Bush Iraq WMD Lies Exposed!

[Spence]

AP reports, "since he resigned as the top weapons hunter in Iraq, David Kay's public statements have sparked widespread questioning of the Bush administration's main justification for war: to remove an imminent threat posed by Saddam and his supposed weapons." However, instead of explaining why it ignored repeated warnings from the intelligence community that the White House's WMD case was weak, newswires report the Administration responded by "denying it ever warned that Saddam Hussein posed an 'imminent' threat to the United States." But a closer look at the record shows the Administration not only used exact phrase "imminent threat," but also buttressed it with claims that Iraq was a "mortal threat," "urgent threat," "immediate threat," "serious and mounting threat," "unique threat," and a threat that was actively seeking to "strike the United States with weapons of mass destruction" – all just months after Secretary of State Colin Powell admitted that Iraq was "contained" and "threatens not the United States." See a long list of the Administration's "threat" rhetoric in this new American Progress backgrounder.

"IMMINENT THREAT," PART I: White House spokesman Scott McClellan yesterday lashed out at reporters yesterday saying "some in the media have chosen to use the word 'imminent'. Those were not words we used." But almost exactly a year ago, it was McClellan who said the reason NATO should go along with the Administration's Iraq war plan was because "this is about imminent threat." Similarly, when White House spokesman Ari Fleischer was asked whether America went to war in Iraq because of an imminent threat, he replied "Absolutely."

"IMMINENT THREAT," PART II: Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was asked whether Iraq was an imminent threat and replied affirmatively, citing 9/11 as justification: "Go back before September 11 and ask yourself this question: Was the attack that took place on September 11 an imminent threat the month before or two months before or three months before or six months before? When did the attack on September 11 become an imminent threat? Now, transport yourself forward a year, two years or a week or a month...So the question is, when is it such an immediate threat that you must do something?" And despite the Administration's efforts to pass the blame for failure to find WMD onto the intelligence community, Rumsfeld essentially admitted that the intelligence community had, in fact warned the White House of the weakness of its WMD case – yet still raised the "imminent threat" specter. On 9/18/02, he said "Some have argued that the nuclear threat from Iraq is not imminent - that Saddam is at least 5-7 years away from having nuclear weapons. I would not be so certain."

"GATHERING" THREAT: McClellan told reporters that the White House only "used the phrase 'grave and gathering threat.' We made it very clear that it was a gathering threat." According to the Roget's Thesaurus, "gathering" is a direct synonym of "imminent". A synonym, we might recall, is defined as "a word having the same or nearly the same meaning as another word" – meaning the White House's continued attempts to differentiate between the use of "imminent threat" and "gathering threat" are hollow and silly semantics. It was President Bush who said in October 2002 that Iraq was a "gathering threat" – and has continued to repeat this phrase for the next two years.

"IMMEDIATE" THREAT: Once again, Roget's Thesaurus defines "immediate" as a direct synonym of "imminent" – and the Administration also repeatedly used this phrase to describe Iraq. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld told Congress on 9/19/02 that "No terrorist state poses a greater or more immediate threat to the security of our people and the stability of the world than the regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq."

"URGENT," "UNIQUE," "TERRIBLE, " "MOUNTING" THREAT: Other phrases of similar hue to "imminent" were also repeatedly invoked by the Administration to play on America's post-9/11 fears. The phrases "urgent" and "unique" threat were also repeatedly invoked. As President Bush said on 11/23/02, "The world is also uniting to answer the unique and urgent threat posed by Iraq." He said on 10/2/02 that "the Iraqi regime is a threat of unique urgency." Vice President Dick Cheney said on 1/30/03 that Iraq poses "terrible threats to the civilized world." Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said on 1/29/03 that "Iraq poses a serious and mounting threat to our country."

CONTINUED

[Spence]

In 2001 and before, intelligence agencies noted that Saddam Hussein was effectively contained after the Gulf War. In fact, former weapons inspector David Kay now admits that the previous policy of containment – including the 1998 bombing of Iraq – destroyed any remaining infrastructure of potential WMD programs.

OCTOBER 8, 1997 – IAEA SAYS IRAQ FREE OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS: "As reported in detail in the progress report dated 8 October 1997…and based on all credible information available to date, the IAEA's verification activities in Iraq, have resulted in the evolution of a technically coherent picture of Iraq's clandestine nuclear programme. These verification activities have revealed no indications that Iraq had achieved its programme objective of producing nuclear weapons or that Iraq had produced more than a few grams of weapon-usable nuclear material or had clandestinely acquired such material. Furthermore, there are no indications that there remains in Iraq any physical capability for t he production of weapon-usable nuclear material of any practical significance." [Source: IAEA Report, 10/8/98]

FEBRUARY 23 & 24, 2001 – COLIN POWELL SAYS IRAQ IS CONTAINED: "I think we ought to declare [the containment policy] a success. We have kept him contained, kept him in his box." He added Saddam "is unable to project conventional power against his neighbors" and that "he threatens not the United States." [Source: State Department, 2/23/01 and 2/24/01]

SEPTEMBER 16, 2001 – CHENEY ACKNOWLEDGES IRAQ IS CONTAINED: Vice President Dick Cheney said that "Saddam Hussein is bottled up" – a confirmation of the intelligence he had received. [Source: Meet the Press, 9/16/2001]

SEPTEMBER 2001 – WHITE HOUSE CREATES OFFICE TO CIRCUMVENT INTEL AGENCIES: The Pentagon creates the Office of Special Plans "in order to find evidence of what Wolfowitz and his boss, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, believed to be true-that Saddam Hussein had close ties to Al Qaeda, and that Iraq had an enormous arsenal of chemical, biological, and possibly even nuclear weapons that threatened the region and, potentially, the United States…The rising influence of the Office of Special Plans was accompanied by a decline in the influence of the C.I.A. and the D.I.A. bringing about a crucial change of direction in the American intelligence community." The office, hand-picked by the Administration, specifically "cherry-picked intelligence that supported its pre-existing position and ignoring all the rest" while officials deliberately "bypassed the government's customary procedures for vetting intelligence." [Sources: New Yorker, 5/12/03; Atlantic Monthly, 1/04; New Yorker, 10/20/03]

2002: Intel Agencies Repeatedly Warn White House of Its Weak WMD Case

Throughout 2002, the CIA, DIA, Department of Energy and United Nations all warned the Bush Administration that its selective use of intelligence was painting a weak WMD case. Those warnings were repeatedly ignored.

JANUARY, 2002 – TENET DOES NOT MENTION IRAQ IN NUCLEAR THREAT REPORT: "In CIA Director George Tenet's January 2002 review of global weapons-technology proliferation, he did not even mention a nuclear threat from Iraq, though he did warn of one from North Korea." [Source: The New Republic, 6/30/03]

FEBRUARY 6, 2002 – CIA SAYS IRAQ HAS NO WMD, AND HAS NOT PROVIDED AL QAEDA WMD: "The Central Intelligence Agency has no evidence that Iraq has engaged in terrorist operations against the United States in nearly a decade, and the agency is also convinced that President Saddam Hussein has not provided chemical or biological weapons to Al Qaeda or related terrorist groups, according to several American intelligence officials." [Source: NY Times, 2/6/02]

APRIL 15, 2002 – WOLFOWITZ ANGERED AT CIA FOR NOT UNDERMINING U.N. REPORT: After receiving a CIA report that concluded that Hans Blix had conducted inspections of Iraq's declared nuclear power plants "fully within the parameters he could operate" when Blix was head of the international agency responsible for these inspections prior to the Gulf War, a report indicated that "Wolfowitz ‘hit the ceiling’ because the CIA failed to provide sufficient ammunition to undermine Blix and, by association, the new U.N. weapons inspection program." [Source: W. Post, 4/15/02]

SUMMER, 2002 – CIA WARNINGS TO WHITE HOUSE EXPOSED: "In the late summer of 2002, Sen. Graham had requested from Tenet an analysis of the Iraqi threat. According to knowledgeable sources, he received a 25-page classified response reflecting the balanced view that had prevailed earlier among the intelligence agencies--noting, for example, that evidence of an Iraqi nuclear program or a link to Al Qaeda was inconclusive. Early that September, the committee also received the DIA's classified analysis, which reflected the same cautious assessments. But committee members became worried when, midway through the month, they received a new CIA analysis of the threat that highlighted the Bush administration's claims and consigned skepticism to footnotes." [Source: The New Republic, 6/30/03]

SEPTEMBER, 2002 – DIA TELLS WHITE HOUSE NO EVIDENCE OF CHEMICAL WEAPONS: "An unclassified excerpt of a 2002 Defense Intelligence Agency study on Iraq's chemical warfare program in which it stated that there is ‘no reliable information on whether Iraq is producing and stockpiling chemical weapons, or where Iraq has - or will - establish its chemical warfare agent production facilities.’" The report also said, "A substantial amount of Iraq's chemical warfare agents, precursors, munitions, and production equipment were destroyed between 1991 and 1998 as a result of Operation Desert Storm and UNSCOM (United Nations Special Commission) actions." [Source: Carnegie Endowment for Peace, 6/13/03; DIA report, 2002]

SEPTEMBER 20, 2002 – DEPT. OF ENERGY TELLS WHITE HOUSE OF NUKE DOUBTS: "Doubts about the quality of some of the evidence that the United States is using to make its case that Iraq is trying to build a nuclear bomb emerged Thursday. While National Security Adviser Condi Rice stated on 9/8 that imported aluminum tubes ‘are only really suited for nuclear weapons programs, centrifuge programs’ a growing number of experts say that the administration has not presented convincing evidence that the tubes were intended for use in uranium enrichment rather than for artillery rocket tubes or other uses. Former U.N. weapons inspector David Albright said he found significant disagreement among scientists within the Department of Energy and other agencies about the certainty of the evidence." [Source: UPI, 9/20/02]

OCTOBER 2002 – CIA DIRECTLY WARNS WHITE HOUSE: "The CIA sent two memos to the White House in October voicing strong doubts about a claim President Bush made three months later in the State of the Union address that Iraq was trying to buy nuclear materials in Africa." [Source: Washington Post, 7/23/03]

OCTOBER 2002 — STATE DEPT. WARNS WHITE HOUSE ON NUKE CHARGES: The State Department’s Intelligence and Research Department dissented from the conclusion in the National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq’s WMD capabilities that Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear weapons program. "The activities we have detected do not ... add up to a compelling case that Iraq is currently pursuing what INR would consider to be an integrated and comprehensive approach to acquiring nuclear weapons." INR accepted the judgment by Energy Department technical experts that aluminum tubes Iraq was seeking to acquire, which was the central basis for the conclusion that Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear weapons program, were ill-suited to build centrifuges for enriching uranium. [Source, Declassified Iraq NIE released 7/2003]

OCTOBER 2002 – AIR FORCE WARNS WHITE HOUSE: "The government organization most knowledgeable about the United States' UAV program -- the Air Force's National Air and Space Intelligence Center -- had sharply disputed the notion that Iraq's UAVs were being designed as attack weapons" – a WMD claim President Bush used in his October 7 speech on Iraqi WMD, just three days before the congressional vote authorizing the president to use force. [Source: Washington Post, 9/26/03]

CONTINUED

[Spence]

2003: WH Pressures Intel Agencies to Conform; Ignores More Warnings

Instead of listening to the repeated warnings from the intelligence community, intelligence officials say the White House instead pressured them to conform their reports to fit a pre-determined policy. Meanwhile, more evidence from international institutions poured in that the White House’s claims were not well-grounded.

LATE 2002-EARLY 2003 – CHENEY PRESSURES CIA TO CHANGE INTELLIGENCE: "Vice President Dick Cheney's repeated trips to CIA headquarters in the run-up to the war for unusual, face-to-face sessions with intelligence analysts poring over Iraqi data. The pressure on the intelligence community to document the administration's claims that the Iraqi regime had ties to al-Qaida and was pursuing a nuclear weapons capacity was ‘unremitting,’ said former CIA counterterrorism chief Vince Cannistraro, echoing several other intelligence veterans interviewed." Additionally, CIA officials "charged that the hard-liners in the Defense Department and vice president's office had 'pressured' agency analysts to paint a dire picture of Saddam's capabilities and intentions." [Sources: Dallas Morning News, 7/28/03; Newsweek, 7/28/03]

JANUARY, 2003 – STATE DEPT. INTEL BUREAU REITERATE WARNING TO POWELL: "The Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR), the State Department's in-house analysis unit, and nuclear experts at the Department of Energy are understood to have explicitly warned Secretary of State Colin Powell during the preparation of his speech that the evidence was questionable. The Bureau reiterated to Mr. Powell during the preparation of his February speech that its analysts were not persuaded that the aluminum tubes the Administration was citing could be used in centrifuges to enrich uranium." [Source: Financial Times, 7/30/03]

FEBRUARY 14, 2003 – UN WARNS WHITE HOUSE THAT NO WMD HAVE BEEN FOUND: "In their third progress report since U.N. Security Council Resolution 1441 was passed in November, inspectors told the council they had not found any weapons of mass destruction." Weapons inspector Hans Blix told the U.N. Security Council they had been unable to find any WMD in Iraq and that more time was needed for inspections. [Source: CNN, 2/14/03]

FEBRUARY 15, 2003 – IAEA WARNS WHITE HOUSE NO NUCLEAR EVIDENCE: The head of the IAEA told the U.N. in February that "We have to date found no evidence of ongoing prohibited nuclear or nuclear-related activities in Iraq." The IAEA examined "2,000 pages of documents seized Jan. 16 from an Iraqi scientist's home -- evidence, the Americans said, that the Iraqi regime was hiding government documents in private homes. The documents, including some marked classified, appear to be the scientist's personal files." However, "the documents, which contained information about the use of laser technology to enrich uranium, refer to activities and sites known to the IAEA and do not change the agency's conclusions about Iraq's laser enrichment program." [Source: Wash. Post, 2/15/03]

FEBURARY 24, 2003 – CIA WARNS WHITE HOUSE ‘NO DIRECT EVIDENCE’ OF WMD: "A CIA report on proliferation released this week says the intelligence community has no ‘direct evidence’ that Iraq has succeeded in reconstituting its biological, chemical, nuclear or long-range missile programs in the two years since U.N. weapons inspectors left and U.S. planes bombed Iraqi facilities. ‘We do not have any direct evidence that Iraq has used the period since Desert Fox to reconstitute its Weapons of Mass Destruction programs,’ said the agency in its semi-annual report on proliferation activities." [NBC News, 2/24/03]

MARCH 7, 2003 – IAEA REITERATES TO WHITE HOUSE NO EVIDENCE OF NUKES: IAEA Director Mohamed ElBaradei said nuclear experts have found "no indication" that Iraq has tried to import high-strength aluminum tubes or specialized ring magnets for centrifuge enrichment of uranium. For months, American officials had "cited Iraq's importation of these tubes as evidence that Mr. Hussein's scientists have been seeking to develop a nuclear capability." ElBaradei also noted said "the IAEA has concluded, with the concurrence of outside experts, that documents which formed the basis for the [President Bush’s assertion] of recent uranium transactions between Iraq and Niger are in fact not authentic." When questioned about this on Meet the Press, Vice President Dick Cheney simply said "Mr. ElBaradei is, frankly, wrong." [Source: NY Times, 3/7/03: Meet the Press, 3/16/03]

CONTINUED

[Spence]

In direct contradiction to the claims of the White House and its defenders, there were foreign intelligence services who doubted the existence of a WMD program in Iraq, but they were denounced as liars and fools by right-wingers in the U.S. and the Bush administration.

Consider this article in today's issue of The Financial Times:And Scott McClellan, White House spokesman, said yesterday that the intelligence presented "was something that was shared by intelligence agencies around the world".

With President George W. Bush and Mr Cheney this week backing away from their previous claims that Iraq possessed mass destruction weapons, the new arguments are crucial for a White House that wants to maintain it was victim of an unintended intelligence failure rather than the perpetrator of a deliberate deception.

But critics say neither claim stands up to scrutiny. "They are continuing the misrepresentation that occurred before the war, and pretending they were just saying what everyone else was saying. It just isn't true," says Joseph Cirincione, director of non-proliferation with the Carnegie Endowment.

US intelligence conclusions on Iraq in fact changed dramatically during the Bush administration, according to unclassified Central Intelligence Agency documents and portions of the October 2002 intelligence estimate declassified by the White House last year.

In the last report presented to Congress during the Clinton administration, the CIA said: "Iraq has probably continued low-level theoretical R&D associated with its nuclear programme" - a conclusion borne out by Mr Kay's findings that Iraq had a "rudimentary" nuclear weapons programme.

The 2000 report also said Iraq had "likely" used the period since it expelled UN weapons inspectors in December 1998 to reconstitute prohibited biological and chemical weapons programmes.

Those assessments remained unchanged until the first half of 2002 when the White House first seriously contemplated a war on Iraq. From there, an increasingly alarmist series of reports culminated in the CIA's top-secret national intelligence estimate in October 2002.

That document claimed with "high confidence" that "Baghdad is reconstituting its nuclear weapons program", that Iraq had renewed production of chemical weapons and that it had establish a large-scale, concealed biological weapons capability. None of those conclusions has been borne out.

The administration may find more cover in its claim that other intelligence agencies also thought the worst about Iraq. Mr Kay himself bolstered this argument yesterday, pointing out that the Germans in particular believed Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. "It turns out we were all wrong, probably, in my judgment, and that is most disturbing."

But international intelligence on Iraq's programmes was far from uniform. Jacques Chirac, France's president, told CNN last March there was "no evidence" that Iraq had a nuclear weapons program. And Vladimir Putin, Russia's president, when asked in October 2002 about the CIA's conclusions, said: "Russia does not have in its possession any trustworthy data that supports the existence of nuclear weapons or any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq."

Further, the International Atomic Energy Agency, an arm of the UN, reported to the UN Security Council on the eve of the war that "after three months of intrusive inspections, we have to date found no evidence or plausible indication of the revival of a nuclear weapons programme in Iraq".Lies, lies, lies and more lies.

[lakewinola]

Why won't Bush investigate the intelligence failure? Could it be because he is hiding something? Perhaps his making up evidence?

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20040130/ap_on_re_us/iraq_weapons_investigation_11

[RedskinsDave]

Oh now that you'll agree there was an intelligence failure, it's still his fault. You're insatiable.

[lakewinola]

Originally posted by RedskinsDave
Oh now that you'll agree there was an intelligence failure, it's still his fault. You're insatiable.

Why does he refuse to investigate anything that can make him look bad.

[Skins57]

Originally posted by lakewinola
Why does he refuse to investigate anything that can make him look bad.


I think you answered your question.

[lakewinola]

Bush doesn't want the american people to know the whole truth about the Iraq failures and lies.

http://www.philly.com/mld/philly/news/7859646.htm

[NamVet4]

On Monday, President Bush said he would appoint a commission to investigate U.S. intelligence failures in Iraq and gaps in other areas, such as secretive regimes like Iran and North Korea and stateless groups such as terrorists.

Mr. Bush defended his decision to go to war on intelligence that Kay now says was erroneous.

"I want all the facts. We do know that Saddam Hussein had the intent and capabilities to cause great harm. We know he was a danger … He slaughtered thousands of people," Mr. Bush said.


Another commission.........

Source link (http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/06/25/iraq/main560449.shtml)

~sigh~

[RedskinsDave]

lake, you have to find another source. That philly.com site is about as reliable as me using newsmax.

[dukeuch]

So what are we to make of the "US Intelligence Failure"? That the Russians, Germans and French, who it turns out were right on the question of the existence of WMD, have more effective intelligence agencies?

[Yudolindo]

The CIA was gutted in the seventies of much of its human intelligence programs and resources. Whether or not France, Germany or whoever else’s intelligence establishments are better, is not really relevant: they avoided conflict for more mundane reasons than advanced information. Rather, the CIA’s ineptitude—and Iraq is far from its first manifestation—should swiftly be remedied no matter what the cost.

[dukeuch]

Originally posted by Yudolindo
The CIA was gutted in the seventies of much of its human intelligence programs and resources. Whether or not France, Germany or whoever else’s intelligence establishments are better, is not really relevant: they avoided conflict for more mundane reasons than advanced information. Rather, the CIA’s ineptitude—and Iraq is far from its first manifestation—should swiftly be remedied no matter what the cost.

You mean mundane reasons like "there is not enought proof"? Point is, until now we had a policy (not always stictly adhered to, unfortunately) of "no preventative war". It is a good policy, one which could only be supported in this case if we "knew" there were WMD. Well, we did not. It turns out that the UN inspectors, the French, Germans and Russians, bascially all those who we loaudly criticized for ignoring the "obvious" were right and we were wrong. As a result, we invaded a country which did NOT pose an immediate threat.

[Yudolindo]

Actually, Iraq did quite a bit of business with France and Saddam owed the French billions of dollars. For example, France sold a number of prohibited arms to Iraq, like GPS jamming equipment and medium range/shoulder fired missiles. If Saddam were removed, they would not get their money, not to mention the embarrassment their transactions would inure. The Russians had oil contracts with Saddam and, again, were owed billions of dollars. The Germans, have an abhorrence of war since the conclusion of World War II that has very little to do with intelligence or moral righteousness.

[Spence]

Considering the way Iraq contracts are being handed out to firms with close ties to the White House [like Bechtel and Halliburton, which has just been discovered to--again--be overcharging U.S. taxpayers for food delivered to U.S. military bases in Kuwait], I think Bush supporters should be very careful about accusing France or Germany of taking an indecent interest in profit from Iraq.

[Yudolindo]

To compare expenses in the rebuilding of Iraq to pure profit that France and Russia made selling weapons to bolster the Bathist monster is intellectually suspect. For one, America is going to loose 80-85 billion dollars in Iraq, regardless of whoever the contractors are; the country is not a pork barrel. Second, getting Iraq’s oil infrastructure rebuilt is extremely difficult and few companies are capable of doing so. The current administrations friends are among such companies. Said companies accused of stealing are being investigated and throttled, despite claims otherwise. The French and Russians were profiteering in the worst way and Perhaps Halliburton is as well. They, however, are in deep sh!t. America is loosing huge amounts of money and claming the profit incentive for a modern invasion just does not hold water.

[dukeuch]

Intellectually dishonest? You are right, we are in deep sh!t. Bush and his senior officials got us into this mess under false pretenses, with a false understanding of what the cost would be, and little regard for the human suffering to both US families and innocent Iraqis. I am really pissed. I'm pissed at my party, too. Think aobut how much better spent all that money would have been searching out terrorists, rebuilding shcools, providing helath care, ANYTHING but throwing it away. What do you think the motive here is, if not for the oil? I do not believe that all these guys (except for the president, perhaps) were so stupid as to NOT see that there simply was no proof.

I put nothing past these guys, who truley believe that if something is good for big business that it is good for America.

[Spence]

America will not make a profit from invading and occuyping Iraq. Indeed, it is a gigantic drain upon our finances. So massive, in fact, that the Bush administration was too embarrassed to even count those figures in its latest budget. That means, of course, that the stated budget deficit of $521 billion for this fiscal year is actually well over $600 billion. So, no, America will make no profit on Iraq. It's a bleeding wound, hemorraging both lives and treasure.

Corporate America, on the other hand, does stand to profit quite nicely from the Iraq occupation. Well, not all corporate America, of course. Just the parts with close ties to the White House. Halliburton was not caught overcharging for work on Iraq's oil system, it was caught charging Uncle Sam for $16 million worth of meals it never delivered to our troops--AT JUST ONE BASE! Halliburton is in charge of such work at dozens of U.S. bases in the area. Hmmm. Let's see, take $16 million and multiply it by forty and you get...Wow! There's good money in occupying countries! Not for America, of course, but for a few connected people.

Halliburton is being held responsible for this? And what do you base that remarkably optimistic estimation upon? The fact that they continue to be awarded no-bid contracts by the administration? You think that's punishing a company that is literally stealing from the taxpayers--by giving them MORE no-bid contracts in Iraq?

Ah, that's Republican justice for you.

[Yudolindo]

Edit: Beat. ^^^^

Saddam tortured and killed roughly one million of his own citizens and about 500,000 to one million Iranians. The Iraqi people are MUCH better off with him gone; those evil republicans have dialed down the world’s collective suffering. Deal with it: it’s a good thing. You don’t invade a country to get oil. Further, you don’t give 80-90 billion dollars that does not produce that much oil for years. Colonialism does not make money. Bush invaded Iraq because he thought it would make America more secure. Whether he felt this because they were WMDs in Iraq or because he believed in the neo-conservative vision of democracy spreading out of Iraq to the rest of the Middle East is up in the air.

[Yudolindo]

Originally posted by Spence

Halliburton is being held responsible for this? And what do you base that remarkably optimistic estimation upon? The fact that they continue to be awarded no-bid contracts by the administration? You think that's punishing a company that is literally stealing from the taxpayers--by giving them MORE no-bid contracts in Iraq?

Ah, that's Republican justice for you.

Because my brother is involved in the investigation against them :). Halliburton is going to give a lot of cash back. I could be wrong, and trust me, I am not happy about this either.

[dukeuch]

Originally posted by Yudolindo
Edit: Beat. ^^^^
Colonialism does not make money. Bush invaded Iraq because he thought it would make America more secure. Whether he felt this because they were WMDs in Iraq or because he believed in the neo-conservative vision of democracy spreading out of Iraq to the rest of the Middle East is up in the air.

How could it be up in the air? Last year he reasoned that we had to invade preemptively because they had WMD which were a direct threat to us. Well, if he did it because of the latter rather than the former, you would at least have to admit that he lied, right?

[Yudolindo]

Originally posted by dukeuch
How could it be up in the air? Last year he reasoned that we had to invade preemptively because they had WMD which were a direct threat to us. Well, if he did it because of the latter rather than the former, you would at least have to admit that he lied, right?

It is up in the air: I don't know the mind of GWB :). I personally think he acted on the intelligence he had; but sure, he could have lied. Democrats do as well: how do you think Vietnam was started?

[Spence]

Originally posted by Yudolindo
Because my brother is involved in the investigation against them :). Halliburton is going to give a lot of cash back. I could be wrong, and trust me, I am not happy about this either. Give the cash back???? That's punishment? If I knock over a 7-11 tonight and take $500 do you think the police will call it punishment if I just agree to give the money back? Please!

Halliburton execs should be imprisoned and the company barred from any further federal contracts. This latest outrage comes hard on the heels of two other recent incidents in which the company has been discovered stealing from the taxpayer. Give the money back? Ah, that's tough on crime, eh?

[Spence]

Originally posted by Yudolindo
It is up in the air: I don't know the mind of GWB :). I personally think he acted on the intelligence he had; but sure, he could have lied. Democrats do as well: how do you think Vietnam was started? And it finished LBJ's career. Served him right. Next up: The other liar from Texas.

[Spence]

North Korean atrocities make Saddam's crimes pale in comparison. If Bush was so concerned about human rights abuses, when does the invasion of North Korea start? And since it worse there than it ever was in Iraq, why haven't we invaded already?

Of course, there's no oil in North Korea, but...nah, that couldn't have anything to do with it.

[If Bush thought human rights abuses was a legitimate reason to invade another country and occupy it, he should have made that argument in 2002 and 2003. He didn't. Instead, his administration invented a non-existent threat and used THAT as an excuse to invade and occupy. Now, they want to change all the reasons for their war and hope no one notices.

But we all notice. Just some of us care and some of us don't.]

[Minnesota Mike]

Originally posted by Yudolindo
Colonialism does not make money.


WHAT?

Exploiting the wealth of the conquered is the primary purpose behind colonialism!

[Yudolindo]

Originally posted by Spence
North Korean atrocities make Saddam's crimes pale in comparison. If Bush was so concerned about human rights abuses, when does the invasion of North Korea start? And since it worse there than it ever was in Iraq, why haven't we invaded already?

Of course, there's no oil in North Korea, but...nah, that couldn't have anything to do with it.


And China’s human rights abuses make North Korea’s look like small fries—so on and so forth. Yes, oil is part of the reason that we went into Iraq, but not because of this cynical “for the Benjamin’s,” rational. Why invade Iraq instead of North Korea? A few reasons. One, Iraq is our problem; we made it ours with the first Gulf War. North Korea just wants to be our problem: China, South Korea and Japan are in the diplomatic mix. Second, it is now in the supreme interest of the west to have democratic nations prosper in the Middle East. Dislike terrorists? Like consistent supplies oil? Like a stable economy? Into human rights? Peace? Democracy is good. Getting rid of madmen is good. If you think that we are somehow going to recoup our “donations” to Iraq through oil and corporate booty, dream on: there is just too much scrutiny. Plus, Iraq is not an oil factory: they are the ninth leading supplier to the west, where as Canada is the first. When does the invasion of Canada start? Third: invading North Korea would be incalculably bloody and disastrous. They have the second largest military in the world. They are not pushovers. They are equipped with fighter aircraft and tanks comparable to our own, and while we would win, casualties on both sides would be astronomical. Did I mention that North Korea is nuclear, and that it is very likely that they have an ICBM capable of delivering a a 50-200 kiloton warhead to L.A., San Diego, Anchorage, Seattle, Portland, Tokyo, and Beijing etc. etc.? Did I also mention that they have counter-force/counter-value solutions against our current ICBM roster? Or that Soul would be shelled out of existence as soon and the conflict began? That is why we are not invading North Korea. If we could, we would.

[Yudolindo]

Originally posted by Minnesota Mike
WHAT?

Exploiting the wealth of the conquered is the primary purpose behind colonialism!

Yes, and it collapsed: the British were in the red for decades before they gave their empire up. In fact, the “empire,” admittedly existed for the posterity of the crown. This is how it was for most nations: they became imperial not necessarily for profit as modern economies formed, but rather for “glory.” Unless the foreign territory is made of gold (which why the Spanish empire prospered and also why it eventually collapsed), the cost of maintaining overseas bureaucracies, security apparatus and infrastructure is prohibitive to making any profit as well as providing a huge drain on a nation’s moral. Colonialism barely worked back then and sure as hell does not work now.

[Spence]

Upon closer study of the British Empire, Yudolindo, I think you will find that it cost the British taxpayer a bundle, but made more than a bundle for a few connected conglomerates, such as the British East India Company and Anglo-Persian Oil. That's what colonies were all about: Enriching the few at the expense of the many.

[Spence]

Yudolindo, I should probably thank you because you're making my arguments for me. [So thanks.] In other words, we don't go after North Korea because it has nukes but we do go after Iraq because it has nothing. Yeah, that makes sense. Bush made the world safer by getting rid of a regime so bankrupt and weaponless it had absolutely nothing. I feel much safer now.

The lesson every ambitious dictator has taken from North Korea/Iraq is: "I better get my nukes fast. If I've got 'em, the Americans will be too scared to do anything. If I don't, they might come after me--especially if I've got oil."

And THAT is Mr Bush's nuclear non-proliferation plan?!?! Apparently, so. That's what happens when you turn the government over to a gang of overly-emotional imbeciles.

Where is this democracy in Iraq? Even Mr Bush's own neocon supporters are saying he is betraying Iraqi democracy by trying to get our troops out in July. [Just in time for the election! What a coincidence. Gee, that Bush sure is a strong man of principle!] Bush's plan for Iraq does not even include actual elections, since that would bring the Shiites to power and the Bush admin does not want that. What progress towards democracy has been made? None. Nor will any be made. With Bush's idiotic public timeline to withdraw the troops, he has ensured the various Iraqi parties will simply run out the clock until the Americans leave and then they can get on with what they really want to do: slaughter each other until a new genocidal dictator emerges.

Face it, every promise the Bush admin made about post-war Iraq has been false. They said the Iraqis would welcome our troops with open arms. They did not. They said the Iraqis would never take to guerrilla warfare against us. They did. They said Iraq was so rich it could finance its own reconstruction. It can't--that'll be up to the American taxpayer. They said they would build democracy in Iraq. They won't. They said they would find tons of weapons of mass destruction. They haven't found a thing.

And these are the people you trust to get things right?

Jeebus, Yudolindo, I think I actually feel sorry for you.

[Yudolindo]

Originally posted by Spence
Upon closer study of the British Empire, Yudolindo, I think you will find that it cost the British taxpayer a bundle, but made more than a bundle for a few connected conglomerates, such as the British East India Company and Anglo-Persian Oil. That's what colonies were all about: Enriching the few at the expense of the many.

The only "companies" (and they were not corporations so much as extensions of the British government) that had any long term profitability were the various north American trading outlets that monopolized the export of Indigo, Cotton and most importantly, Tobacco. The average British (and in many cases Scottish) citizen in fact benefited greatly from the ability to buy dirt-cheap Virginia Tobacco on the British mainland and then to turn around and sell it to the rest of the world at a huge mark up. Moreover, the cotton and indigo purchased at rock bottom prices fed the factories of an industrializing nation. This is the only British venture that worked and the British Empire was utterly dependent on the Navigation acts for its existence. Of course, the same act was starving American farmers who eventually rebelled. When Britain lost her American colonies and drifted economically from them, things went downhill.

[Yudolindo]

A few minor points:

North Korea because it has nukes but we do go after Iraq because it has nothing. Yeah, that makes sense.

We avoid a confrontation with North Korea simply because she is a vastly more formidable foe than Iraq: we avoid because China, South Korea and Japan can disarm North Korea without and exchange of ICBMs. Saddam, in the eyes of many, was not cooperating. North Korea bargains this way: they threaten, then receded, threaten, receded. Saddam, he thought he could win. You should feel safer with Saddam gone: making VX gas is very cheap. Anthrax is very cheap. Why did Gulf War I happen? Because Saddam was bankrupt from his war with Iran.

The lesson every ambitious dictator has taken from North Korea/Iraq is: "I better get my nukes fast. If I've got 'em, the Americans will be too scared to do anything. If I don't, they might come after me--especially if I've got oil."

Not quite. The lesson is to learn to deal with counterforce and be bat shit insane. Plus, you may wonder why Kim Jong Il has warmed up of late: Saddam was an example.


And THAT is Mr Bush's nuclear non-proliferation plan?!?! Apparently, so. That's what happens when you turn the government over to a gang of overly-emotional imbeciles.

Actually, now that Pakistan and North Korea have the bomb, there is not much you can do to stop the nuclear tide in some respects. What Bush has done to deal with so called “Brain Drain,” by funding joint ventures between Arzamas 16 and Los Alamos is really a brilliant step. More over, demanding and funding Russian accountability of nuclear materials is another good step, but ultimately impossible due to the way Soviets kept records. Smuggling of Fissile material does goes on, but it is usually low quantity, low grade Uranium and it is often busted before transactions.

Where is this democracy in Iraq?

Good question. I don’t know, but what I can tell you is that it takes more than a year to build a democracy after 25 years of brutal tyranny.

What progress towards democracy has been made? None.

Why don’t you ask an Iraqi citizen? If they say that there has been none, and that America should go home, there is your progress.


Americans leave and then they can get on with what they really want to do: slaughter each other until a new genocidal dictator emerges.

Where is my damn crystal ball when I need it…what evidence do you have to suggest that this will happen?

They said the Iraqis would welcome our troops with open arms. They did not.

Actually, a lot did (take the south of Iraq, for instance), but believe what you wish.

They said the Iraqis would never take to guerrilla warfare against us. They did.

Quote please.

They said Iraq was so rich it could finance its own reconstruction.

Not quite. The assumption was that Iraq’s oil infrastructure was capable of producing enough oil to supplement American aid. They turned out to be wrong…for now at least: the pipelines will be fixed. I hope soon.

They said they would build democracy in Iraq. They won't.

Your clairvoyant abilities, again, leave much to be desired. It is too easy to say, “They won’t build a democracy in Iraq.” The problem with that statement is that it’s in our interest build a democracy. I think there will be a major attempt if nothing else. Whether it will work has been a subject of debate since the seventies.

They said they would find tons of weapons of mass destruction.

The CIA is incompetent.

Jeebus, Yudolindo, I think I actually feel sorry for you.

:rolleyes: Grow up.

[Spence]

Ooh, fisking. How cute.

I agree completely with you about North Korea. Let's hope the admin hardliners agree with you. From what I've read, both Cheney and Rumsfeld want to "solve" North Korea military in a hypothetical second Bush term.

No, I don't feel safer with Saddam gone. He was obviously not a threat. Certain chemical weapons are relatively easy to create, but he had not done so, probably not for a decade. That says something. It says far more than all the deceitful and melodramatic "we don't want the warning shot to come in the form of a mushroom cloud" warnings we got from the Bush admin.

There is a cost-benefit analysis that must be applied to things like invading and occupying another country. The costs, as you have acknowledged, are enormous. The benefits? Well, a country that did not have WMD still does not have WMD. Not sure what the benefit is there. A country that was no threat to us is still not a threat--unless you happen to be a U.S. soldier unfortunate enough to be stationed in Iraq. Then they're more of a threat than ever. Not sure that can be counted as an improvement.

I'd like some examples of North Korea "warming up," however. That's a flat statement you made, with nothing behind it. I don't see any evidence of that at all. The North Koreans know we won't do there what we foolishly did in Iraq. They're not intimidated by that at all. At least, there is no indication they are.

[Spence]

Originally posted by Yudolindo
Not quite. The assumption was that Iraq’s oil infrastructure was capable of producing enough oil to supplement American aid. They turned out to be wrong…for now at least: the pipelines will be fixed. I hope soon.

Published on Sunday, October 5, 2003 by the New York Times
Report Offered Bleak Outlook About Iraq Oil
by Jeff Gerth

WASHINGTON, Oct. 4 — The Bush administration's optimistic statements earlier this year that Iraq's oil wealth, not American taxpayers, would cover most of the cost of rebuilding Iraq were at odds with a bleaker assessment of a government task force secretly established last fall to study Iraq's oil industry, according to public records and government officials.

When Vice President Cheney was asked about Iraq's oil during an appearance before newspaper editors, he cited higher numbers rather than the task force's more sober findings.

The task force, which was based at the Pentagon as part of the planning for the war, produced a book-length report that described the Iraqi oil industry as so badly damaged by a decade of trade embargoes that its production capacity had fallen by more than 25 percent, panel members have said.

Despite those findings, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz told Congress during the war that "we are dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction, and relatively soon."

Moreover, Vice President Dick Cheney said in April, on the day Baghdad fell, that Iraq's oil production could hit 3 million barrels a day by the end of the year, even though the task force had determined that Iraq was generating less than 2.4 million barrels a day before the war.

Now, as the Bush administration requests $20.3 billion from Congress for reconstruction next year, the chief reasons cited for the high price tag are sabotage of oil equipment — and the poor state of oil infrastructure already documented by the task force.

"The problem is this," L. Paul Bremer III, the top civilian administrator in Iraq, asserted at a Senate hearing two weeks ago: "The oil infrastructure was severely run down over the last 20 years, and partly because of sanctions over the last decade."

Similarly, Bush administration officials announced earlier this year that Iraq's oil revenues would be $20 billion to $30 billion a year, which added to the impression that the aftermath of the war would place a minimal burden on the United States. Mr. Bremer now estimates that Iraq's total oil revenues from the last half of 2003 to 2005 will amount to $35 billion, running at a rate of about $14 billion a year.

The administration now plays down the report's findings.

Senior administration officials said that Mr. Cheney, Mr. Wolfowitz and Donald H. Rumsfeld, the secretary of defense, were aware of the oil group's overall mission, but that they could not say whether they knew of its specific findings.

"I think when it is all said and done," said Lawrence Di Rita, the Pentagon's chief spokesman, "prewar estimates that may be borne out in fact are likelier to be more lucky than smart."

Mr. Di Rita added that earlier estimates and statements by Mr. Wolfowitz and others "oozed with uncertainty."

COMMENT: Slam dunk, I think you'll ruefully agree.

[Spence]

ON THE SUBJECT OF BUSH ADMIN ASSURANCES ABOUT GUERRILLA WARFARE IN IRAQ:

Published on Sunday, August 10, 2003 by the Boston Globe
CIA Warned Administration of Postwar Guerrilla Peril
by Bryan Bender

WASHINGTON - In February, the CIA gave a formal briefing to the National Security Council, including Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, Vice President Dick Cheney, and President Bush himself: ''A quick military victory in Iraq will likely be followed by armed resistance from remnants of the Ba'ath Party and Fedayeen Saddam irregulars.''

The administration seemed unmoved. In the weeks leading up to the Iraq war, top Bush administration officials made glowing predictions that Iraqis would welcome US troops with open arms, while behind the scenes they did little to prepare for a guerrilla war.

''My belief is we will, in fact, be greeted as liberators,'' Cheney said on NBC's ''Meet the Press'' on March 16. ''I've talked with a lot of Iraqis in the last several months myself, had them to the White House.''

''I imagine they will be welcomed,'' Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz, a key architect of the White House's Iraq strategy, said in an interview April 3, two weeks into the war, with CBS's ''60 Minutes II.''

''I think there's every reason to think that huge numbers of the Iraqi population are going to welcome these people ... provided we don't overstay our welcome, provided we mean what we say about handing things back over to the Iraqis,'' Wolfowitz said.

The February report was not the only warning Bush received that a guerrilla war was in the offing. According to US intelligence officials who compiled or contributed to the reports, and provided excerpts to the Globe, on multiple occasions in the months before the war the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency warned that fighting would probably continue after the formal war. The assessments went so far as to suggest that guerrilla tactics could frustrate reconstruction efforts.

But intelligence officials, former military officers, and national security specialists say the administration instead clung to the optimistic predictions of the Iraqi National Congress, an exile group headed by Ahmed Chalabi, who left Iraq in 1958. Chalabi, who is now a member of Iraq's US-backed Governing Council, is a close Rumsfeld and Cheney ally who had the ears of top administration officials in the months before the war.

''I think there was a general sense of how the postconflict phase would go, and it didn't work out that way,'' said a former deputy defense secretary, John J. Hamre, who recently returned from a Pentagon fact-finding mission to Iraq. ''That general sense probably caused them to pass over intelligence assessments that differed from expectations.''

''The obvious critique is that they ignored this beforehand because it didn't fit their expectations,'' Hamre said. But he cautioned against definitive conclusions about the warnings. ''The great problem I see these days is a tendency to take a single report or document and use it as proof to make a point,'' he said. ''When it comes to the world of intelligence, you have to take a much wider sampling of many inputs and make a reasoned judgment.''

The National Security Council did not respond to a request for a comment.

Last month, Wolfowitz defended the administration's planning for the aftermath of the war. ''There's been a lot of talk that there was no plan,'' he said. ''There was a plan, but as any military officer can tell you, no plan survives first contact with reality. Inevitably, some of our assumptions turned out to be wrong.''

Wolfowitz acknowledged that the administration had expected Iraqi military units to defect. ''No army units, at least none of any significant size, came over to our side so that we could use them as Iraqi forces with us today,'' he said. ''Second, the police turned out to require a massive overhaul. Third, and worst of all, it was difficult to imagine before the war that the criminal gang of sadists and gangsters who have run Iraq for 35 years would continue fighting.''

Yet the CIA in particular forewarned policymakers of some of the problems likely to arise, according to one intelligence official who asked not to be identified. The reports, for example, predicted that armed insurgents would attack coalition forces. One prewar report, he said, forecast that after the war ''things would get worse before they get better'' and that there would be a high likelihood of ''backsliding'' - progress followed by setbacks.

[Spence]

Originally posted by Yudolindo
Good question. I don’t know, but what I can tell you is that it takes more than a year to build a democracy after 25 years of brutal tyranny. Ah, a wonderful point. Couldn't agree more. You seem quite confident that such a commitment will be made. I'm sure the saints of neoconservatism over at PNAC and The Weekly Standard woud love to be cheered up by your optimism. They're accusing Bush of ditching the entire enterprise [the July pullout date] just to help his own re-election prospects.

As for Iraqis in the south welcoming us, yeah, they did. For about a week. That was pretty predictable. But now, as I'm sure you already know, it's the southern Iraqis who are giving the Bush admin the most trouble. You know, their insistence on direct elections. The Shiite clerics who have shot down one Bush admin proposal after another. A week's welcome is cheap. If building this democracy is a long-term project [as you wrote above], then the nature of that welcome a year later is far more instructive.

The CIA is incompetent. That's my favorite quote in the entire piece. The CIA is incompetent. Yes, that's been a pretty consistent drumbeat from the neocons. The reasons have changed, though, haven't they? Yes. In 2002 the CIA was incompetent because their warnings about Iraq were not dire enough. They didn't estimate that Iraq had enough WMD. They spent too much time playing down the threat from Iraq and playing up the risks in invading Iraq. That's what the neocon hawks said. They even set up the Office of Special Plans in the Pentagon to go around the CIA and furnish "intelligence" reports more to the liking of the administration.

Now, however, with the fog of war clearing a bit, we learn that the CIA is now incompetent because they're warnings about Iraq were TOO dire. They over-estimated WMD arsenals and didn't talk enough about the dangers of occupation.

Welcome to the Bush Era of Personal Responsibility. "It's not my fault, America. I demanded they give me reports hinting at Armageddon if we didn't invade immediately and when they finally caved to my pressure and did so, it turned out to be all wrong. It's not my fault. Blame them." Priceless.

We've gone from Harry S. Truman and The buck stops here! to George W Bush and Don't blame me!

[NamVet4]

Yudolindo,
Right now, the best estimates (conservative) are that we will loose the life of one American member of the military every day in Iraq.

02-004-2004 Operation Iraqi Freedom began on 20 March 2003. President Bush declared an end to major combat operations in Iraq on 01 May 2003. The single worst day of Major Combat Operations was 23 March 2003, on which 30 American soldiers died. A total of 116 service members were killed in action during major combat operations, and another 25 died due to non-hostile causes such as accidents.

Army Lt. Gen. Richardo Sanchez, the allied forces commander in Iraq, stated on 07 August 2003 that US forces will remain in Iraq for at least two years. Long-term estimates for U.S. presence in Iraq will certainly come with increased US attacks, though President Bush refuses to speculate the price the U.S. forces will pay in casualties. The attacks fuel the growing concern whether the guerilla attacks against Coalition Forces are part of a larger coordinated campaign.

Military officials said the number of attacks had decreased significantly -- down from about 50 a day in mid-September 2003 to an average of about 15 a day in December 2003, spiking to 18 on Christmas Day. At a briefing on 02 January 2004 it was reported that engagements against coalition military have averaged 20 a day, thought the area of operations remains stable.

During the first week of January 2004 there was an average of 18 engagements launched against coalition military targets daily. Attacks against Iraqi security forces averaged slightly more than two per day, with an average of and one attack daily against Iraqi civilians. During the third week in January 2004, there were an average of 17 engagements daily against coalition military personnel, just under four attacks daily against Iraqi security forces and a bit more than one attack daily against Iraqi civilians.

Source link (http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/iraq_casualties.htm)


10 30 -2003 U.S. military deaths from hostile fire in Iraq have reached a grim landmark with the post-war toll surpassing the number of troops killed during the invasion itself.

The military reported Wednesday the deaths of two more American soldiers when their tank ran over a bomb about 75 miles north of Baghdad Tuesday night.

The Pentagon said this brought to 117 the number of troops killed since U.S.President Bush declared major combat over on May 1. The toll surpassed the 115 killed during the actual war, which began on March 20 to topple Saddam Hussein.


Source Link (http://www1.chinadaily.com.cn/en/doc/2003-10/30/content_276938.htm)

Stop deluding yourself...... The Iraqi's are fighting against American forces.... And will continue to fight !
We move ever closer to repeating Vietnam...

[Spence]

The Man Who Knew

Feb. 4, 2003

(CBS) Just yesterday, Secretary of State Colin Powell made a surprising admission.

He told The Washington Post that he doesn't know whether he would have recommended the invasion of Iraq if he had been told at the time that there were no stockpiles of banned weapons.

Powell said that when he made the case for war before the United Nations one year ago, he used evidence that reflected the best judgments of the intelligence agencies.

But long before the war started, there was plenty of doubt among intelligence analysts about Saddam's weapons.

One analyst, Greg Thielmann, told Correspondent Scott Pelley last fall that key evidence cited by the administration was misrepresented to the public.

Thielmann should know. He had been in charge of analyzing the Iraqi weapons threat for Powell's own intelligence bureau.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
“I had a couple of initial reactions. Then I had a more mature reaction,” says Thielmann, commenting on Powell's presentation to the United Nations last February.

“I think my conclusion now is that it's probably one of the low points in his long, distinguished service to the nation."

Thielmann was a foreign service officer for 25 years. His last job at the State Department was acting director of the Office of Strategic Proliferation and Military Affairs, which was responsible for analyzing the Iraqi weapons threat.

He and his staff had the highest security clearances, and saw virtually everything – whether it came into the CIA or the Defense Department.

Thielmann was admired at the State Department. One high-ranking official called him honorable, knowledgeable, and very experienced. Thielmann had planned to retire just four months before Powell’s big moment before the U.N. Security Council.

On Feb. 5, 2003, Secretary Powell presented evidence against Saddam:
“The gravity of this moment is matched by the gravity of the threat that Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction pose to the world."

At the time, Thielmann says that Iraq didn't pose an imminent threat to the U.S.: “I think it didn't even constitute an imminent threat to its neighbors at the time we went to war.”

And Thielmann says that's what the intelligence really showed. For example, he points to the evidence behind Powell’s charge that Iraq was importing aluminum tubes to use in a program to build nuclear weapons.

Powell said: “Saddam Hussein is determined to get his hands on a nuclear bomb. He is so determined that he has made repeated covert attempts to acquire high-specification aluminum tubes from 11 different countries even after inspections resumed.”

“This is one of the most disturbing parts of Secretary Powell's speech for us,” says Thielmann.

Intelligence agents intercepted the tubes in 2001, and the CIA said they were parts for a centrifuge to enrich uranium -- fuel for an atom bomb. But Thielmann wasn’t so sure.

Experts at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the scientists who enriched uranium for American bombs, advised that the tubes were all wrong for a bomb program. At about the same time, Thielmann’s office was working on another explanation. It turned out the tubes' dimensions perfectly matched an Iraqi conventional rocket.

“The aluminum was exactly, I think, what the Iraqis wanted for artillery,” recalls Thielmann, who says he sent that word up to the Secretary of State months before.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
CONTINUED

[Spence]

Houston Wood was a consultant who worked on the Oak Ridge analysis of the tubes. He watched Powell’s speech, too.

“I guess I was angry, that’s the best way to describe my emotions. I was angry at that,” says Wood, who is among the world’s authorities on uranium enrichment by centrifuge. He found the tubes couldn’t be what the CIA thought they were. They were too heavy, three times too thick and certain to leak.

"Wasn't going to work. They would have failed," says Wood, who reached that conclusion back in 2001.

Thielmann reported to Secretary Powell’s office that they were confident the tubes were not for a nuclear program. Then, about a year later, when the administration was building a case for war, the tubes were resurrected on the front page of The New York Times.

“I thought when I read that there must be some other tubes that people were talking about. I just was flabbergasted that people were still pushing that those might be centrifuges,” says Wood.

The New York Times reported that senior administration officials insisted the tubes were for an atom-bomb program.

“Science was not pushing this forward. Scientists had made their determination, their evaluation, and now we didn’t know what was happening,” says Wood.

In his U.N. speech, Secretary Powell acknowledged there was disagreement about the tubes, but he said most experts agreed with the nuclear theory.

“There is controversy about what these tubes are for. Most U.S. experts think they are intended to serve as rotors in centrifuges used to enrich uranium,” said Powell.

“Most experts are located at Oak Ridge and that was not the position there,” says Wood, who claims he doesn’t know anyone in academia or foreign government who would disagree with his appraisal. “I don’t know a single one anywhere.”
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Why would the secretary take the information that Thielmann’s intelligence bureau had developed and turn it on its head?

“I can only assume that he was doing it to loyally support the President of the United States and build the strongest possible case for arguing that there was no alternative to the use of military force,” says Thielmann.

That was a case the president himself was making only eight days before Secretary Powell's speech. In his State of the Union address, the president said: “The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa. Our intelligence sources tell us that he has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear-weapons production.”

After the war, the White House said the African uranium claim was false and shouldn’t have been in the president's address. But at the time, it was part of a campaign that painted the intelligence as irrefutable.

“There is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us,” said Vice President Dick Cheney.

Powell said: “My colleagues, every statement I make today is backed up by sources, solid sources. These are not assertions. What we are giving you are facts and conclusions based on solid intelligence."

It was solid intelligence, Powell said, that proved Saddam had amassed chemical and biological weapons: “Our conservative estimate is that Iraq today has a stockpile of between 100 and 500 tons of chemical-weapons agent.”

He also said that part of the stockpile was clearly in these bunkers: “The four that are in red squares represent active chemical munitions bunkers. How do I know that, how can I say that? Let me give you a closer look.”

Up close, Powell said you could see a truck for cleaning up chemical spills, a signature for a chemical bunker: “It’s a decontamination vehicle in case something goes wrong.”

But Thielmann disagreed with Powell's statement: “My understanding is that these particular vehicles were simply fire trucks. You cannot really describe as being a unique signature.”
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Satellite photos were also notoriously misleading, according to Steve Allinson, a U.N. inspector in Iraq in the months leading up to war.

Was there ever a time when American satellite intelligence provided Allinson with something that was truly useful?

“No. No, not to me. Not on inspections that I participated in,” says Allinson, whose team was sent to find decontamination vehicles that turned out to be fire trucks.

Another time, a satellite spotted what they thought were trucks used for biological weapons.

“We were told we were going to the site to look for refrigerated trucks specifically linked to biological agents,” says Allinson. “We found 7 or 8 of them, I think, in total. And they had cobwebs in them. Some samples were taken and nothing was found.”

If Allinson doubted the satellite evidence, Thielmann watched with worry as Secretary Powell told the Security Council that human intelligence provided conclusive proof.

Thielmann says that many of the human sources were defectors who came forward with an ax to grind. But how reliable was the defector information they received?

“I guess I would say, frequently we got bad information,” says Thielmann.

Some of it came from defectors supplied by the Iraqi National Congress, the leading exile group headed by Ahmed Chalabi.

“You had the Iraqi National Congress with a clear motive for presenting the worst possible picture of what was happening in Iraq to the American government,” says Thielmann.

But there was a good deal more in Secretary Powell’s speech that bothered the analysts. Powell claimed Saddam still had a few dozen Scud missiles.

“I wondered what he was talking about,” says Thielmann. “We did not have evidence that the Iraqis had those missiles, pure and simple.”
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Last week, David Kay, the former chief U.S. arms inspector, said his team found no stockpiles of banned weapons. His assessment of 12 years of U.S. intelligence was this: "Let me begin by saying we were almost all wrong and I certainly include myself here. ... My view was that the best evidence that I had seen was that Iraq indeed had weapons of mass destruction."

Secretary Powell declined an interview for this broadcast. But as 60 Minutes II mentioned earlier, Powell told The Washington Post this week that he doesn't know if he would have recommended invasion if he'd know then that there were no stockpiles of weapons.

But Tuesday, he added this: "The bottom line is this. The president made the right decision. He made the right decision based on the history of this regime, the intention that this terrible leader, terrible despotic leader had the capabilities on a variety of levels. The delivery systems there were there, and nobody's debating that, the infrastructure that was there, the technical know-how that was there. The only thing we are debating are the stockpiles."

Thursday marks one year since Secretary Powell's U.N. speech. In that time, Thielmann has come to his own conclusion about the presentation. He believes the decision to go to war was made - and intelligence was interpreted to fit that conclusion.

"There's plenty of blame to go around. The main problem was that the senior administration officials have what I call faith-based intelligence. They knew what they wanted the intelligence to show," says Thielmann.

"They were really blind and deaf to any kind of countervailing information the intelligence community would produce. I would assign some blame to the intelligence community and most of the blame to the senior administration officials."

This week, President Bush said an independent commission will investigate the intelligence failures on Iraq. It is certainly possible that some rotten bastards deserve to get smoked for this colossal web of incompetence and deceit, but it sure as hell isn't the boys who are actually dying every day.

Old men lie. Young men die.

[lakewinola]

CIA Director confirms Bush misused intelligence to mislead the american people.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=514&e=1&u=/ap/20040205/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/intelligence_cia_19

[Spence]

Many experts are puzzled by Kay's exoneration of the Bush administration. "Kay is trying to have it both ways," says critic Joseph Cirincione of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "He's trying to honestly report what he found and still support the administration's case that it was right to go to war." Some have even questioned the motives of Kay, who in the last four years has given political contributions to both President Bush (news - web sites) and the Republican National Committee (news - web sites).


What has been lost in this recent round of finger-pointing is just how much dissent there was inside the intelligence community. Perhaps the most pivotal document was the National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq's weapons in October 2002. The report, produced in record time, was significantly more conclusive than previous assessments, asserting that Saddam possessed chemical and biological weapons and had probably resumed building nuclear weapons. But the shifts weren't based on new data. "The intelligence community, for the most part, talked about estimates and judgments, rather than solid evidence," says Greg Thielmann, who retired as acting director of the nonproliferation office in the State Department's Intelligence and Research Bureau as the NIE was being drafted. That office and the Energy Department, in fact, vigorously disputed the NIE's conclusion that Iraq had restarted its nuclear program. In all, there were some 40 different caveats and dissents included in the NIE, according to a study by the Carnegie Endowment.


Such nuances were rarely raised publicly by the Bush administration. As late as September, a Defense Intelligence Agency report noted that "there is no reliable information on whether Iraq is producing or stockpiling chemical weapons." Yet the previous month, Vice President Cheney left little room for uncertainty: "Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction." Insiders describe many forms of subtle pressure that the administration applied to analysts. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld even created a special Pentagon office to scrutinize raw data to find evidence to boost the case for war. "Flawed intelligence is just part of the question," says a top U.S. official. "In the midst of this intelligence failure, you had people spinning everything they could to make it even worse." Source (http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&cid=930&u=/usnews/20040203/wl_usnews/wewereallwrong&printer=1)

[Spence]

This comes from the editors of The New Republic, a magazine that was advocating invading and occupying Iraq in 1991, when George W Bush's job was to curse out the reporters his father didn't like. Even these true believers in the Iraq invasion are nailing Bush for his innumerable post-war policy failures. Read on.
Panic Room
by the Editors

Post date: 02.04.04
Issue date: 02.09.04
merica's room to maneuver in Iraq seems to be narrowing by the day. In the latest unraveling of expectations, the Bush team's plans for postwar Iraq have been hijacked by a cleric who hasn't left his house in six years. Emissaries of Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani made clear last week that Iraq's senior Shia cleric has no use for the phased transition to Iraqi self-rule envisioned by the Bush administration, preferring direct elections instead.

And, in Washington, which had planned for caucuses controlled by the Coalition Provisional Authority and the Iraqi Governing Council, the spectacle of thousands of angry Shia in the streets has concentrated the mind. President Bush last week summoned L. Paul Bremer back to the United States, administration officials who once dreamed of marginalizing the United Nations implored Kofi Annan to rescue them, and the Bush team let it be known that nearly every facet of its transition plan was open to negotiation.

Some of the White House's pragmatic instincts are correct. The priority in Iraq should be creating an electoral system--whatever form it takes--that enjoys legitimacy with most Iraqis while also protecting minority rights. Unfortunately, because it doesn't want Iraq's elections to interfere with America's elections, the White House refuses to renegotiate the one part of the transition plan--the June deadline for transferring sovereignty--that it must in order to provide Iraq with a democratic future.

For the U.S. enterprise in Iraq, Sistani's challenge may turn out to be the gravest. The cleric's words amount to law for many Shia, who comprise 60 percent of the country's population. He wishes to make Iraq an Islamic state--not a theocracy in the image of neighboring Iran, but not a liberal democracy, either. Some admiring American officials have divined "moderation" in his past and present proclamations. And it is true that Sistani has admonished his supporters to refrain from further demonstrations, at least for the time being. It is also true that his lieutenants claim that, if the United Nations declares elections unfeasible in the short term, he will abide by their verdict. But the fact is, the United States knows little about this reclusive cleric.

We do know, however, that he has a valid complaint. Sistani's demand for direct elections is at least partly rooted in the justifiable fear that Iraq's long-disenfranchised Shia will be disenfranchised yet again, this time at the hands of the United States. Indeed, administration officials concede that one of the purposes of their original transition plan was to preserve the influence of Washington's handpicked Iraqi politicians. So the White House may have to consider making concessions. After all, the argument over elections versus caucuses is not an argument over first principles. Washington shouldn't insist on a particular form of voting but rather that Iraqis gain a constitution that contains a bill of rights, the outlines of a federal governing structure, mechanisms to ensure Iraq's first election is not its last, and protections for minorities. Local referenda rather than caucuses, extended deadlines, the U.N.'s assessment on the feasibility of elections now--all these measures could bridge the gap between Sistani and Washington. Thwarting the principle of consent in the face of an aggrieved majority, however, carries great risks.

But considering direct elections does not mean holding elections by June. Bremer himself has said that it would be impossible to organize elections by then, and other administration officials have admitted that even holding caucuses may be unfeasible. Still, the White House is unwilling to budge from its June fetish. Some administration officials have long believed, against all evidence, that Iraq could quickly govern itself, and the administration's hopelessly rosy prewar planning stemmed partly from this fiction. Thus the insufficient numbers of troops left behind in Iraq, America's inability to quash violence in the Sunni triangle, and, consequently, the diminishment of U.S. authority. All these things have cleared the way for the challenge from the ayatollah.

Now, the imperatives of 2004 dovetail with the Bush team's long-held beliefs: The United States must transfer sovereignty to Iraqis well before November's presidential elections. As for Sistani, he has said that, if the United Nations decides elections cannot be held as early as June, he would wait. We should, too. Ignoring the will of a restive majority could lead to the kind of civil strife that would make last week's Baghdad demonstrations look like a peace march. Source (http://www.tnr.com/docprint.mhtml?i=20040209&s=editorial020904)

[dukeuch]

It is simply amazing to me that those who support Bush's Iraqi disaster continue to ignore the plain and simple fact that we were mislead, or the administration was completely ignorant, about EVERY concern which those who opposed the invasion brought up. Now they are trying desperately to imply that the intelligence they were provided was the problem.

Man, all I knew was what I read in the paper, and I, and many like me, knew that the following were out and out lies, or highly suspicious:

1) That Iraq had an active nuclear program which had, or was close to having nuclear cababilities.

2) That Iraq had stockpiles of biological and chemical weapons, and laborotories producing the same.

3) That the war would be relativley short (they were right there) and because the Iraqis would welcome us with open arms, subsequent occupation and transferral of power would not take very long.

4) That the cost of the war and rebuilding would be relatively small, certianly not even approaching $100 billion.

Concerning all of the above, they were horrendously wrong. Why was it so hard for them to know what so many of us believed and predicted correctly?

[Spence]

Dukeuch, I think one of the problems is consistent misinformation. Most of the public still belives things even the White House has admitted are false. The White House has admitted Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks and that Iraq had no WMD when Mr Bush ordered his invasion. Yet a poll recently revealed that most people believed those things to be true. For two years they had heard a constant drumbeat from the White House and its many allies in the media [not to mention the so-called liberal media, which obediently repeated things it knew or should have known to be false] that Saddam was complicit in 9/11, that Saddam was working with Al Qaeda, and that Saddam was armed to the teeth. If a lie is repeated often enough by enough people, many will come to believe it. Clearly, that's what the Bush admin has been banking on all along.

What's more, the more a person watches a conservative news channel, like Fox News, or listens to political talk radio, the more likely that person is to believe false things about Iraq and 9/11.

An ignorant population is a conservative politician's best friend.

[Spence]

Earlier, when I wrote that when U.S. troops leave the Iraqis will get back to doing what they want to do, which is slaughter each other until someone achieves mastery of the country. YUDOLINDO mocked this concern and asked me how I could know such a thing.

The obvious answer is that I follow what is going on Iraq. Here is another example of what I meant:Iraq's top cleric survives assassination attempt
Thu 5 February, 2004 20:19

By Khaled Farhan

NAJAF, Iraq (Reuters) - Iraq's most powerful Shi'ite cleric, Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, has survived an assassination bid when gunmen opened fire on his entourage in the sacred streets of Najaf, a security aide says.

The assassination attempt comes days before a team of United Nations electoral experts is due to arrive in the country to assess the feasibility of holding early elections along the lines that Sistani has demanded.

Sistani, revered by Iraq's Shi'ite community, which makes up about 60 percent of the country's 25 million population, is rarely seen in public and seldom leaves Najaf, Shi'ism holiest city, about 160 km (100 miles) south of Baghdad.

"At 10 o'clock (7 a.m. British time) this morning, gunmen opened fire on Ayatollah Sistani as he greeted people in Najaf, but he was not hurt," the official told Reuters on Thursday on condition of anonymity.

Residents said Sistani was travelling by car from his office to his home and stopped to greet passersby when his entourage was fired upon by at least four gunmen. It was not immediately clear whether any of Sistani's security team were injured.

An attempt on the 73-year-old cleric's life is likely to incite fury among Iraq's long-oppressed Shi'ite community as it seeks greater influence in post-Saddam Hussein Iraq.

Muwaffaq al-Rubaie, a leading Shi'ite member of the U.S.-backed Iraqi Governing Council, who met with Sistani on Thursday, said the cleric was well following the attack.

"For sure (Sistani) is safe and in good health," al-Rubaie told reporters in Najaf.

The incident comes amid mounting sectarian and ethnic tension in Iraq. Suicide bomb attacks against Kurdish targets in the northern city of Arbil last Sunday killed more than 100 people, including several top Kurdish leaders.

POWERFUL IRAQI

In recent months, Sistani has spoken out against U.S. proposals for transferring power to an Iraqi government by July 1, saying he wants direct elections to be held rather than the U.S. plan for a system of indirect regional caucuses.

Sistani's pronouncements carry enormous weight in Iraq and his opposition to the U.S. power transfer plans has thrown into question whether sovereignty will be returned by the deadline.

Sistani seldom makes political statements and is regarded as a low-profile but influential religious leader. Given his huge following, his increasingly politicised role has turned him into possibly the most powerful man in postwar Iraq.

Sistani's words recently sent thousands of Shi'ites into the streets to protest against the U.S. power transfer plans.

The cleric has received U.N. envoys in the past and kept open a dialogue with the international body, but he has refused to meet U.S. officials, including the U.S.-appointed governor in Iraq, Paul Bremer, for fear of appearing too close to the U.S.-led occupation.

The attempt on Sistani's life comes six months after the killing of another leading moderate Shi'ite cleric, Mohammed Baqir al-Hakim, in front of the Imam Ali mosque in Najaf. More than 80 other people also died in that car bomb attack.

Sistani's meeting with al-Rubaie, who was exiled in Britain during Saddam's rule, is part of the cleric's behind-the-scenes negotiations with Iraq's interim political leaders in the run-up to the return of sovereignty to Iraqis. Source (http://www.reuters.co.uk/newsPackageArticle.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID=453046&section=news)

[NamVet4]

Originally posted by Spence
Dukeuch, I think one of the problems is consistent misinformation. Most of the public still belives things even the White House has admitted are false. The White House has admitted Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks and that Iraq had no WMD when Mr Bush ordered his invasion. Yet a poll recently revealed that most people believed those things to be true. For two years they had heard a constant drumbeat from the White House and its many allies in the media [not to mention the so-called liberal media, which obediently repeated things it knew or should have known to be false] that Saddam was complicit in 9/11, that Saddam was working with Al Qaeda, and that Saddam was armed to the teeth. If a lie is repeated often enough by enough people, many will come to believe it. Clearly, that's what the Bush admin has been banking on all along.

What's more, the more a person watches a conservative news channel, like Fox News, or listens to political talk radio, the more likely that person is to believe false things about Iraq and 9/11.

An ignorant population is a conservative politician's best friend.



"If a lie is repeated often enough all the dumb jackasses in the world not only get to believe it, they even swear by it. "

"Politics is a profession where the paths of glory lead but to the gravy."

Billy Bob Franklin

[Yudolindo]

Only a few things:

The oil article you mentioned essentially said what I did, so I don’t know why it’s a slam-dunk. They made an assumption about Iraq’s oil infrastructure. They were off the mark, for now at least.

The problem with the intelligence, foreign relations and military apparatuses in our government is that they are fairly partisan: the CIA and state department being traditionally democratic bastions, while the Pentagon tends to be republican. Whomever the president may be, there is a habit of ignoring a department because of its ideology. I was very unhappy when Bush scraped the state departments research/development programs regarding post invasion Iraq; there were many reputable and in the know scholars involved. Many of the problems of post invasion Iraq were foreseen in these programs, including the guerilla resistance issue. I am not sure why the Bush administration chose to ignore these reports: call, it optimism, or stupidity. To late.

While the state department fairly well run, the CIA, however, is, without question an extremely flawed institution. Its human intelligence capabilities were gutted in the seventies and never recovered. The CIA has plenty of “gee whizitry,” super computers and telecommunications intercept capabilities; great for finding out what Gerhard Schroder had to say to his wife, but useless against guys in caves with bombs and AK-47s. Moreover, they lack common sense and are above using street maps. Both the CIA and NSA are in a state of crisis, both by their screw up regarding Iraq and 9-11. They licking the wounds left from allowing a terrorist hiding in a cave in Afghanistan to plan and execute a simultaneous strike on northern Virginia and downtown Manhattan. The CIA has major, major problems, and the NSA is not far behind. I blame Bush (somewhat) for not fixing them, listening to them and at the same time ignoring them; but then I don’t blame him for ignoring them. Confused? Try getting some good intelligence.

Yesterday, CIA director George Tenet staunchly defended his agencies intelligence, including reports about Iraq’s alleged nuclear and chemical weapons programs. He said that no one goaded his analysts into beefing up reports. So, perhaps some of this ire should be leveled not at Bush, but at the CIA. I guess that would be less fun, but it makes quite a bit of sense.

Many of these forces are not necessarily all Iraqi: for example, many are Syrian and Saudi Al – Quida. The irony here is that if there were no Al – Quida in Iraq with Saddam, there sure as hell are now. Because of this, unfortunately, bowing out of Iraq is simply not an option: Iraq is the most important nation-building project since World War II. I am not deluding my self, and frankly, I am offended by that assertion. I have family being shot at and shelled every day, so this conflict is very real to me, as are its consequences. Moreover, to compare this conflict to Vietnam…I am not even going to start, but I will say that the similarities are superficial. Look at the numbers. Look at the situation. Look at the military. Look at the country. Different worlds.

By posting one article about an assassination attempt and a somewhat rancorous Shiite cleric does next to nothing to prove a blanket statement about an entire people. If one thinks that 25 years of violence ends over night…well it doesn’t. Moreover, to suggest that all Iraqis are interested in doing is killing each other is ignorant and absurd. What is not mentioned is that Shiite clerics are on the governing counsel, with Sunnis, working together. Those outside the loop want in, make noise and get in the press. This is going to be a long and hard process, but hey, if all them Iraqi’s want to do is kill each other, why should we try? Why even bother suggesting a democracy?

Americans associate Saddam with Al – Quida, which is really not the case. I don’t know if it is out of ignorance, or out of sheer desire to believe. The truth is pretty clear in this instance, and it was before the war as well. I don't see how Bush can claim this one...

[NamVet4]

Many of these forces are not necessarily all Iraqi: for example, many are Syrian and Saudi Al – Quida. The irony here is that if there were no Al – Quida in Iraq with Saddam, there sure as hell are now. Because of this, unfortunately, bowing out of Iraq is simply not an option: Iraq is the most important nation-building project since World War II. I am not deluding my self, and frankly, I am offended by that assertion. I have family being shot at and shelled every day, so this conflict is very real to me, as are its consequences. Moreover, to compare this conflict to Vietnam…I am not even going to start, but I will say that the similarities are superficial. Look at the numbers. Look at the situation. Look at the military. Look at the country. Different worlds.

Yudolindo,
I did not intend to offend you. I am sorry that you have family and friends in a war zone. But I still assert that the policy of the current administration is following the same path as that which created the mess known as the Vietnam War....
As far as superficial similarities - think about this! Cam Rhan Bay is the largest and deepest ocean port in all of the Pacific Rim; it is a vital economic and military asset. Why, because it can ship millions of tons of goods, i.e. oil, per year! And now our government wages war for another oil based asset. And the other similarity; we are now engaged amidst another civil war!
And lets cut to the chase... Iraqi's are a hell of lot better off without Saddam Hussein - no doubt. That accomplished, it is now urgent that the government seek an immediate and effective withdrawal of all American forces in the region
We do not need nor do not require the American Military presence for a protracted period of time!

[dukeuch]

Yudo:

You are making my head spin off my neck! The CIA is a Democrat leaning institution? As far as the State Department, they are made up of career diplomats, who basically seek diplomatic solutions when dealing with foriegn states, which is admittedly a decidely un-Republican strategy.

Let me start that Bush has already won the battle concerning "what went wrong with our intelligence" by focusing on the intelligence itself. He has succeeded, for the time being, in diverting attention away from how he and his senior staff interpreted the info, which even as presented in newspapers back in the spring was filled with caveats, unknowns , etc. I beleive the intellignece was probaly pretty straight forward, identifying things in terms of what we definately knew (i.e. that Saddam definately had WMD at some time) what we thought might be possible (he MAY still have some around) and what we do not know (if he disposed of all the WMD). It was clear to a neophyte like me, just reading the paper, that w did not have any compelling evidence that he still had any. WHy was it not clear to Bush?

Tenet is right to defend the CIA. Tenet was virtually ignored by Bush in the months leading up to 9/11. The CIA had identified terrorism, and Bin-Laden as major concerns. A month before 9/11 Tenet delivered to Bush a report discussing Bin-Laden's obsession with attacking the US, and the possiblity that hijacked airplanes might be used. This is one of the memos Bush refuses to make public, for obvious reasons. So much for the CIA "allwoing" a terrorist to strike form a cave, it was the administration because the CIA DID warn them.

The NSA? Likewise, they tried their best to download all they knew of terrorism, specifically Bin-Laden, on the new administration. The outgoing staff offered meetings with the new senior administrators as soon as Bush took office. Terrorism and Bin Laden were central issues discussed. Richard Clarke was asked to stay on. This was all months before 9/11.

After the Hart-Rudman Commsion issued it's final report in May '01, which included the recommendaiton of the formulaiton of a National Homeland Security Agency, the Bush administraiton thought, well, maybe we will study that some more, which they then never did until after 9/11.

So, who dropped the ball? Who's head was in the sand regarding 9/11? Who do you suppose screwed up the WMD question, those who warned of the gathering trheat Bin Laden posed, or those who ignored it?