctions while they were still in place, and to undermine international support for them.

Those efforts were reported to include the use of clandestine laboratories to manufacture small quantities of chemical and biological weapons for use in assassinations.

BBC Pentagon correspondent Nick Childs says the report, which runs to more than 1,000 pages, is being billed as the most definitive account yet of Iraq's weapons programmes.

Our correspondent says that with the political stakes in the US so high and Iraq so central to the debate, Republican and Democratic camps in the presidential race will seize on the different elements of the report to argue that it bolsters their case for or against the Iraq war.

However, the document will stop short of offering a final judgement about the situation before the war.

Instead, the ISG is expected to continue translating and evaluating an estimated 10,000 boxes of documents seized in Iraq.

© BBC MMIV

From Rueters:

CIA Report Finds No Conclusive Zarqawi-Saddam Link

Wed Oct 6, 2004 12:24 AM ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A CIA report has found no conclusive evidence that former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein harbored Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, which the Bush administration asserted before the invasion of Iraq.

"There's no conclusive evidence the Saddam Hussein regime had harbored Zarqawi," a U.S. official said on Tuesday about the CIA findings.

But the official, speaking on condition of anonymity, stressed that the report, which was a mix of new information and a look at some older information, did not make any final judgments or come to any definitive conclusions.

"To suggest the case is closed on this would not be correct," the official said in confirming an ABC News story about the CIA report that the network said was delivered to the White House last week.

ABC quoted an unnamed senior U.S. official as saying that the CIA document raises "serious questions" about Bush administration assertions that Zarqawi found sanctuary in pre-war Baghdad.

"The official says there is no clear cut evidence that Saddam Hussein even knew Zarqawi was in Baghdad," ABC reported.

The CIA report concludes Zarqawi was in and out of Baghdad, but cast doubt on reports that Zarqawi had been given official approval for medical treatment there as President Bush said this summer, ABC said.

Earlier on Tuesday, White House spokesman Scott McClellan reasserted that there was a relationship between Saddam and Zarqawi.

"He was in contact from Baghdad with Ansar al-Islam in the northeastern part of Iraq. He had a cell operating from Baghdad during that period, as well. So there are clearly ties between Iraq and -- between the regime, Saddam Hussein's regime and al Qaeda," McClellan told reporters.

Before last year's invasion to topple Saddam, the Bush administration portrayed Zarqawi as al Qaeda's link to Baghdad.

Following Saddam's capture in December and waves of suicide attacks on U.S. and Iraqi security forces which followed, Zarqawi quickly became America's top enemy in Iraq. The United States placed a $25 million bounty on his head.

The Jordanian-born Zarqawi and his militant Tawhid and Jihad group have claimed responsibility for a string of suicide bombings, kidnappings and hostage beheadings.

© Reuters 2004. All Rights Reserved.