Tennent Backs his Officers, Never claimed Iraq was imminent threat.

Not a good day for Mr. Hannah. First implicated with the outing of CIA Valerie Plame and now this.

 

Maybe they should kick his ass out of the Hall of Fame....

 

actually, you've got it precisely backwards. the arguement for going sooner rather than later was if we waited for the threat to fully emerge, become imminent if you will, it would be too late. the Dubyainator made precisely this point in SOTU 2003.

 

So you and other people in favor of the war honestly thought there wasn't much of a real threat from Saddam at the time of the war but were in favor of sending the troops in?

I know you can't speak for anyone else so whatever your honest thoughts about what you believed pre-invasion.

Do you think that other supporters of the war all supported it believing that wasn't any real danger at that moment?

 

Now I'm paranoid. He's looking like a good fall guy!

 

Good thread.


However, it should be retitled. "TENENT BACKS BUSH"

Can't Bush fire Tenet?

 

not exactly. saying that we can't wait until the threat becomes imminent isn't the same as saying Saddam posed no threat to us. Like many others, including the members of the administration, I always thought of the case for war with Iraq as a three legged stool. One leg was the WMD. Another was his ties to terrorists groups, and the third was the human rights issue. Although the latter should have been enough for the UN to act, absent some other provocation it doesn't represent a compelling enough case for the US to act alone. The other two issues, and how they intersect in a post 9/11 world are the real case. That, and Saddam's demonstrated hostility to the US.

even prior to 9/11, the situation in Iraq had become untenable. sanctions were hurting the iraqi people more than Saddam, the "oil for palaces" program merely led to Saddam's personal enrichment, and the cost of men and materiel to maintain the no-fly zones could not be sustained indefinitely. something had to change, and ending sanctions and going home, leaving Saddam in power to contiune his pursuit of WMD and the oppression of his people was not really an option.

9/11 forced, and clarified, the issue. In a post 9/11 world leaving a murderous tyrant with ties to international terrorists and an avowed interest in WMD in place was simply untenable. The threat was clear, even if it wasn't imminent in the sense that the Iraqis would mount a large scale attack themselves. They could however, provide training (Salman Pak), expertise, money, and yes, potentially WMD to terrorist organizations who would.

The decision to invade was based on this threat assessment, and we are now safer for it. Does anyone believe Libya would have come clean about it's nuclear program had we not invaded Iraq? Does anyone believe Iran would have submitted to intrusive inspections were there not a large American army parked on it's doorstep? Do you honestly think the recent revelations by Dr. Khan in Pakistan would have occurred if Saddam were still in power? John Kerry has said he views the war on terror primarily as a police matter. I wonder, who does Syria want to win the US election? Hezbollah? al Queda? These are the most pertinent questions in the election- I'm waiting for John Kerry to give a speech where he sounds angrier about 9/11 than he does about the tax cuts. Kerry seems to believe that the real threat isn't islamic theo-terrorism, but what we do about it. That's a guy I don't trust to protect me and my family. really, what other issue is there?

 

Ok I know that this has been gone over before but if it was truly a three legged stool why was only leg(the WMD leg) given as a way to prevent the war? One way and only one way was given as a way for Saddam to prevent the war, and that was WMD.

Also in the question I didn't ask if you believed that there was no threat. I said a threat at the time of the invasion. If there was a threat at the time of the invasion then that would certainly count as imminent.

Again if ties to international terrorism and human rights were an issue then why didn't we invade Liberia? There is more record of a connection between Al Qaeda and Charles Taylor and there was between Al Qaeda and Saddam. I forget how many hundreds of thousands Charles Taylor had killed or raped. He also had his own 13 year old daughter publically flogged. Then of course we have N. Kore, which is the most Authoritarian regime out there has weapons deals with several terrorist sponsoring governments etc. Let's not forget that Democracy is still struggling and in jeopardy in Afghanistan where Al Qaeda's leaders still roam free. If these other things were reasons for going after Saddam why no prioritize and go after the more importan and more threatening first? Why divert our troops and supplies?

I don't know who those groups would want to win. If they want to continue to recruit supporters and win the hearts of people they probably wish Bush would win the election. If they have any intrest in someone who will deal more rationally and justly with the rest of the world I would say they would hope Kerry to win. I think they probably don't care who wins and will hate the U.S. either way.

 

So I see that no one is raing their hand. Surprising.

Ok...how's about this for a question. What do you call a threat in the period just prior to it being too late to stop it from realizing?

Come on boys and girls, we can do this together...IMMINENT.


This argument and the defense of the WH blocking the 9-11 inquiries are, to me, the lowest points for the Bush supporters, not so much in how I disagree with them, which is mostly a constant, but in the degree they reveal how little they are trying to be realistic, honest, and in pursuit of what's right, but instead are intent on denying, avoiding, or trying to marginalize any truths which portray their previously held positions as in the wrong.

 

You are such a Rush-bobble head

I don't have the link here at home, but I will post it tomorrow at work where this is almost word for word from Rush the other day.

Pure scare tatics

basso(Rush) just used "9/11 changed everything" excuse to validate Iraq and try to scare Americans into thinking a Democratic president wouldn't do what was necessary to combat terrorism. They use Clinton as a example of how Kerry would be. They try to paint Clinton as being weak on terrorism and so Kerry would also be weak. They fail to recongize that Clinton did more and spent more money than all the other presidents that came before him combined to fight terrorism. They fail to mention that the Republican control Congress stiffly dragged their feet and whined about every thing Clinton DID try to do. Too much money...its only a distraction from Monica....wah wah wah

You say 9/11 changed the political environment and paved the way for an pre-emptive invasion of Iraq, but you fail to see the flip side of your own argument. CLINTON WAS ONLY PRESIDENT PRE-9/11. If things are different now and we play by a new set of rules, why are you holding it against a past President?

 

Hey basso, why don't you just say, I wonder who Willie Horton wants to win the election?

You're almost worse than Jorge in a way, you claim innocence and use intellectually dishonest tactics like this and yet pretend to be serious and open minded.

But anyway, who do islamic extremists want to win the election? Naturally President Bush. He's much better for recruiting, without him they wouldn't have images like this:



Plus, since global opinion of the US has gone down immeasurably since we started invading stuff, it gives them more places to hide as our allies are not as willing to help out. Win win for them.

BTW, you should read up on Syria before you spout stuff like this. There was an extensive piece in the New Yorker a while back about overtures made from Assad to the US about trading info about terrorist networks, which were flatly rejected by Rumsfeldowitzperle out of hand.

Back to the thread topic at issue, you know, what's great abou this fingerpointing is that it totally ignores the fact that the CIA was criticized heavily by Cheney, Wolfowitz Perle Feith et al for not assuming Iraq was more dangerous than it was and for not producing intel that was damning enough prior to the war, which is why they formed their own little mini intel operation that cherry picked the most juicy tidbits (regardless of veracity, see Niger uranium) and fed it upstairs. See here

Yet now they're blaming the CIA for being too eager to please?

Man, you can't make sh-t like this up.

 

not only have i never listened to rush, i made no mention of clinton in my post, so what's your point again?

 

I think this is one of the most fair assesments of the situation.

Maybe B-Bob and I can learn to be on the same planet.

 

The way I understood it is the way Max posited it, that we were acting sooner rather than later. No one wants to be the next Neville Chamberlin.

 

MacBeth --

I understood that Iraq HAD WMD's. That those may or may not be in the hands of terrorists yet, but that they already had developed them...and that they were sitting there ready to be used. That was my understanding.

Frankly, I think that was everyone's understanding. To be fair, even those who argued against the war didn't really claim that Saddam didn't or even probably didn't have WMD's. Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't remember that as an argument. The question, as I remember it, was whether or not we should act now or give the inspectors more time to find and dismantle those weapons.

 

The admin concentrated on WMD as a means to bring the UN on board. I think this is also the arguement that carried the most weight at state, which is institutionally more cautious than DOD.

Unless I'm wrong, Liberia has no WMD. it's the combination of WMD and terrorist ties which made Iraq a special case. I'm an advocate of aggressive actions to confron N. Korea. However, the fact that N. Korea probably already has a nuclear weapon, as well as the missle technology to hit the west coast of the US, not to mention there 37,000 US troops sitting in range of N.Korean guns and missles, makes confronting them much more difficult. To it's credit, the admin has realized this and, rather than rely on wishful thinking like the agreement Carter negotiated (that allowed the Koreans to buy technology from pakistan), Bush has inisited that others in the region, Russia, Japan, S.Korea, and particularly China all work together to reign in Kim Jong Il. it's worth pointing out that one of the main reasons for fighting Iraq now was to keep it from becoming another N. Korea. Imagine Saddam with a nuclear weapon, the means to deliver it, sitting on all those oil reserves. can you say "nuclear blackmail?" how about "global economic meltdown?"

Kerry is on record saying he prefers to work within the UN, and that the terrorist problem is fundamentally a law enforcement matter. Are you comfortable leaving questions of national security in the hands of Jaques Chirac and Inspector Clouseau?

 

I was against the war and I assumed the Iraq did have what are now called, vaguely and misleadingly, Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs). This term sloppily equates weapons such as mustard gas, anthrax, and other chemical and biological weapons, with nuclear weapons. They are not the same, do not even come close to having equal destructive capability, and it confuses the issue and leads to bad policy to lump them all together. Before the war, I thought, it was reasonble to assume that Iraq had some form of chemical or biological weapons, but that they posed little or no threat to the U.S. And that Iraq wasn't even close to developing nuclear weapons.

It seemed to me both immoral and stupid to go to war on these grounds. The war would inevitably kill lots of innocent Iraqis, lose a lot of U.S. soldiers, alienate our allies, serve as a recruiting tool for terrorists, divert our attention from more real threats and generally hurt rather than improve our national security.

In my mind any country (or group) should set a very high bar for going to war because the unavoidable harm is so grave. That's not to say it is never justified. If your country (or group) is suffering, or about to suffer, serious harm from attack by another country (or group), then war is justified.

 

9/11 did change everything but pre-9/11 we still had the WTC bombings in 1993 and the attack on the Cole. It wasn't just a stroll in the part pre-9/11.

I never for a minute thought that Saddam could/would launch missiles at us. However, it was easy to conceive that he could hand off any of a number of WMDs that he "probably" had (granted not in STOCKPILES) to some terrorist drinking coffee in a cafe. A month later it would rain down over Washington, D.C.

I still think this PR disaster is a function of two things: 1) The tendency to sensationalize things in the news. What is more sensational than WMDs especially if nuclear WMDs are implied, and 2) politicking by the Democrats who meneuvered the discussion into a limited discussion of nuclear WMDs-- knowing that the intel was never ironclad. It was a no-risk proposition for them to make the Administration stick their neck out about nuclear WMDs.

 

We can maybe plan for Mars now.

 

you think Terry McAullife and co. forced the Administration to talk about mushroom clouds and pretend Niger uraium transactions? They forced this despite controlling no house of congress and essentially flailing about the Iraq question and being completely disorganized?


Silliness.

You can blame them all you want, but the fact is, that's what it took to convince the 55% or whatever it was of Americans that Bush needed to go to war.