The p[roblem with the lies..er...misstatements..

[sarettah]

From:
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/20/internat...4a47cef&ei=5062

North Korea Hides New Nuclear Site, Evidence Suggests
By DAVID E. SANGER and THOM SHANKER

WASHINGTON, July 19 — American and Asian officials with access to the latest intelligence on North Korea say strong evidence has emerged in recent weeks that the country has built a second, secret plant for producing weapons-grade plutonium, complicating both the diplomatic strategy for ending the program and the military options if that diplomacy fails.

The discovery of the new evidence, which one senior administration official cautioned was "very worrisome, but still not conclusive," came just as North Korea declared to the United States 11 days ago that it had completed reprocessing 8,000 spent nuclear fuel rods, enough to make a half dozen or so nuclear weapons.

.................................................. ...........

American intelligence officials say they are wary about making any final judgments about the new evidence. They are keenly aware that C.I.A. assessments of Iraq's nuclear program have touched off a national debate over whether intelligence was exaggerated, and have made all the agency's findings suspect.

That issue has also put the White House at odds with George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence, who knows that the White House is going to extraordinary lengths to avoid calling the nuclear confrontation with North Korea a crisis. So far, White House officials have been told only informally of the new evidence and have not been fully briefed about its potential implications, administration officials say.

[Almighty Colin]

The whole world has been talking about Saddam's WMD's for over a decade. The UN had been dealing with it, Clinton dealt with it, Bush dealt with it. We all know what the evidence was ahead of time. There were no secrets. We all drew our own conclusions from that.

The UN had an extremely difficult time dealing with Saddam in that time. The history is all very public.

If Saddam had no WMD's and has had no WMD's all along, then every bit of evidence and speculation and reason regarding it by any person, analyst, the UN, or any particular country will turn out to have been wrong.
This includes some of the world's top experts in satellite photo analysis, ground intelligence, and analysts such as Kenneth Pollack who has made some remarkablly dead-on predictions of Saddam's behavior in the past.

Does that suddenly mean the satellite photos were faked, the CIA faked intelligence, Bush lied, Tenet lied, Powell lied, Blair lied, former weapons inspectors lied and analysts such as Kenneth Pollack lied.

Isn't it more reasonable that these people saw what they were expecting to find rather than that there was a conspiracy between all these people to deceive the world into something which would eventually be found out anyway? This is quite normal even in the hard sciences. It is even more so in a field relying on very imperfect information gathering techniques, speculation, extrapolation, and assumption.



Last edited by Colin at Jul 20 2003, 09:17 AM

[Almighty Colin]

I am so 50/50 on North Korea. NK with nukes is a nightmare for the world especially given their propensity to illegally sell arms. The US has used a lot of international political capital in the Iraq war. It would cost more in a major confrontation with North Korea. Which road is the lesser of two evils?

[Torone]

Originally posted by Colin@Jul 20 2003, 09:14 AM
The whole world has been talking about Saddam's WMD's for over a decade. The UN had been dealing with it, Clinton dealt with it, Bush dealt with it. We all know what the evidence was ahead of time. There were no secrets. We all drew our own conclusions from that.

The UN had an extremely difficult time dealing with Saddam in that time. The history is all very public.

If Saddam had no WMD's and has had no WMD's all along, then every bit of evidence and speculation and reason regarding it by any person, analyst, the UN, or any particular country will turn out to have been wrong.
This includes some of the world's top experts in satellite photo analysis, ground intelligence, and analysts such as Kenneth Pollack who has made some remarkablly dead-on predictions of Saddam's behavior in the past.

Does that suddenly mean the satellite photos were faked, the CIA faked intelligence, Bush lied, Tenet lied, Powell lied, Blair lied, former weapons inspectors lied and analysts such as Kenneth Pollack lied.

Isn't it more reasonable that these people saw what they were expecting to find rather than that there was a conspiracy between all these people to deceive the world into something which would eventually be found out anyway? This is quite normal even in the hard sciences. It is even more so in a field relying on very imperfect information gathering techniques, speculation, extrapolation, and assumption.

Isn't it also just as possible that the questions being raised now are deliberately false and misleading; ranging from deliberate misquotes to outright lies? I mean, no one is paying attention to the facts (for instance, the huge numbers of documents, the centrifuge in the scientist's rose garden, the 3 Iraqi ships circling out in the middle of nowhere maintaing radio silence, or the traces of chemical agents in the river and on and on). Don't forget, it will be election day a year from November...

[PornoDoggy]

Torone, what are you talking about when you refer to the three mystery ships circling under radio silence? I sort think that the U.S. Navy might be capable of dealing with such vessels if in fact they exist. The "centrifuge in the scientist's rose garden" was a single component of a device that, once assembled, would have several years to produce weapons-grade materials. I believe that the "the traces of chemical agents in the river" were determined to be runoff from a chemical plant by the U.S. Army.

IF FIRM EVIDENCE OF A CONTEMPORARY IRAQI WMD PROGRAM EXISTED GW AND HIS MINONS WOULD BE SHOUTING IT FROM THE ROOFTOPS FOR ALL THE WORLD TO SEE.

I personally was alive when the President, the Secretarys of State and Defense, any number of intellectuals and intelligence officials, and the heads-of-state of a number of our allies lied to get us into a war, and lied to keep us in one - so I don't find it unreasonable to suggest that the current occupants of those offices could do so.

[JR]

ok guys... who is who here?

[TheEnforcer]

Oh man.. that's a classic JR!!!!

[Torone]

Pd,
Keep on, you'll win the award for dumbest Democrat of the year. I thought it was pretty dumb when Sharpton tried to make himself the 'big dog' by stating that he was the only candidate who had been in jail; and even dumber when Kerry tried to one-up him with his little 2-hour stay many years ago for a protest that got out of hand; but you don't know about those ships or what they're carrying. You also seem to know about as much about the centrifuge and the other evidence as the Communist News Network wants to tell you. Further, the main statement in question is being half-quoted, PLUS it was made in January AFTER the same lying Liberals voted to go to war in October. Better learn to watch another channel and try reading. I strongly recommend Ayn Rand as an antidote for Karl Marx.

Side note: A recently ex-CNN reporter told of a missile attack (unsuccessful) by Iraq BEFORE we commenced hostilities. That would seem to indicate that Hussein fired first...

[PornoDoggy]

So now that you're done enthralling me with totally irrelevant anecdotes about Sharpton and Kerry, you want to fill me in on the ships? Or better yet, provide me with a source of information that will prove the inadequacies and/or lies of CNN?

Your reference to "the main statement in question" puzzled me for a minute - but I'm assuming you are referring to the now infamous "16 words." Personally, I think discussion limited to that statement alone is irrelevant, and the ONLY person who would benefit from that is GW, because a focus on those words alone is easily (and somewhat justifiably) categorized as trivial.

BTW ... Ayn Rand is about as interesting as Herman Mehlville, and as exciting as watching paint dry. I waded through Atlas Shrugged years ago, and vowed to never repeat the experience. I don't quite get the obsession you seem to have with the fact that I've read some Marx - maybe you could never find the Cliff Notes, or did you simply accept the word of Herr Gruber years ago that anyone who exposed themselves to it was instantly corrupted?

For crying out loud, I checked it out of the base library at the Naval Training Center San Diego - I'll bet you can really go to town with that bit of information...

[Almighty Colin]

Originally posted by PornoDoggy@Jul 20 2003, 07:18 PM
BTW ... Ayn Rand is about as interesting as Herman Mehlville, and as exciting as watching paint dry. I waded through Atlas Shrugged years ago, and vowed to never repeat the experience.

You don't like Herman Melville? Have you read Billy Budd?

[Torone]

Originally posted by Colin+Jul 21 2003, 04:54 AM-->