Standing ovation for our favorite Frogman, please.

Check today's post immediately if you haven't already.

And yes, I am damn proud to count him as one of my (now fewer) French friends.

This whole talk about not finding WMD because they never existed is pissing me off. Thank God you all have common sense. It's really funny, we haven't found Saddam either but that doesn't mean he didn't exist... Will the franch (and anti-war hippies) claim that we fabricated Saddam too?

Whether or not WMD's are found isn't relevant. Resolution 1441 was the only reason necessary for action. Any signatory country that opposed the war in Iraq can take a long stroll off of a short pier.

US are just about to lose their most important ally regarding this issue. Blair is named "Bliar" by The Economist, British people get the feeling they have been misled, they rightly think WMD as a crucial issue.

Ari Fleisher on 10th of April about WMDs : "This is all this war is about".

A little wishful thinking, eh Papa? ;)

To Papa French:

You have obviously never read the Economist.

It is quite good, actually. They have been spot on about the reasons for the war all along.

This week they did discuss the effect the missing WMDs might have on fickle public opinion polls...But history takes a longer more thoughtful view, doesn't it.

Just wait until 10 years from now when totalitarianism has truly gone into the dustbin of history (not just in the West). Historians will be studying the role of France in providing last ditch life support for this type of regime.

BUT W LIED TO US AND TOLD US HE KNEW THEY EXISTED. THEN WE INVADED A COUNTRY, IN CLEAR VIOLATION OF INTERNATIONAL LAW, BASED ON HIS "JUST TRUST ME ON THIS, SADDAM IS COMING FOR YOU" LIE. SADDAM WAS HORRIBLE, PARTICULARLY WHEN WE WERE ARMING HIM AND GIVING HIM BATTLEFIELD INTELLIGENCE TO CARRY OUT ATROCITIES. SURE IS GOING TO BE FUN RULING IRAQ FOR THE NEXT DECADE, AS OUR NATION'S ARMED FORCES ARE ASKED TO OCCUPY A COUNTRY THAT DOES NOT WANT FOREIGN RULES. IT'S ALL A HORRIBLE SHAME, THANKS TO BUSH AND BLIAR.

the french were right and now they are just shaking their heads in disbelief at a country that was duped by a frat boy with a 6th grade mentality. let's hope that we find an honorable way to end the occupation and get bush, cheney, rumsfeld and the rest of the robber barron's out of that poor devastated country.

Revealed: the secret cabal which spun for Blair
Investigation: By Neil Mackay
BRITAIN ran a covert 'dirty tricks' operation designed specifically to produce misleading intelligence that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction to give the UK a justifiable excuse to wage war on Iraq.
Operation Rockingham, established by the Defence Intelligence Staff within the Ministry of Defence in 1991, was set up to 'cherry-pick' intelligence proving an active Iraqi WMD programme and to ignore and quash intelligence which indicated that Saddam's stockpiles had been destroyed or wound down.

The existence of Operation Rockingham has been confirmed by Scott Ritter, the former UN chief weapons inspector, and a US military intelligence officer. He knew members of the Operation Rockingham team and described the unit as 'dangerous', but insisted they were not 'rogue agents' acting without government backing. 'This policy was coming from the very highest levels,' he added.

'Rockingham was spinning reports and emphasising reports that showed non-compliance (by Iraq with UN inspections) and quashing those which showed compliance. It was cherry-picking intelligence.'

Ritter and other intelligence sources say Operation Rockingham and MI6 were supplying skewed information to the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) which, Tony Blair has told the Commons, was behind the intelligence dossiers that the government published to convince the parliament and the people of the necessity of war against Iraq. Sources in both the British and US intelligence community are now equating the JIC with the Office of Special Plans (OSP) in the US Pentagon. The OSP was set up by Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to gather intelligence which would prove the case for war. In a staggering attack on the OSP, former CIA officer Larry Johnson told the Sunday Herald the OSP was 'dangerous for US national security and a threat to world peace', adding that it 'lied and manipulated intelligence to further its agenda of removing Saddam'.

He added: 'It's a group of ideologues with pre-determined notions of truth and reality. They take bits of intelligence to support their agenda and ignore anything contrary. They should be eliminated.'

Johnson said that to describe Saddam as an 'imminent threat' to the West was 'laughable and idiotic'. He said many CIA officers were in 'great distress' over the way intelligence had been treated. 'We've entered the world of George Orwell,' Johnson added. 'I'm disgusted. The truth has to be told. We can't allow our leaders to use bogus information to justify war.'

Many in British intelligence believe the planned parliamentary inquiry by MPs on the Intelligence and Security Committee will pass the blame for the use of selective intelligence to the JIC, which includes senior intelligence figures .

Intelligence sources say this would be unfair as they claim the JIC was following political instructions. Blair has been under sustained criticism following allegations that intelligence on the threat from Iraq was 'sexed up' to make it more appealing to the public.

The rebel Labour MP and Father of the House, Tam Dalyell, said he would raise the Sunday Herald's investigation into Operation Rockingham in the Commons on Thursday and demand an explanation from the government about selective intelligence. Ritter has also offered to give evidence to parliament.

Both the MoD and Downing Street refused to comment on Ritter's allegations about Operation Rockingham, saying they did not make statements on intelligence matters.

British and American intelligence analysts have also come forward to dispute claims made by President Bush that two military trailers found in Iraq were bio-weapons labs.

Mike,
First of all, check the facts, Russia, France and China are the countries that armed Hussein.
Then, how can you expect the US troops to find weapons that could be hidden just anywhere in the desert in just 2 months while the UN inspectors never denied they existed but couldn't find them in 12 years?!?

David,
The French were not right, the French government was just trying to hide its dirty business with a butcher. The French are right behind Russia and in position #2 among the countries that sold weapons to Hussein's regime. I won't even mention the oil contracts.

NOW CAN ANYONE TELL ME, IF IT IS A FACT THAT THERE IS NO WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION IN IRAQ, WHY UN INSPECTORS WANT TO GO BACK TO IRAQ... TO CHECK WHETHER THE COUNTRY REALLY DISARMED???

What is sad in all of this is that all of you claiming Bush and Blair lied - without any evidence whatsoever, btw - are just proving you wouldn't have accepted the liberation of Iraq without a real tangible threat from Iraq. No WMD in Iraq? Let the Iraqis die, we don't give a fuck! That's what you're saying, not less.
Even if Bush and Blair had lied, again, the butcher of Baghdad is gone. And the mass graves the US and British troops have found are justifying this war.

I say again:

Resolution 1441

All 15 members of the security council signed it.

Saddam didn't play ball.

France, Russia, and Germany reneged.

The U.S., the U.K., and Australia lived up to their obligations.

I guess the Saddam lovers just can't stand that.

The UN has this little thing called a charter to whichour government is a signatory. It is therefore part of U.S. law. It says that it is illegal to invade and overthrow the government of another country except in SELF-DEFENSE after having been attacked. Our lame ass house representative tried to explain to me that this attack was in self-defense. What a bald faced liar.

The shocking thing this week is that the corporate media are treating these "revelations" as very surprising and calling into question Bush's judgement. Surprising because George Tenet's testimony and the asseessment of every intelligence agency in the western world, including Israel, has been clear that there was no immediate threat.

If you want to start exhuming mass graves that have resulted from political violence, then I guess Iraq is just the start. We should do the same for the victims and families of victims of such U.S.backed client states. Are you ready to invade: Burma, Thailand, Indonesia, Philipines, Pakistan, Kenya, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Israel, Egypt, El Salvador, Brazil,Haiti, etc.......

Saddam was at his worst when he was backed by the U.S. The U.S. role as a supporter of Saddam is far greater than teh French would ever dream of. I'm not saying they wouldn't have done horrible things given the chance, but the fact is it is the U.s. government, and Rumsfeld and co. in particular who were supplying battlefield intelligence and satellite imagery in Iraq's invasion of Iran during and AFTER AFTER AFTER his use of chemical weapons.

Yes, it was quite a miracle conversion for those guys to suddenly want to revenge the crime that they helped commmit.

Pathetic and sickening.

How about a little memory eh? What has happened to the liberated of Panama, Nicaragua, Guatemela, Grenada, Vietnam, Philipines, Congo. All were told that they had been liberated by invasion, bombing, or assasination of leaders the U.S. thought dangerous. I hope they are grateful for what the benevolent superpower did for them. You might study the role of intelligence in buoying public support for the U.S. backing a murderous regime in Guatemela, the invasions of Grenada and Panama, or the assasination of Congo's elected Prime Minister. Nothing new in the latest sham.

The ideologically intransigent peace mob pretends self-defense was the case in Iraq, well, because it accomodates the greatest number of non sequiturs.

David is wrong and Gunsniper is right. The argument does not rest with Article 51 of the UN Charter but with UNSCR 1441.

Iraq did launch an attack against a member state. More than 100,000 Iraqi soldiers backed up by 700 tanks invaded the Gulf state of Kuwait on August 2, 1990. Iraq was driven back and as a consequence of its criminal attack the UNSC passed a number resolutions restricting Iraq's ability to conduct both its commerce and its military development.

The operative resolution is UNSCR 1441, which recaps Iraqi noncompliance. If the opposition is not aware of the specific violations Iraq flaunted and the specific remedies the UN sought, click here and go do your homework.

The operative resolution is UNSCR 1441, the telling article of which is No.13:

"13. [The Security Council Acting under Chapter VII of the Charter of the United Nations,] Recalls, in that context, that the Council has repeatedly warned Iraq that it will face serious consequences as a result of its continued violations of its obligations...

So much for David, who tells us he is pathetic and sickened.

Does anyone have a clue what Jason is going on about? This is just a standard laundry list of peace mob piques.

And all the pique begs the question, just what were David's and Jason's action plan for Iraq?

DGB

Anti-war groups have opened a peace office in Iraq to monitor human rights abuses.

A coalition of anti-war groups has opened an “Occupation Watch Center” in Baghdad to monitor alleged human rights violations by U.S. troops and the actions of corporations such as Halliburton in rebuilding Iraqi infrastructure. The coalition is also exploring the idea of advising U.S. soldiers in Iraq on how they can claim conscientious objector status so that they could be discharged and shipped home.