Randy Shannon – 7/14/05This page was last updated on July 14, 2005. War has oily roots; Randy Shannon; Beaver County Times; July 14, 2005. I don’t know what Mr. Shannon knows so I can’t call him a liar. That said, his letter is full of falsehoods as I show below. For background info about Mr. Shannon, see my notes on his speech of October 16, 2004, in front of the Beaver County Courthouse. Below is a detailed critique of the subject letter. “President Bush lied to Congress when he requested authorization to invade Iraq. The Downing Street memos of the secret meetings where Bush plotted the illegal war prove that the evidence he presented to Congress was a premeditated fabrication.” [RWC] Folks like Mr. Shannon constantly claim President Bush lied yet they never seem to present “evidence” that hasn’t already been disproved many times. Mr. Shannon completely misrepresented the content of the “Downing Street memo” (not memos). See my critique of Ms. Catherine Gatian’s letter about the Downing Street memo. When Mr. Shannon says, “the evidence he [President Bush] presented to Congress,” he ignores the fact that most of Congress – both Democrats and Republicans – have access to the same intelligence as President Bush. It would have taken a conspiracy of thousands – a virtual impossibility – for President Bush to mislead Congress on intelligence matters. “United States Code Title 18, Part I, Chapter 47, paragraph 1001 states: ‘Whoever, in any matter within the jurisdiction of the executive branch knowingly and willfully 1) falsifies any material fact; 2) makes any materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or representation; or 3) makes or uses any false writing or document shall be fined under this title or imprisoned no more than five years, or both.’ “Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Powell appear to have violated this law. If the U.S.A. is still a democratic republic, then they should be impeached, indicted and prosecuted.” [RWC] If it “appears” to him that these men violated the law, perhaps Mr. Shannon can explain why every investigation conducted to date has indicated neither the Bush administration nor Congress falsified, influenced, or misrepresented the intelligence presented to them. “In creating the fabrications and the conditions for war, Bush promoted those in the government who supported the plot and punished those who put their loyalty to America first. There are many cases, but the worst is the exposure of CIA agent Valerie Plame to punish her husband for exposing the lie that Iraq was obtaining material for nuclear weapons.” [RWC] Mr. Shannon appears to have facts the rest of us don’t. First, we don’t know who “exposed” Ms. Plame if anyone. That Ms. Plame worked for the CIA was common knowledge among Washington reporters. Indeed, in a Vanity Fair interview (January 2004), Joe Wilson (her current husband) claimed she volunteered to him that she worked for the CIA on only their third or fourth date. That doesn’t sound like someone trying very hard to keep her identity secret. Second, Ms. Plame hadn’t worked undercover for about nine years. She was pulled in during 1994 as a result of the Aldrich Ames spy case. The CIA believed Plame was one of the spies exposed by Ames when he spied for the KGB. Don’t get me wrong. If anyone illegally exposed the identity of an undercover agent, they should be prosecuted. Regarding “the lie that Iraq was obtaining material for nuclear weapons,” the CIA maintained their position was correct and British intelligence still stands by its own reports. Let’s look at Joe Wilson’s claims as addressed in the “Report on the U.S. Intelligence Community’s Prewar Intelligence Assessments on Iraq” issued by the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence on July 7, 2004. Below are several points from that report. · Wilson claimed his CIA agent wife had nothing to do with his being sent to Niger. The report showed his wife recommended him twice, once in 1999 and again in 2002. Further, she approached Wilson on behalf of the CIA to see if he would accept the assignment. · Wilson claimed his investigation debunked the idea of Niger yellowcake sales to Iraq. In fact, the report showed the CIA believed Wilson’s report provided some confirmation of foreign government reports of alleged sales. · Wilson claimed some documents used to indicate a Niger/Iraq connection were forged because the dates and names were wrong. The report showed Wilson could not have seen these documents because they were not yet circulating in the intelligence community at the time he claimed he saw them. When confronted with the fact that he never saw the disputed documents and had no knowledge of the dates and names on the documents, he said he might have confused recollection with an IAEA finding published eight months after his assignment. · Wilson claimed VP Cheney was briefed on his findings. The report showed the CIA briefer did not brief Cheney because Wilson’s report didn’t add any new information to clarify the situation. When confronted about this by Committee staff, Wilson admitted he had no direct knowledge that Cheney had been briefed. He conceded his statement was based on what he thought would happen, not fact. “The latest ‘excuse’ for the continuing slaughter of our families and looting of our treasury is that if we don’t fight the terrorists over there, they are going to come over here. The bombing in London exposes this nonsense.” [RWC] No one ever claimed terrorists wouldn’t come over here if we fought them on their own soil. The logic is simple. We can’t give terrorists safe haven as a base of operations. The more secure terrorists feel, the bolder they will become. No strategy will completely prevent terrorist attacks on our soil, but we need to be on the offense. Defense alone assures only more attacks and more devastating attacks. Using Mr. Shannon’s logic, we should have withdrawn to our borders during World War II instead of taking the fight to Europe, North Africa, and the Western Pacific. “The real reason Bush wants Iraq and Iran is to control the oil. There were no terrorists in Iraq before the war. Now there are over 15,000 and growing. [RWC] “War for oil?” I was wondering when Mr. Shannon would get to this. “There were no terrorists in Iraq before the war?” I guess Mr. Shannon believes in revisionist history. Though it appears Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11, Iraq was a safe haven for terrorists and bipartisan investigations confirmed pre-9/11 Iraq/al-Qaeda links. “In 2000, terrorist attacks hit a low of 1,000. In 2001, terrorists attacked 2,000 times. In 2002, there were 2,800 attacks. In 2003, there were 2,600 attacks. In 2004, there were 3,200 attacks. Maybe invading other countries promotes terrorism.” [RWC] Perhaps Mr. Shannon can explain why the following happened long before we took aggressive action against anyone.
Mr. Shannon apparently believes the free people of the world should just sit back and take it. © 2004-2005 Robert W. Cox, all rights reserved. |
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