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" In the lead up to the Iraq war and its later conduct, I saw at a minimum, true dereliction, negligence and irresponsibility, at worse, lying, incompetence and corruption.... they've screwed up. And whose heads are rolling on this? That's what bothers me most. " - Retd. General Anthony Zinni, formerly of US Marine Corps and G.W.Bush's special envoy to the Middle East, May 2004 [link]
" I did not say he (Iraqi President Saddam Hussein) didn't have weapons of mass destruction." - Colin Powell, c.September 2003
' "irrefutable and undeniable" evidence that Saddam Hussein is concealing weapons of mass destruction. ' - AP quoting Colin Powell, Feb 5th'03
" He (Saddam Hussein) has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction. " - Colin Powell, February 2001
" No biological agents were found on the trucks and experts point out that, unlike the trucks described by Colin Powell, the Secretary of State, in a speech to the UN Security Council, they were open sided and would therefore have left a trace easy for weapons inspectors to detect. One former UN inspector said that the trucks would have been a very inefficient way to produce anthrax. " - UK Independent, 30 May 2003 [link]
" We were told again and again the reason for going to war was that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and that they could be used within 45 minutes... Now it's clear that the Iraqis have had no weapons for some time and that Parliament was given a completely false impression. " - UK MP Tam Dalyell, May '03
" I'm absolutely certain that Iraq HAD illegal possession of weapons of mass destruction and had these RECENTLY and there is every reason why these ought to be found. " - UK Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, May '03
" We know he had them and whether he destroyed them, moved them or hid them, we're going to find out the truth. " - George W Bush, Apr'03
" If they don't find weapons of mass destruction, Bush is finished " - US 'ShockJock' Rush Limbaugh, Jan'03
" I said on my program, if, if the Americans go in and overthrow Saddam Hussein and it's clean, he has nothing, I will apologize to the nation, and I will not trust the Bush administration again. " - Bill O'Reilly, on ABC's Good Morning America, 03-18-03
" The (Fallujah II) chlorine plant is currently inoperative. The site contains a number of tagged dual-use items of equipment, which were all accounted for. All key buildings were inspected in addition to the chlorine and phenol plants. The objectives of the visit were successfully achieved. " - Joint IAEA / UNMOVIC press statement, 9 December 2002[link]
" Most chemical and biological agents are subject to processes of deterioration. A working paper by UNSCOM from January 1998 noted that: "Taking into consideration the conditions and the quality of CW-agents and munitions produced by Iraq at that time, there is no possibility of weapons remaining from the mid-1980's" (quoted in Arms Control Today, June 2000).
If the allegations that Iraq possessed a stockpile of illicit weapons were to be true, then the UK and US would need to present credible evidence that Iraq had managed to stabilise its chemical and biological agents to a greater extent than it is previously thought to have done. The UK dossier does not make this claim, except as an unsubstantiated assertion that Iraq had "the knowledge and capability to add stabiliser to nerve agent and other chemical warfare agents which would prevent such decomposition." The fact that this assertion falls short of the claim that Iraq actually achieved the stabilisation of its chemical agents can be taken as an acknowledgement that no evidence has been discovered - after over 7 years of intrusive inspections and 11 years of intelligence gathering - to demonstrate Iraq's retention of stabilised chemical or biological agents. " - Glen Rangwala, Cambridge University Researcher, March '03 [link] " This site, which used to produce chemical weapons precursors, was bombed in the Gulf War... chemicals could also be used as disinfectants and in water treatment... Fallujah II is also sometimes referred to Tareq State Establishment (or Tareq State Enterprise). Secretary Powell used this name for the facility, as listed above; he may have used the alternate name to make refutation of his claims harder. " - Glen Rangwala, Cambridge University Researcher, March '03[link]
" Iraq has rebuilt key portions of the Tareq State Establishment. Tareq includes facilities designed specifically for Iraq’s chemical weapons program and employs key figures from past programs " - Colin Powell's presentation to the UN, Feb 5th '03
" Iraq has built sophisticated, mobile biological weapons production and research facilities that could be used to make anthrax, ricin and possibly smallpox. Powell said that Iraq had at least seven of the mobile facilities that could be concealed on 18 trucks. " - CNN report Colin Powell's presentation to the UN, Feb 5th '03[link]
" Powell cited informants as saying that Iraqis are dispersing rockets armed with biological weapons in western Iraq... Presented declassified satellite pictures that he said were 15 munitions bunkers. Powell said four of them had active chemical munitions inside. " - AP report Colin Powell's presentation to the UN, Feb 5th '03[link]
" I saw President Bush on that aircraft carrier in the Pacific yesterday. Incidentally, that's the closest he's ever got to the War in Vietnam. " - US Senator Fritz Hollings, '03
" to my knowledge, he never showed up. " - General William Turnipseed, (commanded Bush's Alabama unit), Boston Globe (5/23/00)
" Lt Bush has not been observed at this unit during the period of this report, " - Guard records, Annual Evaluation Report, May 1, 1972 to April 30, 1973[link]
' Bush's Guard files prove that he did not volunteer for overseas duty as he implied during Campaign 2000. Instead, Guard records show that as a F-102 pilot in the National Guard, and opted out and left his Volunteer Sheet's "Area Preferences, Overseas Areas" blank ' - Sanders Hicks, quoting from publicly available Guards records, March '03[link]
" Had my unit been called up, I would have gone overseas. " - George W.Bush, 2000
" Of the 535 members of Congress, only ONE (Sen. Johnson of South Dakota) has an enlisted son or daughter in the armed forces! If you really want to stand up for America, please send your twin daughters over to Kuwait right now and let them don their chemical warfare suits. And let's see every member of Congress with a child of military age also sacrifice their kids for this war effort. What's that you say? You don't THINK so? Well, hey, guess what -- we don't think so either! " - A Letter from Michael Moore to George W. Bush on the Eve of War
[link]
" I want President Bush to get a good look at this, really good look here. This is the only son I had, only son. " - Michael Waters-Bey father of Marine killed in Gulf War II [link]
" If Americans and British are here to destroy the regime and liberate Iraq, we welcome them. But if they come to occupy Iraq, we will fight them to the end — like the Palestinians." - Emad Fadil, 26-year-old worker in the southern city of Basra, Apr'03 [link]
" They didn't want to protect these places — only the oil ministry... Why the oil ministry? " - Actor Fadel Abbas watched his theater get torched by looters, Apr'03 [link]
" Please send one of your helicopters or planes to take him away. You have all this technology to bomb us, to make the missile that burned Ali's house. But you cannot spare one aircraft for one day to save a life? " - Fatin Mhssin Sharhah, Nurse of Ali Ismaeel Abbas at Saddam City Hospital, Baghdad [link]
" They steal and steal,"..."They threaten us, saying: 'We are with the Americans, you can do nothing to us' " - Abu Zeinab, Najaf, Iraq talking about the US backed Iraqi Militias. [link]
" We were thinking these Americans want us to be safe. "
- Bakhat Hassan, who lost 11 family members (his 2 daughters, his son, his parents, two older brothers, their wives and two nieces) when his van was fired on by US troops. Karbala, Iraq, March 31 2003 " Fire a warning shot," he ordered ... Finally, he shouted at the top of his voice, "Stop him, Red 1, stop him!".... " You just [expletive] killed a family because you didn't fire a warning shot soon enough! " - 3rd Infantry Division, Capt. Ronny Johnson. Karbala, Iraq, March 31 2003 [link]
" Unfortunately, while the infrastructure of Iraq may one day be rebuilt, the 'coalition' cannot reconstruct disintegrated babies. It lacks the technology. " - Brian D Finch, Herald Newspaper, April 2003
" It was found in a manual, a training manual for al Qaeda in Afghanistan in which they suggest that you can find weapons in the United States cheap and they're easily available " - Big Hole in America's Security Net, CBS News, May 30, 2003 [link]
" We do know of certain knowledge that he [Osama Bin Laden] is either in Afghanistan, or in some other country, or dead. " — Donald Rumsfeld
" You can fight a war on terrorism and do it legitimately and do it without
sacrificing civil liberties in the United States, but it requires a certain intelligence and
sophistication be brought to the table. So maybe we ought to start grading presidential
candidates for an IQ. " - Gen. Merrill A. "Tony" McPeak, retired former chief of staff of the
U.S. Air Force
" What has come to trouble me most over past weeks is the suspicion that if the hanging chads in Florida had gone the other way and Al Gore had been elected, we would not now be about to commit British troops. " - former UK Foreign Secretary Robin Cook, House of Commons resignation speech [link]
" this Administration has directed all of the anger, fear, and grief which emerged from the ashes of the twin towers and the twisted metal of the Pentagon towards a tangible villain, one we can see and hate and attack. And villain he is. But, he is the wrong villain." - Senator Robert Byrd, US Senate, March 19 2003
" As a commander, I would not want to lead my troops into battle unless I was totally convinced of its just cause and that all necessary resources had been made available. So far, this does not seem to be the case. And how will a war against Iraq impact on the global war against terrorism? " - General Sir Michael Rose
" There is a strong case for a "regime change" in Iraq. The complicating factor is the US's approach which looks like bullying because, well, it is bullying. If the US reserves the right to attack any country it doesn't like the look of, then those who don't like the look of the US might return the compliment. " - Salman Rushdie, writer
" Despite being presented with the falseness of this claim, the administration persists in making misleading arguments about the significance of the (anodized aluminum) tubes " - David Albright, Nuclear consultant, Washington Post, March 8th 2003 [link]
" Iraq has made 'several attempts to buy-high-strength aluminum tubes used to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons.' " - George W Bush, speech to U.N. Security Council, Sept. 12 2002 [link]
" written on paper from a 1980s military government in Niger, bears the date of October 2000 and the signature of a man who by then had not been
foreign minister of Niger in 14 years... 'I'm sure the FBI and CIA must be mortified by this because it is extremely embarrassing to them' former CIA official Ray Close " - Fake Iraq documents 'embarrassing' for U.S, CNN, March 2003 [link]
" it was the information that we had... We provided it. If that information is inaccurate, fine." - Colin Powell, NBC's Meet The Press March 2003 [link]
" Saddam Hussein, armed with a pistol on his hip, seemed 'vigorous and confident' ... Rumsfeld 'conveyed the President's greetings and expressed his pleasure at being in Baghdad' " - Newsweek on declassified documents from 1983 [link]
" the US, under the successive administrations of Ronald Reagan and George Bush Snr, sold materials including anthrax, VX nerve gas, West Nile fever germs and botulism to Iraq right up until March 1992, as well as germs similar to tuberculosis and pneumonia. Other bacteria sold included brucella melitensis, which damages major organs, and clostridium perfringens, which causes gas gangrene. .... The shipments to Iraq went on even after Saddam Hussein ordered the gassing of the Kurdish town of Halabja, in which at least 5000 men, women and children died. The atrocity, which shocked the world, took place in March 1988, but a month later the components and materials of weapons of mass destruction were continuing to arrive in Baghdad from the US. " - US Senate Report [link]
" Mr Channon, in line with Mrs Thatcher's policy of propping up the dictator, said: 'A ban would do our other trade prospects in Iraq no good'. The British taxpayer was even forced to write a compensation cheque for £300,000 to the German-owned company after final checks on the plant,
completed in May 1990, were interrupted by the outbreak of the Gulf war. The Falluja 2 chlorine plant, 50 miles outside Baghdad, near the Habbaniya
airbase, has been pinpointed by the US as an example of a factory rebuilt by Saddam to regain his chemical warfare capability. Last month it featured in Colin Powell's dossier of reasons why the world should go to war against Iraq " - UK Guardian 6th March '03 [link]
" Ministers deliberately misled Parliament, but did not intend to mislead Parliament." - British Arms to Iraq Inquiry, June 1996
" Killing Iraqis was hard at first, but after a while it got easier." - Oklahoma bomber Timothy McVeigh during his service in the first Gulf War
" We had to destroy the village in order to save it " - American military press officer, Vietnam [link]
" All of us have heard this term ‘preventive war’ since the earliest days of Hitler. I recall that is about the first time I heard it. In this day and time…I don’t believe there is such a thing; and frankly, I wouldn’t even listen to anyone seriously that came in and talked about such a thing. " - US President Eisenhower, 1953
" in the United States only Congress can declare wars."..."Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the
same way in any country. " - Hermann Goering during the Nuremberg trials.
" We don't have much to do with him anymore. Nowadays he's just the American defence secretary to us, but for God's sake, he'd better not start a war," - 85 year old Margarete Rumsfeld, Germany [link]
" Sisters Antoinette Uzell and Debra Magee were among many parents who brought their children. Ms Uzell, who was accompanied by Lauren, 2, and Ryan, 4, said: 'Some of the anti-globalisation people are chanting 'Death to Bush'. I don't like that. I like America, I just don't agree with this war. I'm marching for the women in Baghdad and the children who just want to do their shopping without being bombed.' " 100,000 March in Ireland [link]
" When I saw the dead and dying Afghani children on TV, I felt a newly recovered sense of national security. God Bless America. " - T-shirt slogan worn by student in West Virginia suspended from school, then driven out by death threats [link]
" There are huge cracks emerging in our time-honored alliances, and U.S. intentions are suddenly subject to damaging worldwide speculation. Anti-Americanism based on mistrust, misinformation, suspicion, and alarming rhetoric from U.S. leaders is fracturing the once solid alliance against global terrorism which existed after September 11. " - US Senator Robert Byrd [link]
" France can teach the Iraqis how to surrender " - US Congressman Pete King [link]
" George Will saw fit to include in his latest Newsweek column this joke: "How many Frenchmen does it take to defend Paris? No one knows, it's never been tried." That was certainly amusing. One million, four hundred thousand French soldiers were killed during World War I. As a result, there weren't many Frenchmen left to fight in World War II. Nevertheless, 100,000 French soldiers lost their lives trying to stop Hitler.
On behalf of every one of those 100,000 men, I would like to thank Mr. Will for his clever joke. " - Molly Ivins [link]
" On Wednesday, a well-dressed young Manhattan couple yelled insults at a Lebanese-American who was desperately searching for survivors from
the arts center he had run on the 92nd floor of the World Trade
Center's north tower. "They told me, 'You should go back to your
country, you f--king Arabs, we should bomb the s--t out of you," said
the man, Moukhtar Kocache. " - Seattle Times, September 2001 [link]
" Buscemi, who from 1980 to 1985 worked in downtown Manhattan's Engine
Company 55, a few blocks from the disaster, rejoined his former comrades
amid the wreckage. 'He put in 60 hours on top of the pile, pulling out
victims,' says retired NYFD battalion chief Richard Ardisson, 56, who was at
the site with the 43-year-old actor. 'Not delivering coffee or giving moral
support. He was exhausted and covered in soot.' Buscemi declined to speak to
reporters " - Actor Steve Buscemi, September 2001 [link]
" George Clooney organized the 'America: A Tribute to Heroes Telethon,' which raised for than $150 million for families of the victims of the terrorist attacks. and with friends on September 17th rode motorcycles through the streets of Los Angeles for several hours handing out American flags. " - Celebrities who assisted 9-11 victims
" I think a war against Iraq is as unavoidable as it senseless. I think it's coming. But I also think the real danger is going to be what happens after it... You can't beat your enemy anymore through wars; instead you create an entire generation of people revenge-seeking " - George Clooney
" For me as an American, the most painful aspect of this is that I believe that that administration has taken the events of 9/11 and has manipulated the grief of the country and I think that’s reprehensible " - Dustin Hoffman
" We are the only target in America. Nobody thinks of getting even with Waco, Texas. Just New York. And the government in Washington cares less about New York than anyplace in the country... When they needed New York, Washington wailed, "We are going to honor the nine eleven victims. We are going to blow Iraq apart. " - New York, Pulitzer winning columnist Jimmy Breslin
" Nine-11 gave the Bush people carte blanche to carry out their extreme agenda -- and they didn't hesitate for a moment to use it. I mean, by 9/12 Rumsfeld was saying, 'Let's hit Iraq.' They've used the war on terror to justify everything from tax cuts to Alaska oil drilling. " - Ronald Reagan Jr. [link]
" (after 9/11) besieged Americans want to be led by ass-kicking meanies, not mild-mannered milquetoast moderates " - Ted Rall [link]
" The efficiency of the truly national leader consists mainly of preventing the people's attention from becoming divided, and of always concentrating it on a single enemy. " - Adolf Hitler, 'Mein Kampf' 1924
" Saddam Hussein is a truly evil man " - George W Bush, 2002
" I consider bin Laden an evil man. And I don't think there's any religious justification for what he has in mind. Islam is a religion of love, not hate. This is a man who hates. This is a man who's declared war on innocent people. This is a man who doesn't mind destroying women and children. This is man who hates freedom. This is an evil man.
Q - But does he have political goals? He has got evil goals. And it's hard to think in conventional terms about a man so dominated by evil that he's willing to do what he thinks he's going to get away with. But he's not going to get away with it. " - remarks by President George W. Bush meets Muslim Community Leaders in The White House, September 26 2001 [link] " Of course, this conjures up Winston Churchill's famous phrase when he said -- don't quote me on this, okay? I don't want to be quoted on this, so don't quote me. He said sometimes the truth is so precious it must be accompanied by a bodyguard of lies. " - Donald Rumsfeld, 9/25/01
" U.S. planes killed 21 civilians who were fleeing the vicinity of a strike on the Taliban compound, including seventeen children and three women. The survivors of the hit on the trailer were brought into a nearby house, which itself was struck in a follow-up sortie just minutes later. The victims ranged from an eighteen month old infant to a twenty-five year old woman. A sixteen year old girl named Gulfari related how she was splattered with the blood and body parts of her relatives. 'When I put my hand up I felt blood. It was like meat and I threw it away'. " - February 13, 2002 New York Times
" We verified the target and on the night of the 21st, we dropped some precision-guided munitions on the target and destroyed that target. All the munitions were accounted for--on the target. " - Lt Col Jim Yonts, February 13, 2002 New York Times
" 'This war is not about oil,' Rumsfeld said. 'Our decision to intercede against this dictator and not against the dozens of other ruthless dictators in the world is not about oil. France and Russia's opposition to this war is not about the purely coincidental fact that both countries have lucrative, pre-existing oil contracts with Iraq. Furthermore, the interest of many U.S. corporations in the war has nothing to do with oil, either. This war is about liberty. Oil wells deserve liberty, too.' " - 137 More Oil Wells Liberated For Democracy, The Onion, April '03 [link]
" For some time now I've been really pissed off with Mr Johnson, who lives a
couple of doors down the street.... I just know - from very good
sources - that he is, in reality, a Mass Murderer. I have leafleted the
street telling them that if we don't act first, he'll pick us off one by
one.... Since I'm the only one in the street with a
decent range of automatic firearms, I reckon it's up to me to keep the
peace..... The one certain way to stop Muslim fundamentalist suicide bombers targeting the US
or the UK is to bomb a few Muslim countries that have never threatened us.
That's why I want to blow up Mr Johnson's garage and kill his wife and
children. Strike first! That'll teach him a lesson. " - Terry Jones (ex Monty Python), The Observer [link]
" The war on terror involves Saddam Hussein because of the nature of Saddam Hussein, the history of Saddam Hussein, and his willingness to terrorize himself. " — Grand Rapids, Mich., Jan. 29, 2003
" There's only one person who hugs the mothers and the widows, the wives and the kids upon the death of their loved one. Others hug but having committed the troops, I've got an additional responsibility to hug and that's me and I know what it's like. " — Washington, D.C., Dec. 11, 2002
" I need to be able to move the right people to the right place at the right time to protect you, and I'm not going to accept a lousy bill out of the United Nations Senate. " — South Bend, Ind., Oct. 31, 2002
" I was proud the other day when both Republicans and Democrats stood with me in the Rose Garden to announce their support for a clear statement of purpose: you disarm, or we will." — Speaking about Saddam Hussein, Manchester, N.H., Oct. 5, 2002
" There's no doubt in my mind that we should allow the world worst leaders to hold America hostage, to threaten our peace, to threaten our friends and allies with the world's worst weapons." — South Bend, Ind., Sept. 5, 2002
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