Congressman - CIA Faked 2002 Iraq Drone Photos

[shraby]

<http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/8/24/123334/383>

Representative Paul Kanjorski (D-PA) held a Town Hall meeting in the 11th District near Bloomsburg on Thursday, August 23, 2007. According to the local newspaper, Kanjorski expressed his view that there is no military victory possible in Iraq.

Nothing particularly surprising in that. What Kanjorski said next about his decision to vote for the 2002 Authorization to Use Military Force is the interesting part - at least to those of us who still care about how we got into this mess in the first place. Call me old fashioned, but I think our representatives should not base their votes on fabricated evidence.

Today's account from the Press-Enterprise (Bloomsburg, PA):

He said he was undecided in the days leading up to the congressional vote and was summoned to the White House for a meeting. There, top CIA officials showed him and other undecided representatives photos of what they said were unmanned Iraqi aircraft capable of attacking U.S. cities with nuclear, chemical and biological weapons.

"They said there were 1,000 aircraft on freighters headed to the United States," Kanjorski said.

"To me that represented an imminent danger," Kanjorski said. "It was a god-damn lie."

(More)
<http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/8/24/123334/383>

[HeraldSquare212]

1. it sounds a little too fantastical

1,000 drones on freighters headed to the US? If he had said 50, I'd probably buy that it happened or not hold him responsible for believing the story if it did happen. But 1,000?

[shraby]

2. Not really fantastical at all considering how

many freighters come to different ports in this country in one day's time.

[HereSince1628]

6. And not considering how many are loaded with R/C flying models

I'd accept in an instant the possibility that 1000's of them are on a freighter this second being trans-shipped thru Dubai.

[madrchsod]

3. the plywood ones?

everyone with a brain knew this story was bullshit

[Skip Intro]

4. I remember that being talked up at the time.

UAVs on saddam's mystery ships headed for American cities.


put the liars on trial now

[HereSince1628]

5. That's the thing about secret information. We are vulnerable to the folks

who claim to have it.

[Blue Meany]

7. There may be something to it

Bush did hold meetings with congressmen in the White House to persuade them to support the Iraq law. Two are documented in press releases: September 26 and October 2, 2002, but there were likely others for dissenters. The law passed the House on October 10. In the days before the meetings, many congress members expressed skepticism and opposition to the bill, yet some of them did end up voting for it.

Bush must have told them *something* to get them to change their positions. We know that Bush was pushing the notion that drones could be used to deliver chemical and biological weapons and after one of these meetings he asserted that Iraq could launch such an attack in 45 minutes. It is not clear that he was referring to an attack on the US, but he obviously intended to leave that possibility open to speculation. Drones on Iraqi-controlled ships would have been one of the few ways the Iraqi military could actually have attacked the US and it's not the kind of thing a congressman would think up out of the blue in the heat of argument with constituents.

I doubt that Bush or his lackies said there were thousands on ships on their way to the US--even they were not claiming that Saddam Hussein had thousands of them--but they might have asserted that they *could* be on ships at any time. And they might have suggested that if Iraq were allowed to continue, he would build thousands of them.

I'm not sure what to make of the assertion about faked CIA photos (How would he know that the CIA did this? Is this just his speculation?). But I do remember that soldiers who discovered the vaunted drone programs were astonished to find a small number of planes slightly larger than toys airplanes with virtually no military application. Before the war, there were congressional briefings in which military officials asserted that Iraq was converting passenger aircraft to UAV for military use, but, like the WMDs, these never showed up.

The congressman may have mispoken in the heat of the moment and still revealed something important.

[lovuian]

8. I know the Iranians shot our drones down

http://youtube.com/watch?v=WINzQtvjnH8

and we have been fighting Iran already

http://youtube.com/watch?v=XHLFOXWuHm8

http://youtube.com/watch?v=CvS6dNqET8w

If you go back to Bush's first speech
its all about the NWO agenda
the Axis of Evil the Isaiah line Bush fed the Republicans

their on a timeline
Israel'd destruction of Lebanon...they were suppose to get rid of Hamas and woefully failed

do you feel things closing in on them
Pakistan's falling apart and Afghanistans failures

our Army is weary I think its madness
they must destroy America

[Postman]

9. Only an idiot would have believed that shit....

10 years of war against Iran followed by a 120 day air assault by the most powerful Air Force in the world followed by 12 years of sanctions on a country that couldn't get parts for sewage treatment plants but low and behold they have 1000 drones headed for the US on freighters.....and these fictional drones were to drop, what on US cities?

Again, only a friggin' idiot would have believed this shit....