The just released NIE report stated several things, including the consensus opinion within the intelligence community before the war that : A) Saddam Hussein represented no threat to the U.S, or it's allies. B) Saddam Hussein was extrememly unlikely to give WMD to terrorists, or anyone else, even if he had them. C) The only way to make Saddam Hussein a threat to the US or it's allies would be to attack him. THE C.I.A. analyst on CNN right now just stated that the White House had all this information well before the war, and " Chose to interpret things differently." So not only did we likely know that much of the evidence for WMDs was suspect, it would now seem that we knew he represented no threat either way. For an intel report to, as I understand it, claim virtually universal opinion is extremely strong...this is not a matter where 1/2 said A, 1/2 said B, and Bush et al chose B, and just failed to tell us that A was also possible...this was deliberate ignorance of the opinions of those qualified and paid to have them. I am not sure about this...have seen nothing said about it...but wasn't there a report that when the White House didn't get the intel it wanted pre-war, it set up it's own intel branch? Does anyone have anything on this? Also anyone who can find a link for the NIE release would be appreciated. Also the head of the Un today said a few interesting things: He called for a definite end date for US occupation of Iraq, said that, and I quote " Democracy cannot be imposed." ( Trying really hard to not say anything here..MB) and that if it's going to happen, it has to be done by and for Iraqis...alone. No US saying what version of democracy is acceptable, no priorization of 'US friendly' government...true political 'Freedom', in other words... Interesting developments.
Maybe this was the 'darn good Intel' Bush was talking about. An interesting fact I heard yesterday that I hadn't heard before. Apparently U.S. military planning included plans to secure the Oil fields, and the oil ministry, but didn't include any plans to secure the WMD. If they were such a worry and Rumsfeld 'knew' where they were, wouldn't the military have some plans to secure them?
Provide a link to the report. I'm not taking your synopsis of it at face value after your showing in the GOP Talking Points thread.
you may be right here, but my understanding was that they definitely did plan for and go after places that were suspected of housing WMD, but there intel was so crappy that there was nothing at the places when they got there.
Oct. Report Said Defeated Hussein Would Be Threat By Walter Pincus Washington Post Staff Writer Monday, July 21, 2003; Page A01 Last fall, the administration repeatedly warned in public of the danger that an unprovoked Iraqi President Saddam Hussein might give chemical or biological weapons to terrorists. "Iraq could decide on any given day to provide a biological or chemical weapon to a terrorist group or individual terrorists," President Bush said in Cincinnati on Oct. 7. "Alliance with terrorists could allow the Iraqi regime to attack America without leaving any fingerprints." But declassified portions of a still-secret National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) released Friday by the White House show that at the time of the president's speech the U.S. intelligence community judged that possibility to be unlikely. In fact, the NIE, which began circulating Oct. 2, shows the intelligence services were much more worried that Hussein might give weapons to al Qaeda terrorists if he were facing death or capture and his government was collapsing after a military attack by the United States. "Saddam, if sufficiently desperate, might decide that only an organization such as al Qaeda, . . . already engaged in a life-or-death struggle against the United States, could perpetrate the type of terrorist attack that he would hope to conduct," one key judgment of the estimate said. It went on to say that Hussein might decide to take the "extreme step" of assisting al Qaeda in a terrorist attack against the United States if it "would be his last chance to exact vengeance by taking a large number of victims with him." The declassified sections of the NIE were offered by the White House to rebut allegations that the administration had twisted prewar intelligence on Iraq's nuclear weapons program. The result, however, could be to raise more questions about whether the administration misrepresented the judgments of the intelligence services on another basis for going to war: the threat posed by Hussein as a source of weapons for terrorists. The NIE's findings also raise concerns about the dangers posed by Hussein, who is believed to be in hiding, and the failure to find any of his alleged stocks of chemical and biological weapons. If such stocks exist, a hotly debated proposition, this is precisely the kind of dangerous situation the CIA and other intelligence services warned about last fall, administration officials said. A senior administration official said yesterday that the U.S. intelligence community does not know either "the extent to which Saddam Hussein has access or control" over the groups that are attacking U.S. forces, or the location of any possible hidden chemical or biological agents or weapons. Asked whether the former Iraqi leader would today use any chemical or biological weapons if he controlled them, the senior official said, "We would not put that past him to do whatever makes our lives miserable." The official said the judgment of last fall's intelligence estimate -- that a desperate Hussein, in hiding and with U.S. troops searching for him in Iraq, could turn to al Qaeda -- "had not been supplanted." L. Paul Bremer, the U.S. civil administrator in Iraq, said yesterday on NBC's "Meet the Press" he believes Hussein is alive. " I think he is in Iraq, and the sooner we can either kill him or capture him, the better." On "Fox News Sunday," Bremer also said Hussein appeared to have pre-positioned weapons and made plans to carry out an insurgency should his forces, as expected, lose a war with the United States. "There has been some evidence of planning for the possibility of losing the war militarily and going into some kind of insurgency or organized resistance," Bremer said, without explaining what the evidence is. Bremer said he does not believe Hussein could make a comeback: "Dead or alive, this guy is finished in Iraq. There is no public support for him." Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) said in an interview that despite what Bush has said, the war is not over until Hussein is captured or killed. "He could come back like Napoleon if we don't watch out," said Markey, who added that the former Iraqi leader remains a threat because he, if anybody, knows where any chemical or biological weapons might be. Last fall, as Congress began debating a resolution giving Bush authority to go to war against Iraq, CIA Director George J. Tenet ordered six intelligence services to develop over a 10-day period a common assessment of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs and the threat they posed. A few days after the NIE began circulating, at the request of members of Congress who wanted material they could use in public debate, the administration released a 25-page unclassified summary of the 90-page classified report. Two days later, in response to pressure from Sen. Bob Graham (D-Fla.), then chairman of the Senate intelligence committee, Tenet released three pages of additional information from the NIE and a classified hearing that for the first time suggested that Hussein might only use chemical or biological weapons when under threat of attack. Friday's declassified material from the NIE gave a much more complete picture of the intelligence in the form of all the key judgments of the intelligence community. One of the judgments was that Hussein "appears to be drawing a line short of conducting terrorist attacks with conventional or [chemical or biological weapons] against the United States fearing that exposure of Iraqi involvement would provide Washington a stronger case for making war." Another judgment was that Iraq would "probably" attempt a clandestine attack against the United States, as mentioned by Bush -- not on "any given day" as the president said Oct. 7, but only "if Baghdad feared an attack that threatened the survival of the regime were imminent or unavoidable." Today the situation is changed. Hussein is alive but in hiding, and his alleged stocks of chemical or biological weapons or agents have not been found. Meanwhile, the president and other leaders have yet to mention publicly the intelligence assessment that Hussein may be a potentially bigger threat now than before the United States attacked. In fact, Bush, in his May 1 speech from the deck of the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, appeared to take just the opposite position. "We have removed an ally of al Qaeda," Bush said. "No terrorist network will gain weapons of mass destruction from the Iraqi regime."
I really hope this isn't true. First, I was ambivalent about the war because I didn't believe that Bush would lie (or be deceptive) about something so important. And if Iraq really did have an advanced nuclear program and tons of ties to al Qaida, well... wasn't Bush in a far better position than me to know? Secondly, I believed it must have just been mistaken intelligence - surely, he wouldn't have gone in there for false reasons when the stakes were so high. Now? Was this really just a quest to avenge daddy? A war to gain support? A war for his oil buddies? I don't know if any or all of those factored into the decision, or how much if they did... but it's all very depressing. Don't get me wrong, I've never believed politicians were angels. I just never believed that any US President would enter a war with such false pretenses and (potentially) direct lies.
rimrocker, you may want to post a link. Until then, T_J will probably just believe that you wrote that yourself.
It was actually posted yesterday by RMTex. http://bbs.clutchcity.net/php3/showthread.php?s=&threadid=61739
We do know this: The White House was told the following from the intel community: * Iraq probably doesn't have nukes. * The evidence for the nukes is supect. * The evidence for the WMDs in general is not solid. * There is no known connection between 9-11 and Saddam. * Iraq does not represent a viable threat to the US, either militarily or by virtue of providing terrorists with WMDs or support for attacks on the US. The White House told us, the Un, and the world the following: * Iraq has reconsituted nukes. * The evidence we have about the nukes is not questioned, it is imformation we have learned. * The evidence for the WMDs is solid. * There is a known connection between 9-11, Al Queada and Saddam, we just can't reveal it. * Saddam represents a serious threat to the US, and could attack us " at any moment" via terrorists. Not to mention all the other stuff they;ve been caught doing, in terms of misleading us, using selective at best intel gathering, etc. This, to me, is pretty conclusive. If this report is indeed accurate, and I have a hard time coming up with a scenario explaining how it couldn't be...if this was what the White House was being told, then point blank they are guilty of gross misuse of power, manipulation, and leading us to war because they wanted to, not because we wanted to go.
I have to admit what is glaringly obvious: I despise George Bush and his administration. For that reason, I want to be fair with them. But I can't. I read a lot, and I read between the lines, and I ask about what isn't said and what is implied. The list of examples would be too long, but it all comes back to, for me, such documents as "Rebuilding America's Defenses," written in the 90s by neo-cons eager to get their policies implemented. Iraq, Syria, Iran, North Korea, outer space: in that order, the countries we must apparently conquer. Written 10 years ago. This is all just part of a map this administration is following. Add to that the so-called religious fundamentalists and oil-company people in the administration, and the beloved corporate welfare, and I find no redeeming value. Yes, there are bad people in the world, but Incurious George is one of them.
Then explain the sanctions from the UN. Explain the troops we have stationed in Saudi Arabia to protect them. Explain the international coalition built in 1991 to stop Saddam's invasion of Kuwait. Perhaps there was no imminent WMD threat. But to state that there was no threat at all is ridiculous.
I don't think they said Iraq has never in it's history been a threat to anyone anywhere, nor were they saying that if we remove all the UN inspections and let him do what he wants then he'll never be a threat. They were saying that, as things were, he was no threat to us at all. Contrary to what we were repeatedly told. Sorry, Mr. C., but this is pretty big. Even if you want to disagree with their conclusions, or instead you want to try and disagree with the wording in the title of this thread, are you going to say that you don't see the huge implications of this information in terms of what the White House was being told vs. what they were telling us they were being told?
So what are they saying then? If the UN felt that there was enough reason to bring back inspectors, if Bill Clinton authorized missile strikes in 1998, if the UN authorized Gulf War I, then how can you say "he was no threat to us at all." That sounds like an exaggeration. Or is this report just saying that they were not an imminent threat? If Iraq was not a threat in some way, they would be treated more like African nations, we would not bother them. The main implications I see come from the fact that the WMD threat is not imminent. I don't think the report states that Saddam is no threat.
1) No, he was not charecterized as someone who had never been a threat, or as someone who would never be a threat if left alone. He was percieved to not represent a threat as is, with the UN inspections in place...in other words, the Un inspections were working. 2) The report says he was not a threat in terms of WMD, terrorism, or a combination thereof. "One of the judgments was that Hussein "appears to be drawing a line short of conducting terrorist attacks with conventional or [chemical or biological weapons] against the United States fearing that exposure of Iraqi involvement would provide Washington a stronger case for making war." What other threat could he be? Are you suggesting that there was a remotely immediate threat of a conventional Iraqi operation? I will listen to any information you have on this, but having heard nothing about it, and given the incredible restrictions and observation Iraq's military was subject to, I have to tell you I'm skeptical. So if he wasn't a threat to use WMDs....or to provide terrorists with WMDs...or to provide terrorists with any weapons to be used against us...or to launch a conventional military operation...what kind of threat was he, exactly, let alone one that demanded invasion? 3) And you are still, I think, avoiding the implications of the difference between what they were told and what they told us they were told.
Don't get me wrong, I've never believed politicians were angels. I just never believed that any US President would enter a war with such false pretenses and (potentially) direct lies Haven, I admit it can be shocking to learn these truths. Those of us arund during the Vietnam War learned this. You seem to hqave studied some history. What about Vietnam, Chile?, Guatemala, the Contras? Or did you think that this was all leftist bs?
To be fair, and to beat a less sympathetic poster to the punch, I believe the administration really said that Iraq was pursuing means to restart a nuke-u-ler (sic) program. But I don't remember them saying (consistently) that Saddam actually "had" reconstituted nukes.
