Pre-Iraq War Records Show Determination To Engage Despite Conflicting Intelligence Reports

The National Security Archives:

Contrary to statements by President George W. Bush or Prime Minister Tony Blair, declassified records from both governments posted on the Web today reflect an early and focused push to prepare war plans and enlist allies regardless of conflicting intelligence about Iraq's threat and the evident difficulties in garnering global support.

Read the whole story: The National Security Archives

Comments

[arlandbaee]

12:29 AM on 10/03/2010

This news should be discussed every day on every media channel. Questions should be asked every day on every media channel.

[Core-Sample]

07:54 PM on 10/02/2010

Duh, we were building our largest base there six months before the war started.

[Marlyn]

03:56 PM on 10/02/2010

This is news?

[LLisaLL]

06:40 PM on 10/02/2010

Exactly. Bush has to finish what daddy started. 9/11 was a perfect excuse. But to have voiced that though back in 2002 or 2003 - well you have been branded unpatriotic and run out of town and the country.

[arlandbaee]

12:05 AM on 10/03/2010

it should be discussed every day.

[Rooster Coburn]

12:17 AM on 10/03/2010

True, we did not have to invade Iraq just as we did not have to invade Italy in WWII. Mussolini was out of power and in prison and the Italian government was no longer a threat to the Allied powers. Both were decisions based on what were at the time considered to be in our best long term interests.

[tbone99]

01:05 PM on 10/02/2010

This compilation further shows:

* Secretary of State Powell’s awareness, THREE DAYS into a new administration, that Iraq “regime change” would be a principal focus of the Bush presidency.

Folks we have been had ....and yet no one has been tried. That makes Obama and the Dems accomplices

[KIVPossum]

02:25 PM on 10/02/2010

They are politicans, all owned by the MIC. All in bed together

[Marlyn]

03:57 PM on 10/02/2010

What a joke, to blame Obama. Truly NUTS.

[aonemandog]

05:58 PM on 10/02/2010

The Obama Administration has a duty to uphold the laws of this country. Documents like those published and still more that remain classified provide enough proof to trigger an investiagation and prosecution of Bush, Cheney, Rove, Rice, Rumsfeld and even Powell for lying to the American people and perpetrating a fraud in order to start the war with Iraq. Unfortuneately and for what ever reason, Obama is either afraid or unwilling to do so. That war is one of the key factors in the bankrupting of this country and I am willing to bet that if a thorough investigation were made, we would find that Bush, Cheney, et all profitted personally from the wars. Our Government and military is so corrupt that it is hard to imagine a way out of it.

[KIVPossum]

12:58 PM on 10/02/2010

Of course Bush made his mind up to go into Iraq, WMD or no WMD. If truth be known, he probably was trying to figure out a way to invade Iraq before the Supremes annointed him.

He wanted to be a war president, and said so many times
He wanted to get back at Saddam because he tried to kill papa Bush
And most important, he wanted to show daddy he was a man


Bush knew he never lived up to dad's expectations and this was a way to show pop he was a big boy.

9/11 gave him the opening to go into the middle east. He used 911, terrorist, terrorist, God bless America to get his patriot act, then scare the bejebus out of the sheep.
No matter what Saddam offered, no matter what UN inspectors said, he always came back with a reason we had to invade Iraq - haven for terrorists, WMD. And even after he was in, he tried over and over again to redefine why he went in.

[Rob Horton]

01:23 PM on 10/02/2010

9/11 certainly was a convenient coincidence... guess he was just lucky terrorists played into the plan.

[KIVPossum]

01:29 PM on 10/02/2010

Bush knew 911 was coming. Maybe not what day or where or what. But he knew something was going to happen and he wanted it.

[LiberalLee]

12:27 PM on 10/02/2010

There's the GOP in a nutshell.
They didn't care about all the horror of 9/11. They just wanted to protect the Carlysle Group and their Saudi bed-mates.
Skrew going after the guy respsonsible for 9/11. We want Iraqi oil.

[Alessandro Ambrossio]

05:11 PM on 10/02/2010

Going after the "guy" responsible for 9/11 would have meant prosecuting the entire bush administration, along with the top military brass at the pentagon. They are the perpetrators. Just look at the "new American century" manifesto that the rethugs put out years before Bush's first term. It called for a "new pearl harbor".

[LiberalLee]

05:15 PM on 10/02/2010

I don't bother reading conspiracy theories often. There's enough honest blame to spread around without muddying up the water with unprovable guesses.
It's enough to know that Bush was repeatedly warned about the seriousness of the AQ threat, but ignored it.
He was probably trying to get through "See Spot Run", before moving on to "My Pet Goat".

[thepulse33]

05:57 PM on 10/02/2010

F&F Alessandro! People should really take a look at the Project for the New American Century. They'd know who was responsible for 9/11. They took sinister to a new level.

[justalurker]

12:14 PM on 10/02/2010

In a nutshell:

G. W. Bush said, "Is that all we got?" , when reviewing the intel before powell's U.N. Presentation.

Bush STILL went to war. 'Nuff said.

[LeeCalif]

12:05 PM on 10/02/2010

This is another reason Obama should not be re-elected.

He is not prosecuting any of these crimes. These are crimes against humanity.
You prosecute these crimes or you become a part of the criminality of this.

[LiberalLee]

12:23 PM on 10/02/2010

I'd rather we got our economy foxed first.
No GOPer will manage that.
The UN is still considering charges against Bush. Let them pay for it. All we have to do at that point is turn him, Cheney and the rest of the posse over to them.
Being upset because Obama isn't being distracted by Bush's crimes while he's trying to get this country off its financial back is short-sighted.

[justalurker]

12:23 PM on 10/02/2010

You should find a candidate that wants to prosecute Cheney and Bush. Then you would actually have someone to support, instead of just engaging in revenge/punishment voting.

[Buckeye54]

10:48 AM on 10/02/2010

Nothing we didn't know all along.

I hope we retain Democratic majorities in the House and Senate and beginning in 2011, we start holding hearings about why we went to war, and prosecute those responsible for lying to draw us into an unnecessary, expensive and deadly war to our military.

I don't think there's a statute of limitations on war crimes.

[GreshamGuy]

09:44 AM on 10/02/2010

No surprise here - Bush intimated as much in his campaign biography in 1999. Daddy pulled out too early 1991, not near early enough many years earlier.

[LiberalLee]

12:25 PM on 10/02/2010

Daddy didn't pull out EARLY enough.
That's why we got the mo.ron to begin with...
Oh... out of Iraq... I meant Barbara...

[KIVPossum]

12:59 PM on 10/02/2010

LOL

[fairplaystacy]

09:34 AM on 10/02/2010

Imagine how many lives and how much money could have been saved if one of Sadam's people just shot him dead before Bush invaded Iraq.

Bush would have been completely blindsided and had no reason to go into Iraq. The Germans should have assassinated Sadam. The bullet would have cost about 17 cents (Remington Colt .45)

History is so cruel.

[tbone99]

01:06 PM on 10/02/2010

Imagine if someone had just shot Bush - same result

[thepulse33]

06:32 PM on 10/02/2010

Imagine if the U.S. had left Saddam where he was. Yes he was a despot but there are plenty of those to go around. He was no worse than Dick Cheney is. Saddam didn't do anything that Bush and Cheney haven't done.

[fairplaystacy]

09:28 AM on 10/02/2010

ooooh, can we hold Bush accountable now?

no not now?

Oh not until we actually uncover a video or a recording of Bush saying to Cheney, "...let's lie to the American people and go into Iraq just for fun, even if it means we might go to jail"

Oh, then only maybe?!

[wolf58]

08:26 AM on 10/02/2010

But Sadam was a bad person he killed his own people and was a threat to us......What a load of crap. If we are to go by those statements one can make the same argument of Bush/Cheney and the rest of the Neocon chickenhawk adminstration, because their actions based all on lies have shown they were a bigger threat to our own country and they killed and mamed more Americans than the attackers of 911. Sadam was nothing but a paper tiger and we knew this. The no-fly zones had kept him in check since the gulf war and all his saber rattling was to keep his enemies (Iran) from rolling into his country. No jr had full intentions of going into Iraq long before he took office and his sidekick Cheney who played the brave hero when in fact he avoided service with five deferments knew that Bush would go along with anything he said and did. My two kids fought there, one wounded and we lost friends and for what? So all these cowards in suits could beat their chest proclaiming what patriots they were when in fact they were nothing but lying, war mongering, coward,neocon chickenhawk traitors. They should be tried as such but they won't and I do fault the Obama admistration with their look forward instead of back logic and because of that the traitors have got away with murder.

[AverageJose007]

12:27 AM on 10/02/2010

Wow, Imagine that.

4,375 US Military, 179 British Military, 139 Other Country Coalition Forces

31,616 Wounded through December 2009

Iraqi Civilian Fatalities: January 2008 report - 151,000 ( Thought this might get some notice, they are fellow human beings.

[ThankGodhesgone]

12:17 AM on 10/02/2010

Post-9/11 call for regime change in Iraq
On September 20, 2001 (nine days after the September 11, 2001 attacks), the PNAC sent a letter to President George W. Bush, advocating "a determined effort to remove Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq," or regime change:

...even if evidence does not link Iraq directly to the attack, any strategy aiming at the eradication of terrorism and its sponsors must include a determined effort to remove Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq. Failure to undertake such an effort will constitute an early and perhaps decisive surrender in the war on international terrorism.[4][18]

From 2001 through 2002, the co-founders and other members of the PNAC published articles supporting the United States' invasion of Iraq.[19] On its website, the PNAC promoted its point of view that leaving Saddam Hussein in power would be "surrender to terrorism."[20][21][22][23]

In 2003, during the period leading up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the PNAC had seven full-time staff members in addition to its board of directors.

Seems that the invasion of Iraq was in the works as soon as Jr was elected.

[justalurker]

12:27 PM on 10/02/2010

Yes, the idea of invading Iraq was at least mentioned at the time of his first cabinet meeting 8 months before 9/11, according to the book by his first treasure secretary.

[thepulse33]

06:36 PM on 10/02/2010

And no bid contracts to rebuild Iraq were doled out before the first shot was fired. Halliburton the the biggest beneficiary. Dick Cheney's company.

[ThankGodhesgone]

07:11 PM on 10/03/2010

Agreed. And they didn't do such a great job. Remember when some soldiers were electrocuted in the showers, because Haliburton's sub contractors put in sub standard electrical wiring?