Libertarian Leanings

Butler Report

I've typed up paragraphs from the Butler Inquiry on Review of Intelligence on Weapons of Mass Destruction that pertain to the infamous sixteen words in the 2003 SOTU. The entire report in PDF format is here.

499. We conclude that, on the basis of intelligence assessments at the time, covering both Niger and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the statements on Iraqi attempts to acquire uranium from Africa in the Government’s dossier, and by the Prime Minister in the House of Commons, were well founded. By extension, we conclude also that the statement in President Bush’s State of the Union Address of January 28, 2003 that:

The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.

was well-founded.

503. From our examination of the intelligence and other material on Iraqi attempts to buy uranium from Africa we conclude that:

a. It is accepted by all parties that Iraqi officials visited Niger in 1999.

b. The British Government had intelligence from several different sources that indicating that this visit was for the purpose of acquiring uranium. Since uranium constitutes almost three-quarters of Niger’s exports, the intelligence was credible.

c. The evidence was not conclusive that Iraq actually purchased, as opposed to having sought, uranium and the British Government did not claim this.

d. The forged documents were not available to the British Government at the time of its assessment, so the fact of the forgery does not undermine it.

Tom Maguire seems to think this last bullet implies the Bits made their intelligence assessments based on documents not in their possession. I guess after a while you get suspicious of everybody, but in all the reporting and commentary on the subject, it seems a lot of people have been distorting the facts to make the case against the war in Iraq. Which is to be believed? A six-month inquiry into intelligence failures, or a eight-day tea drinking trip to chat with old friends? The conclusion of which was to say "it was highly doubtful that any such transaction had ever taken place", when that was not the question.

Saddam Hussein was going to have to be dealt with sooner or later. John Kerry seems to think there would have been some advantage to dealing with him later, or not dealing with him at all. I don't want a president who would take the risk of leaving Saddam in power in this age of terrorism.

Oracle Madeleine

Having frog marched the kitchen trash to its rightful bin this evening, I stopped briefly at the computer.

"Computer," said I, "take me to the Minute Man."

And it was done. There at the top of the blog was this. (You gotta love this guy's sense of humor.) While my tin foil hat is a bit of a tight fit, so far it doesn't seem to be cutting off circulation, so let me confidently remind everyone that all roads lead to Madeleine.

Kerry's minimum wage

Jeffrey M. Herbener, chairman of the department of economics at Grove City College, takes a very dim view of Mr. Kerry and his promise to raise the minimum wage.

Even if Kerry is an Economics 101 dropout, one would think that witnessing labor unions lobby for higher minimum wages during his many years in the Senate would have aroused his suspicions about who benefits from such legislation. Since union members are already being paid well above the minimum wage, union officials must recognize what Kerry seems not to see: that raising the minimum wage makes the lowest-wage workers unemployable and, thus reduces their competitiveness with union workers.

Creating an underclass of low-skilled, unemployable persons is, perhaps, the most socially malignant way imaginable to raise union wages.

Pandering. It's what Kerry does. Minimum wage, universal health care. These are the made to order issues for Kerry - consistent with his voting record. He knows they don't work and he knows they won't do what he promises they will. Votes are for show anyway. "I voted for it before I voted against it."

Worst economy since...

Massachusetts tax receipts are dramatically higher than expected at the close of the fiscal year.

State tax receipts ballooned during the just-ended fiscal year as corporate profits fattened and more workers found jobs, state data released yesterday showed, underlining the strength of the state's building economic recovery.

Economists brushed off concerns about low percentage gains in sales tax receipts, which rose just 1.1 percent, because consumer spending - and thus sales taxes - remained relatively strong during the recent recession.

Economy watchers found the year-end 9.5 percent jump in corporate taxes more encouraging, as it indicates Bay State businesses' bottom lines were healthy. The state took in a total $1.675 billion in corporate and business taxes in the 12 months ended June 30.

I wonder how long Kerry's going to keep droning on about the economy and jobs. After a while he's going to begin to sound, well, stupid.

Criminals clash with Iraqi police

As I drove to work this morning listening to WBZ, I was quite startled to hear that the Iraqi police were cracking down on "criminals". There is at least one AP reporter in Baghdad who now refers to the "insurgents" as criminals. Here's the story.

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) Hundreds were detained in an Iraqi police sweep of suspected criminals in a Baghdad neighborhood, police said Tuesday.

The operation Monday involved dozens of Iraqi police officers and was intended to crack down on ``criminals, kidnappers and looters,'' said Hussein Ali Kamal, the deputy interior minister.

Authorities arrested 527 suspects, said Sabah Qassem, an Interior Ministry information officer.

Just after dark, police in pickup trucks and sport utility vehicles spread through the Bab Alsheikh neighborhood and snatched suspects off the streets. Some fought back, setting off dozens of small gunbattles. One suspect died and two were injured while resisting arrest, Kamal said.

Associated Press Television News video showed dozens of detained men sitting on the ground. It was not immediately clear where the men were taken.

Maybe this means the light at the end of the tunnel isn't that far away. Maybe the "terrorists'" glamour is wearing thin, and their base of support is drying up. Of course they'll always be able to count on Michael Moore. To him they're Minutemen.

Still more on Joe Wilson

This isn't news, really, but Clifford May in National Review gives voice to the question that's bugged me right along.

He has a chapter called "What I Didn't Find in Africa," which might be used as a case study for CIA trainees and others who need to understand the fundamental principle of logic that "the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence." In other words, Wilson fails to grasp that because he didn't find proof that Saddam was seeking African uranium does not mean that proof was not there to be found.

Why was Wilson given any credibility at all? Why were "respectable" news organizations acting as if an eight day mission could even scratch the surface, let alone provide proof that Saddam made no attempts to acquire uranium?

More on Joe Wilson

Susan Schmidt has unkind words about Joe Wilson in yesterday's Washington Post. She confirms what I've been thinking right along - the man's a liar.

Former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, dispatched by the CIA in February 2002 to investigate reports that Iraq sought to reconstitute its nuclear weapons program with uranium from Africa, was specifically recommended for the mission by his wife, a CIA employee, contrary to what he has said publicly.

Joe Wilson for those who may not recall, is the gentleman who has been calling George Bush a liar for saying British intelligence learned that Iraq was trying to acquire uranium in Africa. He is also the gentleman who accused Karl Rove of criminally revealing that his wife Valerie is a covert CIA agent. Tom Maguire has been all over this story, and you can start here and here to read up on it. But first let me excerpt Mr. Maguire's hypotheses regarding Joe Wilson's veracity on the point of his wife's recommendation.

So, his wife called the meeting, and introduced him, but, according to what the Ambassador told Dr. Marshall, he didn't know anyone in the room. Calling Mr. Wilson a liar seems too obvious, so we have other ideas:

(a) His wife was in her covert deep-cover disguise, and he didn't recognize her;

(b) She introduced him and left by way of a secret passageway through the bookcase before he entered the room - actually having him in the room for the intro would have been awkward for everyone.

(c) Wilson told larger truths about the evildoers in BushCo, so his minor, uhh, misrecollections are irrelevant.

Back to the Post. Of the purpose of Mr. Wilson's trip to Niger and its outcome Ms. Schmidt had this to say.

The panel found that Wilson's report, rather than debunking intelligence about purported uranium sales to Iraq, as he has said, bolstered the case for most intelligence analysts. And contrary to Wilson's assertions and even the government's previous statements, the CIA did not tell the White House it had qualms about the reliability of the Africa intelligence that made its way into 16 fateful words in President Bush's January 2003 State of the Union address.

[...]

The report also said Wilson provided misleading information to The Washington Post last June. He said then that he concluded the Niger intelligence was based on documents that had clearly been forged because "the dates were wrong and the names were wrong."

"Committee staff asked how the former ambassador could have come to the conclusion that the 'dates were wrong and the names were wrong' when he had never seen the CIA reports and had no knowledge of what names and dates were in the reports," the Senate panel said. Wilson told the panel he may have been confused and may have "misspoken" to reporters. The documents -- purported sales agreements between Niger and Iraq -- were not in U.S. hands until eight months after Wilson made his trip to Niger.

For more see this post at Pejmanesque. And in an interesting side note, David Thomson makes this observation in a comment to Dan Drezner.

Am I being overly cynical to point out that Susan Schmidt’s piece was published “Saturday, July 10, 2004; Page A09?” Why not on the front page---and why on Saturday---a day when few people read the newspaper?

Makes you wonder if maybe there's some kind of bias. Probably just my imagination. But anyway, back to the issue at hand. This would appear to drive another nail into any notions of the administration lying about weapons of mass destruction. But we still have the question of who outed Valerie Plame. Or perhaps the question should be phrased, "Who cares who outed Valerie Plame?" In a comment I left laying around the blogosphere somewhere I said I thought Valerie was the evil genius behind the outing of Valerie. I retract the genius part.

Update: Instapundit links to more commentary on Ambassador Joe.

Turn back the clock

It was often said of Ronald Reagan when he campaigned against Jimmie Carter that he wanted to "turn back the clock". How curious it is that John Kerry would like to do just that. Here's William Kristol in his Weekly Standard article, The 9/10 Democrats:

LAST THURSDAY, CNN's Larry King asked John Kerry whether he would want former President Bill Clinton to campaign on his behalf. Kerry said yes. "What American would not trade the economy we had in the 1990s, the fact that we were not at war and young Americans were not deployed?" Kerry's answer is revealing. We were, in fact, at war. The Clinton administration, with the exception of a few cruise missiles, had simply chosen not to fight back.

This is the most unusual election season I've ever seen. Never has there been such a campaign of distortion by the media as is going on right now. The Democrats and the media will paint the picture of the Kerry/Edwards team restoring America's standing, of returning America to that position of respect that was ours in the Clinton years. Here's Mr. Kristol's take on that.

As for hatred of America, al Qaeda leaders were planning their attacks on New York and Washington back in those halcyon days of the Clinton era that John Kerry recalls with such nostalgia. Indeed, al Qaeda was left unmolested as it trained thousands of terrorists at camps in Afghanistan. And of course, lest we forget: On October 12, 2000, al Qaeda bombed the USS Cole off the coast of Yemen, killing 17 American sailors. On August 7, 1998, al Qaeda struck two U.S. embassies in East Africa killing 257--including 12 Americans--and injuring 5,000. During the 1990s, numerous other attacks were planned (the Millennium attack on the Los Angeles airport) or executed (the Khobar Towers attacks, the 1993 World Trade Center bombing). Those were the good old days when, by Jay Rockefeller's reckoning, America was less hated and less vulnerable.

Charlie Bass

Today's Union Leader reports that the New Hampshire delegation is not surprised by the CIA's poor report card. District Congressman Charlie Bass served on the House Intelligence Committee from 1997 to 2001.

“The intelligence community’s capacity in this part of the world and in other parts of the world were sadly deficient as a result of underfunding in the 1990s and the efforts that were made during the Clinton administration to purge the agency’s ability to collect human intelligence,” Bass said in a telephone interview.

Iraqis tune in to the campaign

Iraqi blogger Sam's latest post on Hammorabi: "The War against GWB"

The new report by the US Senate regarding intelligence failure about WMD may be part of the war against GWB!

Even in Iraq they get it. The campaign continues.

What GWB done is the right thing and it is good as far as that is going to change the Middle East into a better place for the whole world.

Nowadays one can smell the same thing which is in Al Jazeera from the BBC and the CNN!

I think he's nailed it. The smell gives 'em away.