almared_alarabi

In the Name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful.

'The Road to Hell Is Paved With Good Intentions'
by Jason Leopold
July 16, 2003
Since the start of the war in Iraq four months ago, 212 American
soldiers have been killed, including 79 who have died since May 1,
when President George Bush declared an end to major hostilities in
Iraq. It's unclear how many Iraqi civilians perished during major
combat, but estimates say it is "several thousand."

The Iraqis did not welcome U.S. soldiers with bouquets of flowers, as
the hawks in the White House suggested. Instead, they are begging us
to leave and are engaging soldiers in guerrilla warfare. Iraq is in
such disarray that experts predict it will take at least 10 years to
rebuild the country's infrastructure at a cost of tens of billions of
dollars. More importantly though, to date, no weapons of mass
destruction have been found and there isn't a shred of proof that Iraq
was building a nuclear weapons arsenal.

Still, Bush said Iraq was an imminent threat to its neighbors in the
Middle East and to the United States. But how can that be if the
evidence of its chemical, biological and nuclear weapons program are
nowhere to be found? How then can these casualties be justified?

Saddam Hussein was an evil dictator who repressed, murdered and
tortured his own people. That and that alone was a good enough reason
enough to go to war, according to Bush and his cabal of
neoconservatives.

But that's only true if Iraq proved to be an "imminent" threat. As the
old saying goes, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Bush
may have meant well, but he lied and lied and lied.

A bulk of the intelligence information the CIA gathered to help the
President build a case for war has not held up. There's the now
infamous uranium purchases Iraq was supposedly seeking from Niger, the
mobile trailers that were purportedly used to cook up some chemical
weapons, the aluminum tubes that Iraq bought to allegedly enrich
uranium for a nuclear bomb, the International Atomic Energy Agency
Reports that don't exist and on and on.

Some of Bush's most frightening statements on Iraq, posted on the
website findlaw.com, none of which have been proven accurate are:

"We have sources that tell us that Saddam Hussein recently authorized
Iraqi field commanders to use chemical weapons -- the very weapons the
dictator tells us he does not have."
Radio Address
October 5, 2002

"The Iraqi regime . . . possesses and produces chemical and biological
weapons. It is seeking nuclear weapons."

"We know that the regime has produced thousands of tons of chemical
agents, including mustard gas, sarin nerve gas, VX nerve gas."

"We've also discovered through intelligence that Iraq has a growing
fleet of manned and unmanned aerial vehicles that could be used to
disperse chemical or biological weapons across broad areas. We're
concerned that Iraq is exploring ways of using these UAVS for missions
targeting the United States."

"The evidence indicates that Iraq is reconstituting its nuclear
weapons program. Saddam Hussein has held numerous meetings with Iraqi
nuclear scientists, a group he calls his "nuclear mujahideen" - his
nuclear holy warriors. Satellite photographs reveal that Iraq is
rebuilding facilities at sites that have been part of its nuclear
program in the past. Iraq has attempted to purchase high-strength
aluminum tubes and other equipment needed for gas centrifuges, which
are used to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons."

Cincinnati, Ohio Speech
October 7, 2002

"Our intelligence officials estimate that Saddam Hussein had the
materials to produce as much as 500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX
nerve agent."
State of the Union Address
January 28, 2003

John Dean, the former counsel to President Richard Nixon, made an
excellent argument in June for possibly impeaching Bush if the
president intentionally misled Congress and the public into backing
the war with Iraq.

"Presidential statements, particularly on matters of national
security, are held to an expectation of the highest standard of


Johnson's distortions of the truth about Vietnam forced him to stand
down from reelection. President Richard Nixon's false statements about
Watergate forced his resignation."

Based on the bogus intelligence information that has come to light
thus far, there very well could be a case for impeaching Bush.
Although no Democrat in Washington has so far had the guts to utter
the "I" word with regard to Bush and the Iraq war, the lousy
intelligence information supplied to the White House by the CIA begs
for a bipartisan investigation into what Bush knew and when he knew
it.

"To put it bluntly, if Bush has taken Congress and the nation into war
based on bogus information, he is cooked," Dean said in his column.
"Manipulation or deliberate misuse of national security intelligence
data, if proven, could be "a high crime" under the Constitution's
impeachment clause. It would also be a violation of federal criminal
law, including the broad federal anti-conspiracy statute, which
renders it a felony "to defraud the United States, or any agency
thereof in any manner or for any purpose."

"It's important to recall that when Richard Nixon resigned, he was
about to be impeached by the House of Representatives for misusing the
CIA and FBI. After Watergate, all presidents are on notice that
manipulating or misusing any agency of the executive branch is a
serious abuse of presidential power," Dean said.

What's clear so far is that many of Bush's top advisers, including
Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, have misused the CIA.
Wolfowitz had the spy agency investigate United Nations weapons
inspector Hans Blix in February 2002 in an attempt to discredit the
scientist and possibly launch an early war with Iraq. Vice President
**** Cheney frequently visited the CIA and put pressure on agents to
beef up some intelligence information to portray Iraq as a threat to
world security. It's unclear whether Bush took any part in any of
these schemes but it is a question Congress should ask the President.

Remember, this is a country that impeached a president for accepting
***ual favors in the oval office and lying about it. There's no doubt
that the White House has so far failed to prove that Iraq was a lethal
threat to the U.S. It's time for our elected lawmakers to find out who
should carry the blame.

Jason Leopold is the former Los Angeles bureau chief of Dow Jones
Newswires. He is currently finishing a book on the California energy
crisis.
http://www.antiwar.com/orig/leopold9.html