I suspect it is simply anyone who threatens their psychological condition of deep denial, Costas.  It is certainly anyone who realizes what the Bush Bunch are and calls a spade a spade.


Costas Piliotis <> wrote:

Watch it Bill, you might be perceived as part of the loony left, as per
wavemechanic's earlier post:

"...loony fringe, both left and right, although on this board it seems that
only the left has emerged"

I guess anything left of the far right is considered left wing by them eh...
Including middle-of-the-road folks.

-----Original Message-----
From: William Tamblyn [mailto:]
Sent: Friday, July 30, 2004 4:01 PM
To:
Subject: [Longwaves Forum]Those 16 Words Still Smell






http://www.democraticunderground.com/articles/04/07/24_16words.html

Those 16 Words Still Smell

July 24, 2004
By Dennis Hans

We are now told that the controversial 16-word sentence in the January 28,
2003 State of the Union address (hereafter "SOTU") about alleged Iraqi
efforts to procure unenriched uranium from Africa was "truthful" (William
Safire) and "well-founded" (Britain's Butler Committee report). Alas, it is
neither.

An examination of the entire SOTU paragraph that includes those 16 words
illustrates a few of the many "techniques of deceit" the Bush team has
mastered: deception through juxtaposition, unsupported "certitude" and, most
importantly, deception through omission.
Here is Bush's description of the Iraqi nuclear threat:
The International Atomic Energy Agency [IAEA] confirmed in the 1990s that
Saddam Hussein had an advanced nuclear weapons development program, had a
design for a nuclear weapon and was working on five different methods of
enriching uranium for a bomb. The British government has learned that Saddam
Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa. Our
intelligence sources tell us that he has attempted to purchase high-strength
aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production. Saddam Hussein has
not credibly explained these activities. He clearly has much to hide.

If you're a parent watching at home with your kids, and you just happen to
lack expertise on Iraq and nuclear-weapons technology, like 99.99 percent of
your fellow citizens (including me), that's a very frightening picture.
Not only did Bush put the fear of Saddam into viewers, he did so by citing
sources that fence-sitters and skeptics would likely consider credible: the
British government and the IAEA. For citizens who didn't know the IAEA from
Adam or what to think of it, Bush wisely included this comment earlier in
the address: "We're strongly supporting the [IAEA] in its mission to track
and control nuclear materials around the world."
What Bush didn't include was the IAEA's assessment - issued the day before
the SOTU - of the current Iraqi nuclear "threat." So far, the agency had
found "No evidence of ongoing prohibited nuclear or nuclear-related
activities" nor:
signs of new nuclear facilities or direct support to any nuclear activity...
The IAEA expects to be able, within the next few months, barring exceptional
circumstances and provided there is sustained proactive cooperation by Iraq,
to provide credible assurance that Iraq has no nuclear weapons programme.

(All IAEA quotes taken from Glen Rangwala's voluminous work on WMD claims).
Such a program can't be hidden in a basement or buried in a garden. It
requires a vast, high-tech infrastructure. The "yellowcake" uranium Iraq was
allegedly seeking in Africa would have to be enriched to become
weapons-grade. A nuclear consultant quoted on July 20, 2003 in the British
newspaper The Independent estimated the enrichment plant would be "the size
of 30 football pitches" - i.e., 30 soccer fields. Such a plant could not go
undetected in a country spied on from satellites and swarming with
inspectors, as was the case in January 2003.
What the preparers of the SOTU did was cherry-pick an old IAEA evaluation of
no revelance to 2003, about a nuclear program that was destroyed and
dismantled long ago, and paired it with (dubious) assertions about recent
activity to conjure up a frightening image that bore no relation to reality.

The uranium sentence
As for the uranium sentence, in the months leading up to the SOTU the CIA
alternately credited and pooh-poohed unconfirmed reports that Iraq had been
seeking uranium from Niger and possibly other nations in Africa. One thing
was clear: the CIA certainly didn't know for a fact that Iraq was pursuing
African uranium.
In the days leading up to the SOTU, a CIA official and a National Security
Council aide agreed that, for the purpose of a public speech, the best
option was to cite a public document, Britain's September 2002 WMD dossier,
rather than the CIA's classifie d National Intelligence Estimate.
As noted above, the final wording read, "The British government has learned
that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from
Africa."
CIA director George Tenet did not review the SOTU, and he has subsequently
said that such a major speech by a U.S. president should not cite a foreign
intelligence service on a matter that U.S. intelligence retained doubts. But
you can't fault the NSC aide or the White House speechwriters. The CIA
official had a chance to delete or alter that sentence, but instead endorsed
it.
We can, however, fault all who reviewed that sentence for failing to spot
the obvious flaw: The confused and untrustworthy Brits had not "learned"
Saddam "recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." To
learn is to know, and not one Brit knew that for a fact.
The slippery source for the SOTU uranium sentence In the British dossier's
Executive Summ ary, Point 6 begins, "As a result of the intelligence we
judge" that, among other things, Iraq has "sought significant quantities of
uranium from Africa, despite having no active civil nuclear power programme
that could require it." The phrase "we judge" does not mean "we know."
By Chapter 3, however, the Brits profess absolute certainty. One section
lays out "what we know" about the WMD programmes and includes a list of nine
"main conclusions." The fourth states that "Uranium has been sought from
Africa..."
The most obvious flaw in the list of "what we know" is that it presents as
established fact things the Brits may suspect are true, but couldn't
possibly "know" are true. Properly interpreted, the list is evidence not of
Iraq's capabilities, actions and intentions, but of a deceitful British
policy of saying "we know" when they bloody well don't.
Later in Chapter 3, the Brits lose the certitude and pen an accurate
statement: "But th ere is intelligence that Iraq has sought the supply of
significant quantities of uranium from Africa."
If you're keeping score, there's a "we judge" judgment in the Executive
Summary, a statement of fact in Chapter 3, and a vague "there is
intelligence" claim in the same chapter. Guess which interpretation Blair
picked for his address to Parliament on the day the dossier was published?
Blair boldly declared, "we now know the following." He then laid out a list
of everything "Saddam has bought or attempted to buy" that could be used in
a uranium enrichment program. "In addition, we know Saddam has been trying
to buy significant quantities of uranium from Africa, though we do not know
whether he has been successful."
Notice how Blair lends credibility to his assertions of what "we now know"
by acknowledging something "we do not know." Who wouldn't trust a man who's
willing to admit he doesn't "know" everything? Back on September 24, 2002,
not many. Today, 58 percent of the British public believe Blair "lied" to
them about Iraq.
If the British press and politicians had done their job, Blair would have
been forced to explain the discrepancies right then and there. He would have
had to acknowledge that "We don't really KNOW." Tabloid headlines screaming
"Blair Recants!" would have lessened the likelihood that, four months later,
the SOTU would have referred to what the slippery Brits had "learned." Alas,
the British press and politicians are nearly as sorry as our own.
The uranium sentence in the context of 2002-03 When the Brits first floated
their judgment/allegation/statement of fact in September 2002, the IAEA
asked them for "actionable information" - "specifics of when and where" - so
it could investigate. Britain provided nothing. That's because it had no
intelligence to call its own, and it was not at liberty to share
intelligence that was, in effect, "owned" by foreig n intelligence services.
The Brits were relying on stuff passed along by Italian and French
intelligence, including summaries (not official documents) of the
information in the documents that the IAEA would soon label fake.
UN Resolution 1441 required the U.S. and all nations to provide the IAEA any
evidence they had on Iraq's nuclear programs. In October 2002 the U.S. State
Department acquired copies of the documents that turned out to be fake and
promptly distributed them to all the national-security bureaucracies
concerned with foreign policy and nuclear proliferation. No U.S. bureaucracy
provided copies to the IAEA until February 2003 - strange behavior indeed
for those analysts and officials who considered the documents credible. What
better way to help Bush win a strong, intrusive U.N. resolution than to have
the IAEA confirm that Iraq had agreed to buy 500 metric tons of yellowcake
from Niger. And what a great SOTU prop for Bush t o brandish!
Alas, some "evidence" is just too darn good to put to the test. That's
because once you put it to the test, you run the risk it will blow up in
your face. It could have happened in October 2002, before the U.N. debate
and vote. It did happen on March 7, 2003, but by then it was too late to
play a role in derailing an unnecessary war.
The aluminum tubes sentence
Bush's statement about aluminum tubes combines "deception through omission"
with "implied certitude," as he gave nary a hint that they might have a
non-nuclear use. The non-expert sitting at home would have no idea that the
tubes' dimensions and technical specifications made them a perfect fit for
Iraq's stock of conventional artillery rockets, or that the IAEA's
"provisional conclusion" - presented 16 days before the SOTU - was that the
tubes "were for rockets and not for centrifuges" to enrich uranium. A
majority of the U.S. intelligence community disagreed with the IAEA, but our
best experts, the nuclear scientists at the Department of Energy (DOE),
concurred.
Nor would the non-expert viewer have learned what the IAEA reported 19 days
before the SOTU: Despite Bush's characterization of the tubes as "suitable
for nuclear weapons production," the IAEA concluded that they "are not
directly suitable." As the IAEA and DOE knew, aluminum was a substandard
metal for the demanding enrichment task. Also, the tubes were the wrong
dimension and would have to be redesigned (a very difficult process) and
stripped of their anodized coating. If all that were achieved, the technical
experts still considered it highly unlikely that aluminum tubes would be
sufficiently durable to function effectively as gas centrifuges.
(Click here for an outstanding article on the astounding level of CIA deceit
from 2001 to 2003 to persuade other departments, agencies and lawmakers that
the tubes were up to the enrichment tas k and were not suitable for Iraq's
stock of conventional rockets.) What this tell us about Bush and his aides
The American public doesn't know if Uncurious George was aware of the
disagreements about the tubes. True, they were spelled out in a long,
careful article in the Washington Post a few days before the SOTU, but as
the article didn't run in the sports section (the one section Bush
reportedly reads with care) he might have missed it. But make no mistake,
plenty of people who reviewed SOTU drafts did know about the disagreements
and did know that it was misleading to give citizens the impression that
those tubes only possible purpose was uranium enrichment.
Bush administration deceit is often a team effort. Make no mistake, senior
officials know that Bush likes to cheat. Those who signed off on the tubes
sentence and that entire graf long ago caught on that the plain-spoken
straight shooter deeply committed to "restoring honor and integ rity to the
White House" (as Bush repeatedly reminded voters before the 2000 election)
has no qualms whatsoever about misleading the American people.
I can't imagine a senior official going up to Bush and saying, "Mr.
President, for the sake of argument let's grant that each of those sentences
in the nuclear-threat paragraph is at least technically true. Nevertheless,
when we string them together in that order they pain an alarming but false
picture. Democracy is all about the informed consent of the governed, and we
owe the citizens an honest portrayal of the Iraqi threat. We need to rewrite
that paragraph."
Deceitful close to a deceitful paragraph Bush wrapped up the nuclear-threat
paragraph with theese words: "Saddam Hussein has not credibly explained
these activities. He clearly has much to hide."
In fact, Iraqi officials had credibly explained the tubes to the IAEA's
satisfaction. As for Iraq's alleged pursuit of African uranium, t he burden
of proof was on the accusers, who were required by U.N. Resolution 1441 to
provide the IAEA any evidence of prohibited Iraqi nuclear activity. The best
the accusers could come up with was a parcel of forgeries.
Neither U.S., British, French or Italian intelligence was willing to put to
the IAEA test any other "evidence" each claimed to possess. Clearly, the
rascals who run those various intelligence agencies haven't "credibly
explained" why they didn't step up to the plate. One might say they have
"much to hide" in the way of credible explanations, but nothing to hide with
respect to credible evidence. Nothing to hide and nothing to show.
Advice for lapdogs who'd like to be watchdogs The astute reader may have
noticed that there was lots of public evidence from credible sources that
would have enabled competent journalists to demolish the SOTU at the very
time it was delivered. (Click here for my own analysis two weeks after the
speech.) That leads to our most important lessons: (1) The Bush team's
techniques of deceit are transparent and easily exposed. (2) The techniques
can work only if the watchdogs - national-security bureaucrats in position
to blow the whistle, members of Congress, serious journalists - allow them
to work.

Dennis Hans is a freelance writer who has taught courses in mass
communications and American foreign policy at the University of South
Florida-St. Petersburg; he's also a basketball shooting instructor. His
essays have appeared in the Miami Herald, Washington Post, New York Times,
National Catholic Reporter, Slate and HoopsHype.com, among other outlets.
Prior to the Iraq war, Hans published the prescient essays "Lying Us Into
War: Exposing Bush and His 'Techniques of Deceit'," and "The Disinformation
Age." He can be reached at .



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