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Blanche_DuBois - In an AP interview Blair addressed the memos. They're real
He didn't deny them, he only comments that he's surprised they caused such a stir in the US. I'll have to repost it, as I don't want to use someone else's blog. Regardless of the number of articles one can find on the web form the myriad of blogs and sites out there, the one I give credence to is the article where Tony Blair was interviewed on June 29, 2005. All the denial sites / blogs / stories are bogus. (See the article on My Take. I'll repost right now.)
posted by
blogflogger
on February 1, 2006 at 5:45 PM
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Blogflogger,
I just followed WriterofLight's link to the Robbins article in National Review re: debunking the Downing Memo. Robbins derides Richard Dearlove, head of MI=6, the British intelligence agency, as an "assistant to Cabinet officials". I suppose that would be like saying George Tenet, ex-head of the CIA is asisstant to American Cabinet officails.
The Downning Memo states that "intelligence policy was fixed around going to war". Robbin's claims that the London National Observor speculated that before the Memo came out. That seems unlikely. What's your take?
posted by
Blanche.
on January 31, 2006 at 4:17 PM
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mysteria - No sign that you've read the Tony Blair memo. I only posted
it on my blog for your reference. I'm going to go ahead and delete it as it was just for your information.
posted by
blogflogger
on January 31, 2006 at 4:04 PM
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WriterofLight - AP Interview with Tony Blair / Downing Street Memos
I also research. After your response I posted the Associated Press interview withTony Blain on my political blog "My Take" in its entirety. Blog title is "Tony Blair Response To Downing Street Memos - June 30, 2005". Prime Minister does not deny validity of the memos or their contents. (I posted it on my site as it was too large for a comment on your.)
posted by
blogflogger
on January 30, 2006 at 11:04 PM
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Welcome, mysteria!
Interesting imagery - Comet Saddam? Just a thought - this "streamed from the mouth" of an Iraqi officer who should know what he was talking about.
Scoop and Sarooster, consider that WMDs are not necessarily large or massive. It would be interesting to know what was observed during those flights; I doubt that whatever was seen would have been identifiable as WMDs.
blogflogger, you mentioned the Downing Street Memo. Here, let me do a little flogging of my own. Read this expose of this fake story: http://www.nationalreview.com/robbins/robbins200506060801.asp I'd highly recommend you become familiar with Newsmax, it'll give you some much needed balance and perspective.
FW: Thanks, good friend, you have just fallen into the trap. You don't think it happened, therefore it is impossible. See comment on Sccop and Sarooster's observations. From what I've seen, the report being discussed nowhere tries to correlate the weapons that were transported with the quantities and volumes reported in the intelligence that first came to light and was acted on during (ahem!) the Bubba administration.
posted by
WriterofLight
on January 30, 2006 at 7:26 PM
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Welcome, katray!
Nice shot, but no good. You're forgetting something - Saddam's support of terrorists. What would make more sense to him - using these weapons within his own borders to fight the invasion, or spiriting them out for others to use elsewhere? As far why he didn't cut and run, I can only guess that he was in denial that he was getting his ass kicked militarily. Thanks for commenting!
posted by
WriterofLight
on January 30, 2006 at 7:12 PM
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Writer
I don't know whether he had them or not. I am extremely hard pressed to believe anything that streams from the mouths of our parties.
Regardless, I think, had he easy access to them he would act very irresponsibly like a wayward comet...
posted by
mysteria
on January 30, 2006 at 8:22 AM
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Let's see, the US had been watching Iraq for years ...
they even had satellite photos of a truck container that supposedly had rods to make nuclear weapons, and you would have us believe that they were somehow able to mysteriously make their whole arsenal of WMD vanish into thin air and magically reappear in Syria?
Right!
Scoop, you should be embarrassed for even thinking this lame ass, cockamamey excuse even has one shred of believability.
posted by
fwmystic
on January 29, 2006 at 8:40 PM
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WriterofLight - There is no shortage of theories about the lack of WMD ...
... since the invasion of Iraq. But:
- if you’ve read the Downing Street memos even Tony Blair and his senior staff were worried about backing the U.S. in invading Iraq because there was no proof of WMD or long rang armaments which had been discussed (see the Downing Street memos at http://downingstreetmemo.com)
- the U.N. weapons inspectors had not seen anything to convince them Iraq actually possessed WMD and wanted to work through the process to have inspectors back in Iraq
- no scientists have come forward since our occupation of Iraq with information that WMD’s existed, even though many were anti-Hussein
- Colin Powell was furious when he found he’d been set up with bogus information which he presented to the United Nations
- The CIA tried to get references to WMD and yellow cake removed from the President’s State of the Union address, and was overridden
I agree with an earlier comment that with our ability to monitor ground activity via satellite of any country in the world, do you really think Iraq could have transported the volume of WMD that the administration claimed they had, without that activity having been detected with the 24/7 monitoring that was taking place, especially just prior to our invasion?
I am unfamiliar with newsmax, the web site you referenced, but all content was pro-Bush. In searching the Internet I couldn’t find any other national publications or web sites that reported this information.
We can “what it” forever, but I don’t want to ever again see the United States take military action against ANY nation based on other than known facts.
posted by
blogflogger
on January 29, 2006 at 7:07 PM
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If he had them
why weren't they used against us during the invasion? An evil, American hating dictator surely would do that instead of spiriting them out of his country; also if he had the foreplanning and ability to ship WMD's out of country, why didn't he go along with them into Syria instead of hiding out in a sewer in Iraq and risking capture, which had to be his worst nightmare, after being killed. Now he probably will face an execution squad or chamber - are we to believe this egomaniac put more value on weapons than his own life? Yes, anti war people have considered many possibilities regarding Saddam and WMD's; this one simply makes no sense upon examination.
posted by
Katray2
on January 29, 2006 at 6:03 PM
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I am with scoop on this one.
We can read the license plate on a car with some of our satellites. How could they have possibly moved that much WMD material and no one saw it. Someone has to know what went on.
posted by
sarooster
on January 29, 2006 at 5:40 PM
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Don't I vaguely remember, at the beginning of the war,
that there was suspicion regarding the multiple passenger flights made to Syria? Makes total sense that Saddam would do this.
posted by
JanesOpinion
on January 29, 2006 at 2:19 PM
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Of course this is possible and as I said in Corbins post, it does not
surprise me, the United State took forever to invade Iraq, they had plenty of time to dispose of any and if that is the case where was the intelligence on that, why didn't the CIA and the military know that? If they were monitoring like they said and had all the info who blew that? Why didn't all these spy agencies with satellites know this? We can tap a phone but not know where WMD are going?
posted by
scoop
on January 29, 2006 at 1:17 PM
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