About those DSM’s that has the left all atwitter. The memo’s say that Bush had decided to depose of Saddam….whoa, big secret there:
WASHINGTON – President Bush has decided to oust Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein from power and ordered the CIA, the Pentagon and other agencies to devise a combination of military, diplomatic and covert steps to achieve that goal, senior U.S. officials said Tuesday.
No military strike is imminent, but Bush has concluded that Saddam and his nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs are such a threat to U.S. security that the Iraqi dictator must be removed, even if U.S. allies do not help, said the officials, who all spoke on condition of anonymity.
“This is not an argument about whether to get rid of Saddam Hussein. That debate is over. This is … how you do it,” a senior administration official said in an interview with Knight Ridder.
The president’s decision has launched the United States on a course that will have major ramifications for the U.S. military, the Middle East’s future political alignment, international oil flows and Bush’s own war on terrorism. Russia and most of America’s European allies have expressed alarm about the administration’s escalating rhetoric on Iraq.
The course also is fraught with potential military difficulties, with most experts on Iraq warning that a campaign there would not be as swift or virtually free of American casualties as Afghanistan. There, rebels of the northern alliance, backed by U.S. commandos and massive U.S. airpower, quickly overthrew the Taliban regime.
Nevertheless, one foreign leader who met Bush recently came away “with the feeling that a decision has been made to strike Iraq, and the ‘how’ and ‘when’ are still fluid,” added a diplomat who asked not to be further identified.
The CIA, senior officials said, recently presented Bush with a plan to destabilize Saddam’s well-entrenched regime in Baghdad. The plan proposed a massive covert action campaign, sabotage, information warfare and significantly more aggressive bombing of the “no fly” zones over northern and southern Iraq. U.S. and British forces patrol the zones to prevent Iraqi planes from bombing opposition forces.
Bush reportedly was enthusiastic, and although it could not be determined whether he gave final approval for the plan, the CIA has begun assigning officers to the task.
Bush also is dispatching Vice President Cheney next month on a tour of 11 Middle East nations, including many of Iraq’s neighbors, whose leaders are leery of a U.S. attack on Baghdad.
While the mission’s purpose has been portrayed publicly as sounding out Middle Eastern leaders on Iraq policy, Cheney in fact will tell them that the United States intends to get rid of Saddam and his regime, several top Bush aides said.
“He’s not going to beg for support. He’s going to inform them that the president’s decision has been made and will be carried out, and if they want some input into how and when it’s carried out, now’s the time for them to speak up,” one senior official said.
The above was written Feb, 2002.
And somehow these memo’s are a smoking gun for the left? How much wackyweed do these people smoke?
Eff yeah he was preparing for war, as any good president should. He gave Saddam every opportunity to prevent this war, but he didn’t and now he sit’s awaiting judgement. Which hopefully is a bullet in the back of his head.
Plus, how in the hell has a memo from some Brit, who got the info from another Brit who talked to some unnamed source in the Administration telling the second Brit what they guessed was on the Presidents mind ever get so much press?
Answer – The Liberal MSM
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