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

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.

Yep. Never mind the outright deceit, false statements, misstatements, or anything else the administration did. It's all the Democrats' fault for calling them out on it. The nerve of those guys!

<I>" It (Iraq) possesses and produces chemical and biological weapons. It is seeking nuclear weapons"

"If we know Saddam Hussein has dangerous weapons today -- and we do -- does it make any sense for the world to wait to confront him"
</I>

Bush certainly made it clear to the American people that the intel wasn't iron-clad, eh?

 

I don' think the administration's position was that Iraq itself was an imminent threat. Go back to the SOTU 2003, President Bush cites how easily a bio-weapon could be smuggled into the US. In that speech, in fact, I believe his statement is that the threat is "not imminent."

We didn't have to invade. We chose to . You have to begin somewhere. I think that we knew how hard it would be to catch Osama bin Laden. Let him die of kidney disease rather than make him a martyr. Keep him underground and on the run. Then, we turned our attention to Saddam who is a bigger monster than Osama-- if you drop your America-first perspective.

 

Originally posted by SamFisher

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?
<b> Did I say "forced?" I said maneuvered. The world is full of complexity and nuance which you don't seem to recognize unless it suits your purpose.

You don't need to control a house of congress. Face time on the news will do.</b>

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.

<b>Blame them? I'm crediting them. They had nothing to lose but pushing the discussion in that direction and they knew the administration had a lot of explaining to do if the WMD finds were smaller or less significant than anticipated.

Are you asserting that the 55% number is based solely on the threat of WMDs-- especially nuclear?</b>

 

Originally posted by Major

Yep. Never mind the outright deceit, false statements, misstatements, or anything else the administration did. It's all the Democrats' fault for calling them out on it. The nerve of those guys!

<b>I give them credit. You say it's not political but how would you characterize the longshot that every Democrate opposed the war to the very same degree. That is nothing but political. It is beyond the pale of possibility in human affairs-- unless there is a political template applied.</b>

Bush certainly made it clear to the American people that the intel wasn't iron-clad, eh?
<b>That's not his job. His job is to execute based on the resources available to him.</b>

 

I'm obviously jumping in late to this debate, but the blame should go to the White House on this, not Tenet and the CIA. IMO, the decision to attack Iraq had been made internally by Bush and his senior aides (Rumsfeld, Cheney, Wolfowitz) months before and then the rest of the time was just them desperately trying to justify their decision.

The CIA presented them with intelligence that was admittedly spotty, but believed to be true by almost everyone in the international community, including the French. Because the decision had already been made by the Bush team to go after Iraq, they chose to focus on only the intelligence that mattered to them, while they ignored any warnings that the intell could be suspect. I believe Tenet that he presented to Bush the intelligence as accurately as possible and that it was Bush and his aides that chose to run with it, rather than show caution.

Part of the problem, IMO, is that two of the most important people in the decision-making process had skewed views on the situation due to their past experiences. Cheney as Secretary of Defense in the first Gulf War obviously had preconceived notions of the type of threat that Iraq was, and he allowed that to play a factor in his decision to go to war. Likewise, Rumsfeld's past experience at the Pentagon and in other policy-making positions in the past two decades influenced how he thought, regardless of the actual imminence of the threat posed by Iraq.

They then spent the next year trying to convince everyone of the need to go to war. Regardless of what specific words were used by the administration to describe the nature of the Iraqi threat, the general feeling of the message to the American people was that Iraq was a threat to US security and needed to be dealt with immediately. It's irrelevant whether you agree with the message or not, but that is how it was basically presented before the war. Maybe Bush was wrong in attacking Iraq, maybe he was right, but it was the White House's decision and not the CIA's decision to do so.

Tenet should not take the fall for this and this whole intelligence inquiry is a joke that is being used by the Bush Admin to cover their asses publicly just in case they do not end up finding anything. Nothing will really come of this because the Admin knows that the CIA did nothing wrong, and if anyone was at fault it was them for jumping to conclusions. I think Tenet did a pretty good job defending himself and the CIA yesterday and I don't think I can blame them for any intelligence shortcomings.

kind of a long ramble, i know. sorry about that.

 

A) What is the disctinction based upon? I don;t think Max was saying there was a distinction between "sooner rather than later" and responding to an imminent threat,neither in intent nor in practice.

B) Re Chamberlain. Totally agree, and had we been proposing to give Kuwait, Syria and parts of Iran to Saddam in exchange for his promise to stay pecaefull, I'd have opposed it.

 

Well, I for one freely admit that I thought Saddam probably had WMDs. But there were differences on several matters:

1) Whether the intel we had proved it, or merely led us to a probability.

2) How selective the administration was being with it's intel.

3) Why, if as they claimed they had concret evidence, both about 9-11 and WMDs, every example they actually released was proven wrong.

4) Whether we should go to war on a probability.

5) And most importantly, whether Saddam A) Had enough WMDs to pose a threat, and B) Constituted any kind of threat even if he had them, let alone an imminent one. Logic showed that he hadn;t even used them against us in GW1, when we know for a fact he had them, so when did he suddenly become this unhinged ticking bomb? This is what the NIE report also concluded, and of note, this is what they were telling the administration.


If the threat wasn't imminent, why the rush? Why were we unprepared to wait for UN approval. There had been a final request for a brief period, we said " We don't have that kind of time."


But, again, the percpetion at the time, especially among those now denying same was that the threat was imminent. A brief perusal through pre-war debares in here shows that. I remember arguing against the invasion and being told that I would find it hard to stand on my principles amidst the rubble of a nuclear bomb, etc. That was the attitide at the time, and there is no doubt where that came from.

 

1) I'll have to oull the quote, but I don't at all think that Bush's comment in the SOTUA was to the effect that the threat was not imminent; It was responding to those who said we needed that to justify invading, and his point was that, given the nature of the threat, there was no way to distinguish between imminent and realized until it was too late.

2) But again, this "you have to start somewhere" is built upon a house of cards, It assumes A) We have the right to determine who does and who does not qualify as a threat to us irrespective of evidence or global restraint, B) That Iraq was any kind of significant player in the war on terrorism, which is contrary to the evidence, relatively speaking, C) That our admin had the right to manipulate us and try ( unseuccessfully) to manipulate the globe into acceding to it's wishes by postulating one reason for invasion of Iraq while, according to you, having another, more theoretical aim in mind.

 

Cull the quote. I've pasted it here at least twice. I'd bet my old Driver that I'm right!

I do think "We have the right to determine who does and who does not qualify as a threat to us irrespective of evidence or global restraint." It's our country that suffered a terrorist attack.

 

So that gives us the right to attack anyone?


Other countires have suffered more combined deaths to terrorism than the US, shoudl they be allowed to attack anyone they want too?

 

Sorry, giddy, but I think my version is pretty dead on:


"Some have said we must not act until the threat is imminent. Since when have terrorists and tyrants announced their intentions, politely putting us on notice before they strike? If this threat is permitted to fully and suddenly emerge, all actions, all words, and all recriminations would come too late."

He is saying there is no disctinction.

 

Originally posted by MacBeth

Sorry, giddy, but I think my version is pretty dead on:


"Some have said we must not act until the threat is imminent. Since when have terrorists and tyrants announced their intentions, politely putting us on notice before they strike? If this threat is permitted to fully and suddenly emerge, all actions, all words, and all recriminations would come too late."

He is saying there is no disctinction.

<B>Bush's language separates him from those who say that the threat is imminent. He is saying it is not time to wait and find out whether the threat is imminent or not. In that sense, yes, there is no distinction...</b>

 

Clear evidence does not denote imminence.

 

There you go, redefining words like clear again!

 

Are you saying that clear evidence does denote imminence?

It's clearly evident that Mike Tyson could flatten me but it's not happening anytime soon. It's clear that the Soviets have nukes but we are not imminently in peril. It takes something besides clear evidence to make something imminent.

 

Is there "clear" evidence that Iraq had WMDs prior to our invasion?

 

Are you saying that clear evidence does denote imminence?

What are you talking about? It was the clear evidence <I>of peril</I> that denoted imminence in Sam's post, since peril is defined as imminent danger. The evidence itself wasn't the imminence.

In other words, the quote would read "Facing clear evidence of imminent danger [peril]."

 

Is there "clear" evidence that Saddam was rebuilding his WMD programs?