Where's the evidence?

[vox]

Over in the SvC forum, I've been asking the war-mongering right-wingers for evidence that Iraq is an imminent threat to the US or to any other nation. Once, CI even posted a story saying that Bush will, at some point, talk about this as evidence! Their best hope seemed to be Blair's "dossier" on Iraq.

Let's see what people are saying about it:

"The document is a damp squib. It really consists of a reworking of information that was already public. It seems more like a PR stunt than a serious attempt to bring new information forward. Tony Blair will have to do better than this if he wants to convince the British public to go to war."
Diane Abbott, the Labour MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington

"An awful lot of the material we are being shown at the moment has been around for a very long time. Military intervention has got to be avoided at all costs, especially a unilateral one. If Iraq poses a direct threat and is about to attack one of its neighbours with weapons of mass destruction, then the whole game changes, but at the moment that is certainly not the case. A lot of people feel we are being almost inevitably drawn into war without the UN course being pursued."
Mark Seddon, a leftwing member of Labour's National Executive Committee

More reactions (http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,798046,00.html).

You can download the whole thing from CNN (http://www.cnn.com) or The Guardian (http://www.guardian.co.uk) in PDF format and read it for yourself.

It looks like the imperialists have failed yet again. Of course, that won't stop them from carrying out their gruesome plan.

vox

[Angie]

Blair Fails

UK Prime Minister Tony Blair's dossier on Iraq has failed to produce the expected evidence to galvanize world opinion for an invasion of Iraq, Greens Senator Bob Brown said tonight.

"After the hype leading up to Mr Blair's announcement in London today, the recycled or unsourced revelations about uranium transfers, a 5 year lag before Iraq gets nuclear weapon capacity and the withholding of some 20 rockets will deflate expectations and even erode support for the Bush-Blair-Howard war option.

"Saddam Hussein is a brute. But the Blair revelations are best handled by the UN weapons inspectors and weapons destruction.

"This is no recipe for a war. It certainly doesn't justify the risks of inflaming the Arab world and endangering the lives of innocent Iraqis or Australian defence personnel.

"The Greens remain totally opposed to President Bush's war," Senator Brown said.Just something that was emailed to me this morning by the Australian Greens Party. Thought I might share the spirit.

:)

[suffianr]

I hear you, vox. Likewise, examine this article:

http://www.spiked-online.com/Articles/00000006DA63.htm

The evidence is all too obvious to miss...

[mentalbunny]

apparently there's proof that saddam helped al queada (sorry, dodgy spelling). i cna't remember who has the proof, some one in america i think, can anyone fill me in? PM me with details.

[guerrillaradio]

I don't think anyone should be surprised by the lack of evidence in the dossier. The good news though, is that Blair's revised his position to calling for the removal of weapons of mass destruction rather than regime change.

[vox]

Excellent piece there, Suffianr.

Robert Fisk also has a very damning piece (http://argument.independent.co.uk/commentators/story.jsp?story=336404) in the Independent:

Tony Blair's "dossier" on Iraq is a shocking document. Reading it can only fill a decent human being with shame and outrage. Its pages are final proof – if the contents are true – that a massive crime against humanity has been committed in Iraq. For if the details of Saddam's building of weapons of mass destruction are correct – and I will come to the "ifs" and "buts" and "coulds" later – it means that our massive, obstructive, brutal policy of UN sanctions has totally failed. In other words, half a million Iraqi children were killed by us – for nothing.

Has anyone heard anything like that from the corporate media in the US?

vox

[IHP]

i read in the paper a couple of days ago, the weapons that saddam was "producing" and next to every type of weapon there, "may be producing" and the "was producing, may have recommenced" or something to that effect. this dossier is heap of cowboy crap.

--IHP