Newsweak and Isikoff Try AgainI dunno, maybe they still figure they have a
shred of credibility left with the goofballs, so they title the new "scoop"
From Downing Street to Capitol Hill.
Two senior British government officials today acknowledged as authentic a series of 2002 pre-Iraq war memos stating that Saddam Hussein's nuclear weapons program was "effectively frozen" and that there was "no recent evidence" of Iraqi ties to international terrorism—private conclusions that contradicted two key pillars of the Bush administration's public case for the invasion in March 2003.Okay, let's hit the quoted words. The term "effectively frozen" of course, means not quite frozen, and it does not mean that it didn't exist, otherwise it would use the term "nonexistent. And "no recent evidence" clearly implies that there was evidence at one time.
Second, once again, it's a British memo. If that's what the Brits thought, then it seems to me they might have a quarrel with Tony Blair, who pointed out recently that the only people who knew what Tony Blair and George Bush themselves thought were Tony Blair and George Bush.
A March 8, 2002, secret "options" paper prepared by Prime Minister Tony Blair's top national-security aides also stated that intelligence on Saddam's purported weapons of mass destruction (WMD) was "poor." While noting that Saddam had used such weapons in the past and could do so again "if his regime were threatened," the options paper concluded "there is no greater threat now than in recent years that Saddam will use WMD."He wasn't supposed to have WMD at all. So if the intelligence was that he had WMD and wasn't using it, he was in violation. Ergo we've got our reason for going.
The options paper was written just one month before Blair met with President Bush in Crawford, Texas. According to another leaked internal memo, Blair agreed at the meeting to support a U.S.-led invasion to topple Saddam’s regime provided that “certain conditions” were met. Those conditions, according to the newly leaked memo, were that efforts be made to “construct a coalition” and “shape” public opinion; that the Israeli-Palestinian crisis was “quiescent,” and that attempts to eliminate Iraqi WMD through the return of United Nations weapons inspectors be exhausted.Okay, we're three paragraphs into this turkey and they're trying to sell us that Blair telling Bush to "construct a coalition" is sinister? The rest is blather about how the moonbats have been pushing the Downing Street Memo.
Unbelievably lame.
