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Voter Guide

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War and International Affairs

Iraq

1) What are the consequences of the torture, sexual abuse and murder at Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad?

1) These abuses violate the Geneva Conventions.

2) These abuses further undermine the United States' justification for war.

3) These abuses have further alienated the Iraqi public.  

4) These abuses put US soldiers at greater risk all over the world.

5) These abuses caused further loss of any moral ground the United States may have had in international policy.

By the fall of 2003, the majority of several thousand detainees in Abu Ghraib Prison were civilians who were picked up by the US military during routine sweeps and at highway checkpoints.  The final report on the abuses of Abu Ghraib prisoners places the responsibility with soldiers at Abu Ghraib Prison and senior civilian and military officers at the Pentagon.

Sources: Seymour M. Hersh, "Annals of National Security: Torture at Abu Ghraib",
The New Yorker magazine, issue date 5/10/04; posted 4/30/04; www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?0;
www.amnesty.org/library;

Top Brass at Fault, Robert Burns, Associated Press, The Examiner, August 25, 2004, http://www.sfexaminer.com/article/index.cfm/i/082504b_abughraib

Amnesty International Report: The Gulf and the Arabian Peninsula: EU-US Summit: End the EU's embarrassing silence on US torture (News AMR 51/102/2004--June 24, 2004); Open Letter from Amnesty International to the President of the European Council Bertie Ahern on the occasion of the EU-US Summit, June 25-26, 2004;www.news.amnesty.org

2) Did Bush order the Pentagon to explore an invasion of Iraq prior to September 11, 2001?

"President Bush ordered the Pentagon to explore the possibility of a ground invasion of Iraq well before the United States was attacked on Sept. 11, 2001" an official told ABC News, confirming the account former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill gives in a book written by former Wall Street Journal reporter Ron Suskind. The official, who asked not to be identified, was present in the same National Security Council meetings as O’Neill immediately after Bush’s inauguration in January and February of 2001.  O’Neill says that from the very start of his administration, Bush was focused on ousting Saddam.

Source: "Corroborating O’Neill’s Account: Official Confirms Claims That Saddam Was Bush’s Focus Before 9/11," John Cochran, ABC News, Jan. 13, 2004, http://abcnews.go.com/sections/wnt/US/oneill_charges_040113.html

3) What specific evidence came from former Treasury Secretary O’Neill and others concerning Bush’s plans to take over Iraq prior to 9/11/01?

A Pentagon document dated March 5, 2001, "Foreign Suitors for Iraqi Oilfield Contracts," includes a map of potential areas for exploration and outlines contractors around the world from 30-40 countries.

An earlier document marked Secret from January 2001, "Plan for post-Saddam Iraq," envisioned peacekeeping troops, war crimes tribunals, and even included plans on divvying up Iraq’s oil wealth.

Source: "Bush Sought ‘Way’ To Invade Iraq?" 60 Minutes, CBS News, Jan. 11, 2004, http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/01/09/60minutes/main592330.shtml

4) The Bush administration claimed that Iraq was a threat to our security while countries neighboring Iraq did not consider Iraq to be a threat. Have any nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons been found in Iraq as of 10/3/03

No such weapons were found according to the UN weapons inspectors, the CIA-led Iraq Survey Group (ISG), and the Pentagon’s own Defense Intelligence Agency.

Sources: "Search in Iraq Finds No Banned Weapons," Dana Priest and Walter Pincus, Washington Post staff writers, Fri., Oct. 3, 2003, p. A01, http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A35638-2003Oct2?language=printer

"2002 Report Found No Iraqi Arsenal," Bryan Bender, Boston Globe article, reprinted in the San Francisco Chronicle, Sat., June 7, 2003, p. A-1, http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2003/06/07/MN208710.DTL

5) What other reports concluded that there were no Weapons of Mass Destruction?

Former U.S. weapons inspector David Kay has said repeatedly that U.S. intelligence was wrong in claiming that Saddam had stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons and advanced nuclear weapons programs. Those programs were the main justification for the Iraq war. 

A report from UN weapons inspectors to be released this week says they now believe there were no weapons of mass destruction of any significance in Iraq after 1994. The report, is the first outside study that confirms the statements Kay made in January to the US Senate. At that time, Kay told a Senate committee that he believed there were no WMD in Iraq.

Source: Kay calls on Bush to 'come clean' about WMD, Christian Science Monitor, March 4, 2003, http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0304/dailyUpdate.html?s=entt

Kay: Bush Should Admit Error on Iraq WMD: Ex-WMD Inspector David Kay Advises Bush to Admit He Was Wrong About Weapons in Iraq, The Associated Press, Feb 13, 2004, http://abcnews.go.com/wire/Politics/ap20040213_696.html

Bush, Aides Ignored CIA Caveats on Iraq, Washington Post - Feb 6, 2004, http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A20194-2004Feb6&notFound=true

6) Did the CIA claim that Iraq was an "imminent threat"?

No. In his first public defense of prewar intelligence, CIA Director George Tenet said that U.S. analysts had never claimed Iraq was an imminent threat, the main argument used by President Bush for going to war.

Source:  CIA Boss: Iraq Not Called Imminent Threat,  CIA Director Defends Intelligence Community, Says Analysts Never Called Iraq an Imminent Threat, The Associated Press, Feb. 5, 2004, http://abcnews.go.com/wire/Politics/ap20040205_918.html

7) During the 1980s who sold weapons to Iraq — and what kind?  What kind of assistance did the US provide and who was a special envoy to the Iraqi regime? 

US, British, and German companies sold deadly weapons to the Iraqi regime. Even with well-known reports of Hussein’s malicious use of weapons against his own people, the Reagan and Bush Administrations both authorized the sale of lethal weaponry to Iraq, including poisonous chemicals and deadly biological viruses, such as anthrax and bubonic plague. The Pentagon has since identified these strains of anthrax as a central element of the Iraqi biological warfare program.

US assistance to Iraq in the war against Iran also included the supply of cluster bombs through a Chilean front company. Donald Rumsfeld, then a special presidential envoy, helped to secure this "special relationship" at a time when Iraq was using chemical weapons on an almost daily basis. The Commerce Department also facilitated the export of insecticides to Iraq, despite growing evidence that they were "highly toxic" to humans and could be used for chemical warfare — a direct contravention to the Geneva Protocols of 1925. It should come as no surprise, then, that the same American-mandated UN weapons inspectors found USA brands on many of Iraq’s chemical and missile components after the Gulf War.

Source: "U.S. Had Key Role in Iraq Buildup," Michael Dobbs, Washington Post staff writer, Dec. 30, 2002, p. A01, http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A52241-2002Dec29?language=printer

8) The administration claimed there was a connection between Al-Qaeda and Iraq.  What is or was the connection?

To date, the administration has not come forward with any evidence of a close relationship between Iraq and Al-Qaeda.

Discrediting the significance of a leaked Pentagon memo purporting a connection, one former senior intelligence official likened the memo to a series of "data points . . . among the millions of holdings of the intelligence agencies, many of which are simply not thought likely to be true." The Pentagon followed suit, issuing its final word on the memo soon after the leak had been released to the press. "News reports that the Defense Department recently confirmed new information with respect to contacts between al Qaeda and Iraq . . . are inaccurate." The Pentagon also said the memo "was not an analysis of the substantive issue of the relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda and drew no conclusions."

Source: "CIA Seeks Probe of Iraq-Al Qaeda Memo Leak," Walter Pincus, Washington Post staff writer, Nov. 18, 2003, p. A18, http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A54452-2003Nov17&notFound=true

9) Colin Powell made a case before the UN to go to war with Iraq.  From what sources was Colin Powell’s report plagiarized, and how old were these sources?

Colin Powell’s speech before the UN Security Council cited a 19-page British dossier that was plagiarized, in large part, from an academic paper on Iraq based on the 1991 Gulf War. Glen Rangwala, a lecturer in politics at Cambridge University, affirmed that pages 6-16 of the dossier were copied almost verbatim from the 13-year-old paper by Ibrahim al-Marashi. The other two plagiarized sources, which constituted a further 6 pages of the dossier, came from the commercial publication Jane’s Intelligence Review, dated 1997 and 2002.

Sources: "Britain’s Intelligence Crisis," Jane’s Intelligence Digest, Feb. 14, 2003, http://www.janes.com/security/international_security/news/jid/jid030214_1_n.shtml

"UK accused of lifting dossier text," CNN, Feb. 7, 2003, http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/meast/02/07/sprj.irq.uk.dossier/

10) Were the administration’s claims that Saddam Hussein was working on buying nuclear materials from Africa based on facts? 

No.  According to the International Atomic Energy Agency, the claims that Iraq had attempted to buy 500 tons of uranium, known as "yellow cake," from Niger were based on crude forgeries and falsified documents.

Source: "Who Lied To Whom?" Seymour M. Hersh, The New Yorker, March 31, 2003, http://newyorker.com/printable/?fact/030331fa_fact1

Source: "Open Warfare: Bush vs. the Intelligence Community," Ivan Eland, Senior Fellow and Director of the Center on Peace & Liberty, The Independent Institute, Sept. 30, 2003, http://www.independent.org/tii/news/030930Eland.html

11) Open: President Bush in the State of Union address reported that Iraq was buying nuclear grade materials from the African nation of Niger despite a report to the contrary by the CIA and former Ambassador Wilson.  When Wilson’s report became public, the White House retaliated by outing his undercover CIA agent wife in the national press, putting her and all her contacts in the area of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) at grave risk.  How do you feel about this behavior on the part of this administration toward agents who risk their lives on a daily basis for the sake of our country?

12) Open: Do you approve of unilateral military action by the US or do you think we should cooperate with other nations to work out non-military solutions to our international problems?

Please share this information face to face with as many others as possible based on as much commitment you can muster in yourself for your country, your fellow Americans and for the world.   For more referenced questions and answers please visit our website at:   www.votewiththefacts.org