U.S. Officials: Iraq's Prewar Offers Not Legitimate (From Faux, of Course

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,102346,00.html

WASHINGTON — U.S. intelligence officials have told Fox News that reports of a frantic last-ditch effort by Iraq to avert an impending war were simply a facade by "third parties, charlatans and independent actors" aimed at preventing the U.S.-led invasion.


According to reports in The New York Times' online edition Wednesday night, an influential adviser to the Pentagon (search) received a secret message from a Lebanese-American businessman indicating that Saddam Hussein wanted to make a deal.

The Times reported that the chief of the Iraqi Intelligence Service (search) and other Iraqi officials had told the businessman that they wanted Washington to know that Iraq no longer had weapons of mass destruction and offered to let American troops and experts do an independent search. The Iraqi officials also offered to hand over a man accused of being involved in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing who was being held in Baghdad, the Times reported.

Messages from Baghdad, first relayed by the businessman in February to an analyst in the office of Douglas Feith (search), the undersecretary of defense for policy and planning, were part of an attempt by Iraqi officers to persuade the Bush administration to open talks through a clandestine channel, people involved in the discussion told the Times.

<snip>

That didn't take long to get this out. Bushco's fast on the draw tonight.

[Kurt Remarque]

1. if bush was president during the cuban missile crisis...

...we wouldn't be here

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

2. Nobody would be here... Welcome to DU!

:toast:

[dbt]

3. The bu$h regime has the NERVE

to say the alleged offer was not legitimate? After they based their entire case for war on lies?

:freak:
dbt

[JawJaw]

4. "Legitimate"?

This illegitimate President does not know the meaning of the word.

[Enjolras]

5. What else was not legitimate, then?

Was the invitation to re-admit the UN weapons inspectors not legitimate? Was Iraq's last-minute destruction of its cache of arguably banned al-Samoud missiles not legitimate? And, most laughably, are we still contending that Iraq's repeated denials of possession of WMD's were, even now, not legitimate?