Using JREF methodology to prove Bush Admin lied on WMD

[a_unique_person]

The premise of my logic is this.

The JREF million dollars is to be paid, not on exhaustive investigation of the claims of Sylvia, for example, but a simple test of easy questions. She doesn't have to get them all right, just a reasonable percentage. If she is right about being psychic, she will get most of answers right, and win the mill. Otherwise, she is lying about having psychic powers.

Now, a similar test can be applied to the Bush admins claims about WMD in Iraq. Colin powells speech is a good example. He made numerous claims. It is a simple matter now of just ticking them off, correct or incorrect. If he lied then most will be incorrect, if he told the truth, then most will be correct. He does not have to get them all right. If he got them all wrong, however, it is not just a matter of making a simple mistake, then another, then another.

He must have been lying.

 

[karl]

Did you forget rule #1 of the challenge?

Applicant must state clearly in advance, and applicant and JREF will agree upon, what powers or abilities will be demonstrated, the limits of the proposed demonstration (so far as time, location and other variables are concerned) and what will constitute both a positive and a negative result.

 

[zenith-nadir]

Did you forget rule #1 of the challenge?

Shhhh...you're cramping a_u_p's America-is-the-great-satan style.....

 

[a_unique_person]

Did you forget rule #1 of the challenge?

I'm not talking about Powell winning it, and he obviously isn't going to be a part of the test. I'm just about using a simple test, yes/no, for each of the claims made. Then we take a success/fail rate. A generous one, in my opinion, would be 50% right. Given the man had the massive forces of the US intelligence, military and diplomatic resources at his disposal, then we can expect he would get at least that many right. Even a random guess would give us that many right or wrong, for the whole list.

 

[davefoc]

AUP,
I think your analogy is flawed.

I think there is general agreement that Powell incorrectly claimed that there were significant stockpiles of WMD in Iraq and Powell exaggerated any capability that Iraq had to produce WMD.

The issue as to whether Powell lied or not is did he know that he was not speaking the truth when he made his speech. There have been threads on this topic and for me the only thing I derived from those threads is that the answer will probably never be known exactly and even if the underlying facts were known exactly the situation may be ambigous enough that Powell's detractors can legitimately argue that he lied and his defenders can legitimately argue that he didn't.

For me, Powell was a disappointment. I think he should have considered resigning when he realized that the deck was stacked against him. Rumsfeld seemed consumed with the idea that he could run the state department better than Powell and nobody seems to have stepped in to tell him to back off. The Bush administration seemed to be as antagonistic towards our allies as any administration in my memory. Powell became a facilitator for that when he didn't take a public stand against it.

Now four years later the Bush administration is trying to gain support from our allies by doing a little public sucking up to them. Am I the only one that thinks this is because their great Iraqi adventure is turning out to be a giant sink hole for American money and they'd like a little help with the problem? I pretty much expect our allies to do some glad handing but I think they're just going to let Bush twist in the wind on this one. I can't imagine anything like actual support coming any time soon.

 

[Silicon]

Powell lied.


He knew Zarqawi's "chemical weapons base" was in American patrolled Northern Iraq when he said to the UN:

"Iraq today harbors a deadly terrorist network headed by Abu Mussab
al-Zarqawi, a collaborator of Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda
lieutenants." ... "When our coalition ousted the
Taliban, the Zarqawi network helped establish another poison and
explosive training center camp. And this camp is located in
northeastern Iraq."

He was drawing a non-existant connection between Zarqawi and Baghdad, when he himself knew that Ansar-al Islam (a Kurdish seperatist group) ran that base, and was virulently opposed to Saddam. And since it was in US controlled territory, that "poison and explosive training camp" could be wiped out by the US without any need to bring it to the UN.

Whether or not it had chemical weapons (it didn't) is immaterial to the fact the Powell KNEW various mitigating facts and didn't reveal them at the time.

 

[varwoche]

Powell lied.

He knew Zarqawi's "chemical weapons base" was in American patrolled Northern Iraq when he said to the UN:

Effective too. This obviscation is still being parroted as fact -- even on skeptical forums.

 

[Silicon]

For the record, Powell DID say that it was outside of Saddam controlled territory. I (and most people) originally missed the part of the quote where he said that, as it wasn't as widely quoted as the parts that I just quoted above.

But he still alleged that they were operating at Saddam's welcome, which was highly doubted by experts on Ansar al-Islam at the time, and come to think of it, is ridiculous on its face.

The US could have moved on that base anytime it wanted, swooped down and captured the entire thing in a raid, and questioned everyone and searched for links to Saddam. Hell, a good strike on that would have eliminated an al Queda base and possibly killed or captured Zarquawi in the process.

Instead they broadcasted its existence and American awareness of that to every person on the planet, virtually guaranteeing they'd get no evidence to link it to Saddam, and give Zarquawi and anyone knowing his whereabouts months of free escape time.

Powell may be a stooge, but he's no idiot. He knew that the sketchy claims he could make in the UN were more valuable than following that trail to a possible dead end.

 

[Renfield]

Powell lied.


He knew Zarqawi's "chemical weapons base" was in American patrolled Northern Iraq when he said to the UN:

They made many claims like that which weren't supported by the intelligence they had. They claimed they knew quite a few things for a "fact"- like the state of Hussein's nuclear program - when in fact their intelligence was not nearly so solid. Those aluminum tubes, that British report saying they were on the verge of getting Uranium, mobile weapons labs, etc.

Unless you want to try a Clintonesque redefinition of the words "fact" and "know" , there's no getting around the fact that Bush lied.

 

[karl]

I'm not talking about Powell winning it, and he obviously isn't going to be a part of the test. I'm just about using a simple test, yes/no, for each of the claims made. Then we take a success/fail rate. A generous one, in my opinion, would be 50% right. Given the man had the massive forces of the US intelligence, military and diplomatic resources at his disposal, then we can expect he would get at least that many right. Even a random guess would give us that many right or wrong, for the whole list.

My point was that there was no agreement as to what would count as a "yes" or a "no" for any of Powell's claims. Ask some people on this board "Did Saddam have weapons of mass destruction?" and you may get answers like "Yes he did ... have programs." or "It hasn't been conclusively proven that he didn't, so the answer is possibly yes."

There is nothing simple about it. You can't conduct a meaningful test if the evaluation criteria aren't objective.

 

[a_unique_person]

My point was that there was no agreement as to what would count as a "yes" or a "no" for any of Powell's claims. Ask some people on this board "Did Saddam have weapons of mass destruction?" and you may get answers like "Yes he did ... have programs." or "It hasn't been conclusively proven that he didn't, so the answer is possibly yes."

There is nothing simple about it. You can't conduct a meaningful test if the evaluation criteria aren't objective.

Powell has made quite specific claims. The sites that these claims were made about have been investigated after the war ended.

 

[davefoc]

Without some contrary evidence it seems very reasonable to me to conclude that the information provided by Powell in his UN speech was false.

I think there would be a widespread consensus on that point by the people on this board.

The only open question (for me at least) is did he intentionally mislead to the point that it is reasonable to say that he lied.

I don't know, but several posters here have made at least a plausible case that he did. There's sort of a philosophical point here. If somebody says they're sure and they later turn out to be wrong, did they, by definition, lie since they must have overstated the reliability of the information they based their statement on?

I guess my answer would be no. But I tend to require a fairly definitive situation before I decide that somebody has actually lied.

 

[a_unique_person]

Hence a 'statistical' approach.

 

[CFLarsen]

Powell has made quite specific claims. The sites that these claims were made about have been investigated after the war ended.

List them, with sources.

Then, we can evaluate them.

Clarify. That's the ticket.

 

[Ziggurat]

They made many claims like that which weren't supported by the intelligence they had. They claimed they knew quite a few things for a "fact"- like the state of Hussein's nuclear program - when in fact their intelligence was not nearly so solid. Those aluminum tubes, that British report saying they were on the verge of getting Uranium, mobile weapons labs, etc.

I'm always amused when someone thinks they know for certain that Bush lied when it's quite clear that they don't actually understand the facts of the case. In particular, you obviously don't understand the uranium issue. Saddam was not on the verge of obtaining uranium. In fact, he had a few hundred tons of uranium already. That was never in dispute, and if you don't know this already, you're really not qualified to argue about the uranium issue. It was never about whether or not he had uranium, it was whether or not he was attempting to get more clandestinely, and sorry to tell you this, it does in fact look like he made unsuccessful attempts. And since the only reason to do that would be if he was trying to restart his nuclear weapons program, that is indeed quite serious. Wilson's real report, not what he later told the press, actually supports the contention that Iraq sought uranium from Niger. There were significant problems with the aluminum tubes claim (they believed te CIA over DOE), and you could certainly argue that the Iraqi expats who told them about the weapons labs were unreliable sources whom we should not have believed, but there was intelligence for those claims too.

 

[billydkid]

America?

Shhhh...you're cramping a_u_p's America-is-the-great-satan style.....

I'm sorry, you've confused a dimwitted, egomaniacal sociopath with a great nation. Dubya is not America. It is funny how when a rightwing bible thumper is the President the executive branch of the government is America, but when a typical Democrat is President there is no such identification.

 

[rikzilla]

Powell has made quite specific claims. The sites that these claims were made about have been investigated after the war ended.

I remember that many of the specific claims involved truck-based mobile labs. What specific site would you suggest be investigated? Also, if these labs did exist would it not be fairly easy to have had them moved across-border, hidden, or destroyed?

Also Powell played tapes of electronic intercepts of Iraqi Generals and field commanders speaking openly about WMD's. This use by Powell of what has proven to be Iraqi dis-information would tend to point up the fact that Powell was duped. Being duped by a sly enemy is not the same thing as willfully lying.

,,,and one more thing....GEEZ! ANOTHER WMD THREAD!?! You need to MoveOn my friend!

-z

 

[Crossbow]

The premise of my logic is this.

The JREF million dollars is to be paid, not on exhaustive investigation of the claims of Sylvia, for example, but a simple test of easy questions. She doesn't have to get them all right, just a reasonable percentage. If she is right about being psychic, she will get most of answers right, and win the mill. Otherwise, she is lying about having psychic powers.

Now, a similar test can be applied to the Bush admins claims about WMD in Iraq. Colin powells speech is a good example. He made numerous claims. It is a simple matter now of just ticking them off, correct or incorrect. If he lied then most will be incorrect, if he told the truth, then most will be correct. He does not have to get them all right. If he got them all wrong, however, it is not just a matter of making a simple mistake, then another, then another.

He must have been lying.

Sorry, but I do not think that will work.

However, one of the many things that I find most interesting regrding this definitely no WMD period is the is post-hoc WMD rationalizations that one continually hears from the pro-war people.

To name a few:

Bush did not lie, he just made the most of the information that he had.
Bush did not lie, since Tennant assured him that the WMD case was a "slam dunk".
Bush did not lie, since he was not actually under oath at the time that claims were made.
Bush did not lie, since all of the other intelligence agencies also believed that Saddam had WMDs.
WMDs were not real reason for the war, it was actually that law Congress passed a few years ago regarding getting Saddam out of power.
WMDs were not the real reason for the war any way, the war was really about freeing Iraq and setting a good example for the rest of the Middle East.
And so on.

Anyway, this sort of thing reminds me of how people try to explain their failures regarding the JREF testing. A few reasons that come to mind are:

I could not do the dowsing since the room was too square.
I cannot describe how to take pictures of demons or the demons will come and kill me.
I could not summon my ESP powers due to the negative energy generated by the proctors.
I cannot take the test since Randi does not believe in God and/or Randi will not pay the money.
And so on.

In both cases, the people making the claim still feel completly vindicated even though their respective claims were not proven in any way (in spite of the face that before the test they were quite sure that there claims would be fully validated). Go figure!

 

[demon]

"He must have been lying."

AUP, have you seen this detailed, extraordinary "history" of the US attack on Iraq? - all the lies few saw fit to print at the time they were told?

quote:
What I Heard about Iraq
Eliot Weinberger
In 1992, a year after the first Gulf War, I heard Dick Cheney, then secretary of defense, say that the US had been wise not to invade Baghdad and get ‘bogged down in the problems of trying to take over and govern Iraq’. I heard him say: ‘The question in my mind is how many additional American casualties is Saddam worth? And the answer is: not that damned many.’

In February 2001, I heard Colin Powell say that Saddam Hussein ‘has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction. He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbours.’

That same month, I heard that a CIA report stated: ‘We do not have any direct evidence that Iraq has used the period since Desert Fox to reconstitute its weapons of mass destruction programmes.’

In July 2001, I heard Condoleezza Rice say: ‘We are able to keep his arms from him. His military forces have not been rebuilt.’

On 11 September 2001, six hours after the attacks, I heard that Donald Rumsfeld said that it might be an opportunity to ‘hit’ Iraq. I heard that he said: ‘Go massive. Sweep it all up. Things related and not.’

I heard that Condoleezza Rice asked: ‘How do you capitalise on these opportunities?’

I heard that on 17 September the president signed a document marked top secret that directed the Pentagon to begin planning for the invasion and that, some months later, he secretly and illegally diverted $700 million approved by Congress for operations in Afghanistan into preparing for the new battle front.

In February 2002, I heard that an unnamed ‘senior military commander’ said: ‘We are moving military and intelligence personnel and resources out of Afghanistan to get ready for a future war in Iraq.’

I heard the president say that Iraq is ‘a threat of unique urgency’, and that there is ‘no doubt the Iraqi regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised’.

I heard the vice president say: ‘Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction.’.......

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v27/n03/wein01_.html
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Stunning compilation.

 

[hgc]

...

,,,and one more thing....GEEZ! ANOTHER WMD THREAD!?! You need to MoveOn my friend!

-z

... oh, and another thing ... GEEZ! ANOTHER BUNCH OF MARINES DEAD IN IRAQ!?! You need to be asking how we got into this thing, why and at whose behest!