You have commented 338 times on Rantburg.

Your Name
Your e-mail (optional)
Website (optional)
My Original Nic        Pic-a-Nic        Sorry. Comments have been closed on this article.
Bold Italic Underline Strike Bullet Blockquote Small Big Link Squish Foto Photo
Iraq
Release the Iraqi Docs Now: Version 3.1b
2006-03-10
On February 16, President George W. Bush assembled a small group of congressional Republicans for a briefing on Iraq. Vice President Dick Cheney and National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley were there, and U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad participated via teleconference from Baghdad. As the meeting was beginning, Mike Pence spoke up. The Indiana Republican, a leader of conservatives in the House, was seated next to Bush.

"Yesterday, Mr. President, the war had its best night on the network news since the war ended," Pence said.

"Is this the tapes thing?" Bush asked, referring to two ABC News reports that included excerpts of recordings Saddam Hussein made of meetings with his war cabinet in the years before the U.S. invasion. Bush had not seen the newscasts but had been briefed on them.

Pence framed his response as a question, quoting Abraham Lincoln: "One of your Republican predecessors said, 'Give the people the facts and the Republic will be saved.' There are 3,000 hours of Saddam tapes and millions of pages of other documents that we captured after the war. When will the American public get to see this information?"

Bush replied that he wanted the documents released. He turned to Hadley and asked for an update. Hadley explained that John Negroponte, Bush's Director of National Intelligence, "owns the documents" and that DNI lawyers were deciding how they might be handled.

Bush extended his arms in exasperation and worried aloud that people who see the documents in 10 years will wonder why they weren't released sooner. "If

I knew then what I know now," Bush said in the voice of a war skeptic, "I would have
Posted by:Captain America

#4  Why does that sound worse? lol!
Posted by: Danking70   2006-03-10 22:43  

#3  Russia was the only power that could take the Iraqi WMDs out of the country before the invasion, so, we asked them to. The logic was straightforward.

1) We wanted to fight a conventional war. If the Iraqis used WMDs, we would almost have to use them back. That would be bad all the way around, and have huge international repercussions.

2) Russia provided a lot of those WMDs in the first place, and would be severely embarassed had they been found and exhibited before the UN. So they had no problem in doing this favor for us.

3) Syria was pretty much a client state of Russia and was conveniently located as a disposal site. Even the Israelis could, and did see where the WMDs were buried. This strongly lowered the threat of escalation in the war.

4) Lastly, Russia knew that Saddam was wacky enough to maybe try and prevent their taking those weapons out of the country. So not only were they probably prepared to fight their way out, the US was on stand-by to help them get out.
Posted by: Anonymoose   2006-03-10 22:34  

#2  I still can't figure out how Russia has helped us.
Posted by: Danking70   2006-03-10 22:05  

#1  We are trying very hard to overlook the Russian role in removing WMD materials from Iraq. I hope Bush is getting a fair exchange for the favor of letting Putin save face.
Posted by: Darrell   2006-03-10 20:35  

00:00