If you want to take a look at what happened within those \"top-secret\" meetings, and what options our Government faced, prior to the US going to war with Iraq, read the following link for an interesting perspective:
http://online.wsj.com/public/article_print/SB121504452359324921.html
JimmyG
Member Profile
Still think the war was unnecessary?
Yes.
Consider the source.
I suspect much the time he does not realize he is lying. You have linked to the person most likely to confuse reality and fantasy on the planet.
Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith, whom most of you probably know Tommy Franks said was the stupidest blankety-blank man in the world. He was. Let me testify to that. He was. Seldom in my life have I met a dumber man.
-- Lawrence Wilkerson, Colin Powell’s former chief of staffFrom the condensed Woodward book Gen Tommy Franks speaking...
Page 281: On Douglas Feith, the Pentagon\'s undersecretary for policy: \"I have to deal with the fxxking stupidest guy on the face of the earth almost every day.\"
--------------------------Of all the revelations that have surfaced about the Abu Ghraib prison-abuse scandal so far, the least surprising is that Douglas Feith may be partly responsible. Not a single Iraq war screw-up has gone by without someone tagging Feith—who, as the Defense Department\'s undersecretary for policy, is the Pentagon\'s No. 3 civilian, after Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz—as the guy to blame. Feith, who ranks with Wolfowitz in purity of neoconservative fervor, has turned out to be Michael Dukakis in reverse: ideology without competence.
It\'s not that the 50-year-old Feith is at fault for everything that\'s gone wrong in Iraq. He\'s only tangentially related to the mystery of the missing weapons of mass destruction, for example. (Though it\'s a significant tangent: An anonymous \"Pentagon insider\" told the Washington Times last year that Feith was the person who urged the Bush administration to make Saddam\'s WMD the chief public rationale for going to war immediately.) Nor was it Feith who made the decision to commit fewer troops than the generals requested. (Though Feith did give the most honest explanation for the decision, saying last year that it \"makes our military less usable\" if hundreds of thousands of troops are needed to fight wars.) But if he isn\'t fully culpable for all these fiascos, he\'s still implicated in them somehow. He\'s a leading indicator, like a falling Dow—something that correlates with but does not cause disaster
http://www.slate.com/id/2100899/
I always did, and I always will.
And Dougie can you tell us where your real allegiance is?
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Central_Asia_watch/Is_Iran_Next.html
JimmyG
Member Profile
Using Feith to try to justify the war is like using Michelle Malkin to justify internment of the Japanese during WWII.
I understand the need to debunk the author, but by solely focusing on that alone, you may not consider the points that are made.
\"1.) Saddam was a threat to U.S. interests before 9/11,
2.) The threat of renewed aggression by Saddam was more troubling and urgent after 9/11,
3.) To contain the threat from Saddam, all reasonable means short of war had been tried unsuccessfully for a dozen years,
4.) While there were large risks involved in a war, the risks of leaving Saddam in power were even larger,
5.) America after 9/11 had a lower tolerance for such dangers.\"
These points are all valid and factual.
\"President Bush inherited a worrisome Iraq problem from Bill Clinton and from his own father. Saddam had systematically undermined the measures the U.N. Security Council put in place after the Gulf War to contain his regime.\"
Al Qaeda is not the only terrorist group.
JimmyG
Member Profile
Just because Feith asserts your listed 1-4 above doesn\'t make them true assertions or facts.
As to #5, a \"lower tolerance\" is not a reason to go to war.
If you want to get technical, none of those points listed are actually \"fact\". They are conclusions or judgements based on facts, but they are not facts by themselves. Whether or not those are sound conclusions/judgements or assertions is a whole other issue!
NR.
Lest we be forced to point out something in language strong enough to irritate our hosts, perhaps you should admit that your strength is not in current events as you have admitted to lacking a grounding in history.
Furthermore.
The concept of a war on a noun as justification for taking over a country which never threatened, attempted or could in its rulers wildest dreams harm the United States, is so alien to rational human beings that it could only come to fruition by propaganda of the most blatant sort. (Further details omitted lest we invoke Godwin\'s Law and lose this thread too)
Google the following:
Office of special plans, Chalabi, Curveball, Yellow cake forgery, petrodollar OPEC, Iraq sanctions.
And read this from the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence
http://intelligence.senate.gov/pubcurrent.html
Saddam and Iraq were a very real threat to the Multinational Oil companies and the petro dollar monopoly the US enjoyed due to the OPEC nations use of the dollar as official currency.
In late September of 2000 Saddam Hussein started selling oil for Euros in defiance of the monopoly.
http://www.globalpolicy.org/nations/sovereign/dollar/2000/1101baghdad.htm
The rest is history, and sadly current events.
Yeah, wait a minute- the \"threat\" from Saddam? When we invaded we promptly discovered the total lack of WMDs and an infrastructure held together with duct tape and shoe strings under the facade of his regime. He was a threat to his own people, clearly, and an all-around sucky dude, but so is Mugabe and as far as I know there\'s no effort to trump up international terrorism charges against him in this climate of \"lower tolerance for such dangers.\" Maybe if Americans could find Mugabe\'s country on a map or discover some untapped oil it would make a difference.
Ok, Ken, I am extremely comfortable in admitting that I am no intellect in regards to history or current events.
You, however seem to be and I appreciate learning from you, even if it is mostly liberal quotes and links that you share.
I do look at everything that is shared on this forum, and in doing so hope to learn more and more everyday. I think looking at BOTH sides and ALL opinions is a good start in becoming further educated.
Unfortunately, not everyone chooses to do that and, therefore, when I feel that a valid point is being made, it is first and foremost tossed out and deemed inaccurate or untrue.
Being able to look at all sides to an issue is where true intelligence is gained. I\'ll be the first to admit my shortcomings (although, you beat me to it here), but at least I\'m continuing to learn.
JimmyG - I agree that because someone \"asserts\" something to be true, it doesn\'t make it so. Please explain, or direct me to where, these points are contradicted.
And, thank you to those who took the time to read what I shared, even after seeing who wrote it.
NR - you rock!
JimmyG
Member Profile
Sorry NR, I don\'t want to get into a long hashed out political debate with you or anyone else here. I think this is the 1st political thread in a long while here on WSB that I\'ve posted on.
Frankly they bore me as it\'s just like arguing religion and abortion--akin to striking 2 bricks togehter--and about as useful.
I\'m not going to change your mind about the validity of the war, and you won\'t change my opinion about it.
For every \"fact\" you can dig up and link to, I can do the reverse. So where does it get anyone?
With me it gets a big fat yawn. I would much prefer to argue the relative merits of soft serve versus hard ice cream.
JimmG - LOL! I agree. I\'m not very political, myself, but in this extremely important election year, I\'m trying to learn everything I can.
Of course, posting a different school of thought here on this forum, in turn, provides me a lot of information as my points are always refuted.
And, apologies to put you, personally, on the spot. I want to be shown where those points are factually contradicted. I\'m sure someone here would be up to the challenge.
wsblover - You\'re my new best friend!
o.m.g.
Jiggers
Member Profile
Bush is such and idiot do you realize that we could have had both BinLaden and Saddam in one fail swoop? Bush decided to make a hard left and turn into Iraq when they were actually on the heels of following BinLaden in Tora Bora. It was too difficult in tracking down Bin Laden but easier to find Saddam.
NewResident...
Cudos to you. you sought a source from a more \"balanced\" republican... and not an extremist... great job!
however, since Doug Feith was in charge of selling the war to the American Public in the first place.. he has a pretty big vested interest in justifying what he did.
was Saddam a pain in the .. you know... ???
Yup, he was. He was also an all round bad guy and terrorized his own people.
But a terrorist threat? Not unless you include terrorizing his own people.
He simply didn\'t have the resources... the reasonable means we had been trying were finally taking their toll and it was all he could do to hold his country together and hope none of his neighbors decided to return the favor and invade.
We were successfully negotiating with Saddam two weeks before the invasion.
It was actually a bigger threat to american security to invade Iraq.
if nothing else, it meant that we were using our military resources and therefore didn\'t have resources left to actively pursue the real terrorists.
At worst, the invasion generated more terrorists than it killed... and some of them are likely planning attacks against us as we speak.
The only statement from those you listed above that i think we can agree is true is the last...
America was more likely to agree to the invasion than at any other time in our history. We wanted retaliation.. and i think Saddam looked as good as any...
However, if Bush hadn\'t erroneously tied Saddam to 911, i think he would have had a much harder time selling this war.
1.) Saddam was a threat to U.S. interests before 9/11,
2.) The threat of renewed aggression by Saddam was more troubling and urgent after 9/11,
3.) To contain the threat from Saddam, all reasonable means short of war had been tried unsuccessfully for a dozen years,
4.) While there were large risks involved in a war, the risks of leaving Saddam in power were even larger,
5.) America after 9/11 had a lower tolerance for such dangers.\"
I was in the Army from 1995 till 2001. This included a tour of duty in Kuwait in 2000, where I had a frontline view watching aircraft taking off and patrolling the No-Fly Zone every day (and often returning without their ordnance - meaning, they dropped it over Iraq). I am now in the Navy Reserve.
I\'ve never encountered anyone in uniform who ever thought Saddam was a threat. After the \'91 war, they were gutted, and not even able to control their own internal security. If Iraq was a threat to anybody, how come they couldn\'t even kick out the Kurds in the North, nevermind attack the Kuwaitis or Saudis who had many hundreds of tanks and dozens of warplanes that were as good or better than the Coalition had in \'91. In addition, the constant patrolling of Iraqi airspace by US/UK warplanes destroyed damn near anything that moved - in many ways, the war didn\'t end in \'91, but just reverted to daily small scale bombing over 2/3rds of Iraq. Iraq didn\'t even have an air force to contest those no-fly zones.
Fact of the matter is that the only terror group that can be linked to Saddam is Mujahedeen-e-Khalq, who were an anti-Iranian terror group (and who were proctected by the American Army until at least last year - maybe even today).
What other risks were there to leave Saddam in power? And don\'t you dare suggest that we went into Iraq for humanitarian reasons.
All of his five points basically say the same thing: \"We think Saddam is a threat\" when, in fact, he controlled very little of his country outside of Baghdad.
Fact of the matter is, NR, that you have no idea what you\'re talking about and you blindly trust people in positions of authority without bothering to research the facts.
I have a healthy amount of disappointment in the capabilities and motivations of my government. But I always have such a hard time co-signing sentiments that President Bush and his cronies A. are idiots or B. deliberately lied for some kind of economic gain. Those arguments seem too simplistic to me.
If you\'re going to make these assertions convincingly in relation to a discussion of the Iraq war it seems necessary to also recognize that Saddam Hussein played cat and mouse with the UN weapons inspectors for the better part of a decade. If he didn\'t have WMDs then why didn\'t he just cooperate with the UN so the inspectors would leave? Instead he stonewalled and allowed his people to suffer under relentless sanctions. The truth is that we knew he had WMDs because he used them against Iran and the Kurds and because US and German chemical companies sold him the chemicals that were used to manufacture those WMDs.
Iraq was sitting on the third largest proven oil reserves in the world and yet had ambitions for a nuclear energy program (as Iran does now). Why do countries with massive amounts of oil need nuclear energy? (Hint: They don\'t). Even if you take the genocide of the Kurds off the table, Hussein invaded Kuwait by force. There were a lot of reasons why it would have been beneficial to remove such a destabilizing tyrant.
With that said, I\'m not a fan of military action and war. Diplomacy is always a better way to go. But what do you do when diplomacy fails to produce results? The US tried diplomacy for twelve years under three presidents. One of the reasons it failed in this case was because the European Union was fractuous. Too many countries had their own economic interests in Iraq to support putting any muscle behind the UN Security Council resolutions. It is much easier to let the US do the heavy lifting, to take all the blame and then claim to hate us. When US troops went into Iraq they discovered all kinds of Italian and French weapon systems. The Europeans are anti-war but they\'re pro-commerce. And all of the reasons they supposedly hate us (based mostly on outdated stereotypes and a lack of American Studies programs anywhere in Europe) are usually more based in their own national impotence.
It is an understatement to say that President Bush and the Iraq War are unpopular. But I think it is unfair to assign him with all the blame. The US and many European nations completely ignored the Middle East for centuries except to exploit its resources. That region\'s problems and issues (some we\'ve caused, some home-grown) have only festered as we\'ve put our collective heads in the sand while we\'ve been content with \"popular\" presidents who showed little stomach for difficult decisions and who chose to simply lead by polls all the while ensuring a steady supply of 99 cent gasoline.
I didn\'t vote for Bush but I\'m really weary of the blind hatred of the man and his presidency especially when the issues that seem to fuel this mountain of negativity are so much more complex. It seems to me as though it would be a better use of time and energy to look forward and support change
elgrego...
NewResident is making a real effort to seek out less extreme resources and learn from the more moderate voices on both sides of this issue...
she is seeking out the facts...
I think it is difficult to know what to think and who to believe when so much of the rationalization literature that is out now agrees with what we have heard from our national press. You really have to work to find more in-depth information.
But it is being published now.. even by some republicans...
It is going to take some time to get this message across to anyone who hasn\'t already been informed.
There is simply too much misinformation that has to be overcome.
cjboffoli...
we can\'t undo what has already been done... so we have no choice but to figure out what to do now.
but to do that.. we have to find out what has been done. so we can unravel the mess it has made.
while i agree it is simplistic to just blame Bush & his cronies as idiots (i don\'t believe they are) or self interested (i do believe they are that)..
it is also simplistic to blame Europe\'s anti-American bias on their mercenary interests and a lack of American studies programs.
Much of Saddam\'s arsenal was sold to him by the US military and American companies... We have ourselves to blame as much as we can blame the mercenary interests in the EU for arming Saddam.
As for the anti-American bias... it is quite possible we have created a good deal of it by changing our own policies in regards to economics and weapons... and refusing to sign onto international agreements regarding nuclear weapons and the environment...
and yes, Iraq does sit on a lot of oil.. and that does seem to be an issue, doesn\'t it.
Sorry, I don\'t have sympathy for people that have opinions that they can\'t justify.
elgrego..
it\'s hard, isn\'t it. Those of us who figured out this was a bad deal early on have still had to pay the bill for a war we never thought was in America\'s best interests.. oil or no oil...
i too get very impatient...
but, getting us out of this mess will take more than just those of us who were too sensible in the first place to get into it... and the more we blame them for not looking beyond the evening news, the longer it will take.
don\'t mistake my pragmatism for sympathy...
but i am an optomist... i value progress.. no matter how small...
B-squared
Member Profile
Thanks elgrego. excellent points.
Saddam was what we helped him to become, and we encouraged him when it suited us. just like many other very bad men we either helped put in place or propped up to further \"american interests\". we have a long history of this all over the world, and few americans have even the slightest clue what goes on in this regard. it\'s apparent that \"american interests\" and peace are mutually exclusive. yes, the iraq \'invasion\' was unnecessary. technically i don\'t think it is a war.
oh, and hard ice cream over softserve, anytime!
JoB: C\'mon, you can\'t blame the US for making Saddam who he was. Saddam Hussein was like that friend you make during your first month of college. He seemed really cool at first and you seemed to have so much in common with him. You both hated the same guy who lived in the dorm suite next door. But then you spent some time with him and he started acting crazy, maybe drinking too much and doing too many hard drugs and until you realized that maybe it wasn\'t such a good idea to be associating with that guy. And of course you went into it thinking you\'d be BFF\'s forever so you shared with him all of this cool stuff that later on you weren\'t so happy to let him hang on to because it totally wasn\'t worth asking for the crap back.
cjboffoli - I love your analogy! That was great.
I also liked what you said in your earlier post. I, too, am tired of everyone blaming Bush, when, basically, he was cleaning up the mess that was left for him.
In fact, when and IF Obama takes office, I cannot wait to blame him for our economy, our recession. It\'s, supposedly, starting before his term isn\'t it? It\'s easy to jump on that bandwagon, though.
elgrego - Even though I thought we were flirting in another thread, I can see your disagreement with the link I posted. You have been there, on the front line. Who better to have an opinion. Thank you for sharing yours.
Btw, I\'m not looking for sympathy. I\'m just trying to educate myself. I love to see all the different angles and views (without the hatred, preferably).
Also, Ken, I wanted to let you know that I am reading the Intelligence report that you linked to.
I need a little time to go through it. It is 174 pages. But I will read it and I understand that this is considered \"proof\" that the points made by Feith are untrue.
It should be interesting to get a \"conservative\" opinion on the report, as I already have read points that substantiate the opinion that the Iraqi government had restarted its nuclear weapons program.
cjboffoli..
saddam wasn\'t the cool friend. saddam was the useful friend.. and we turned a blind eye to everything he did until he wasn\'t useful any more...
Exactly JoB. We might not have made him what he was, but he got there with our support. We have a pretty ridiculous history of doing that- arming the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan when it suited our purpose against the Soviets, supporting Mobuto because he was staunchly anti-communist despite being a total despot, supporting the Khmer Rouge for years because they too were anti-Soviet, over-throwing the democratically elected Mossadegh and replacing him with the Shah, and then of course our illustrious history with the Contras in Nicaragua... and we wonder why people in other countries find our motives suspect when we \"liberate\" places like Iraq.
NewRes - For a pre-history to the current conflict you might google \'Aqaba pipeline project\'. This will take you back to 83\' when Rumsfeld went to Iraq (and during the iran/iraq conflict) to try and negotiate a pipeline deal from Iraq to Jordan with Saddam.
\"I, too, am tired of everyone blaming Bush, when, basically, he was cleaning up the mess that was left for him.\"
Um, no, I don\'t think so. Not going to start listing facts & data, but that comment is just not right or fair!
But, add, putting EVERYTHING on Bush is not right either (or fair).
Take some time and read the 9/11 Commission Report, or even the Intelligence report that Ken linked to.
What I don\'t understand is the hatred for America that is prevalent throughout this thread. Every post on this thread condemns our very own country.
JimmyG
Member Profile
Sweeping generalizations will get you in trouble NR.
Every post on this thread does NOT condemn our country. Mine in particular don\'t, nor do several others.
And on the 4th of July I have to point out that discourse about \"our very own country\" is a good thing. We need to be able to critique, and yes, even criticize our elected officials and our government. That\'s how advances are made.
Knowing both the goods and the bads of our very own country\'s history is vital to understanding the context of current events. I\'ve spent a great deal of time overseas, and have been disturbed to realize that a lot of people outside of this country know our recent history better than we do. But I most certainly don\'t hate America, and resent the implication that questioning some of our government\'s foreign policy decisions somehow makes me less patriotic.
You can condemn American policies without condemning America...
Understanding those policies.. and how they were created to protect American business interests... often at the cost of the american people... is the first step to understanding what really needs to change.
I intend to celebrate being an American today.
It\'s my country.. and i love it too much to leave it in the hands of those who are bent on destroying the very things that have made it a great country in the name of profit...
charlabob
Member Profile
Going along with everything America(sic) does is a reflection of true hatred, masked by lazy indifference. Of course, even claiming to going along is false -- it is, in fact, going along with the corporatist systematic destruction of the United States by destroying what it used to stand for in the world.
As JoB and RS said, it is our country too and we will not be driven away by lies and hyperbole.
charlabob..
sometimes going along is a reflection of ignorance...
i know none of us think we are brainwashed.. but we all have been exposed to a lifetime (for some) of a media that has become little more than a sensation seeking mouthpiece for corporate interests...
I think it is impossible not to be affected by that..
The good news is that ignorance isn\'t so difficult to change... once you get over the hump of defensiveness.
indifference takes personal hardship.. and sometimes even that is not enough.
It was incorrect to state that every post on this thread condemns America.
I should have said, almost every post condemns our Administration. Understandably. I \"get\" why people are upset with our President.
I believe that true \"ignorance\" is the inability to look at something for yourself and come to your OWN conclusion. I also think there is a lot of \"going along\" on BOTH party lines.
Happy 4th!
NR, I was condemning some of the decisions of our administration... and those of previous administrations going back decades! I\'m not just blindly condeming Bush. I\'m really condeming the Root Doctrine... and outing myself as a total foreign policy nerd.
Looking at the facts and coming to your own conclusion IS a good idea, but you have to have all the facts. This thread struck a cord with me because I believe a lot of people in this country don\'t have all the very basic who-did-what-when facts of our history, which impact what actions our government takes today and how the rest of the world perceives those actions.
RS - I agree. I actually printed out the Intelligence report that Ken linked to and think it is great reading on determining the who-did-what-when. It holds Bush and Cheney to what they have publicly stated. And goes into detail about when things were said, what was known at the time it was said, etc..
I highly recommend reading it. Thanks again, Ken!
\"What I don\'t understand is the hatred for America that is prevalent throughout this thread. Every post on this thread condemns our very own country. \"
First of all, NR, I\'m sorry. I was unduly hostile to you before. Call it a bad day or whatever, but I was wrong to get pissy with you.
In regards to your above statement, I disagree. I don\'t think there is any anti-Americanism displayed in this thread that I\'ve seen.
I think a lot of people will agree with me that we\'re just disappointed with where America has gone since 9/11.
I remember reading the headline of the French newspaper \"Le Monde\" that said \"Today, we are all Americans\" after 9/11. Even Castro sent his sympathies, as did Iran (IIRC). We had the world in the palm of our hand. We could have done great things.
Yes, the invasion of Afghanistan was justified. I think most people in the US and the world understood that, and still agree with us (which is why so many countries are there with us now). But instead of doing anything to promote the greater good in the US and the world as a whole, we turned around and invaded Iraq.
I don\'t know about you, but I was raised with the belief that America is not an aggressive country. I realize now that I was a bit naive with this belief, even before Iraq, but the idea that we\'d invade another country that did nothing to provoke us was beyond foul for me. Iraq wasn\'t a threat. Yeah, Saddam was a dick, but a lot of people in the world are (Mugabe, Chavez, Kim Jong Il, etc.). He wasn\'t a threat. I can\'t say that enough.
I\'m all for America being a defender of liberty and freedom around the world (be it individual freedom or protecting the sovereignty of other nations/states). I thought we did the right thing in \'90/\'91. In Haiti. In Somalia (at least we tried). In Bosnia. Even Vietnam, I think, had some noble intent to it (which got screwed up in the process...). But my America doesn\'t invade people. Nazi Germany does that. Imperial Japan does that.
I think what you perceive as anti-American sentiment in this thread is just people sharing my disappointment with what we\'ve become, and the loss of what we could have been.
elgrego - Thank you.
That was an incredibly honest, eloquent and sentimental post.
I agree with a lot of what you just said.
Have fun celebrating our country today!!!!!!
Ken - I have finished reading through the very first report that you linked me to a couple days ago.
This report was in regards to whether the President\'s, V.P\'s, Secretary of State\'s and other members of the current Administration\'s statements were substantiated by current intelligence. In other words, what DID we know?
The final outcome, was that, yes, they were substantiated.
What we knew, to break it down, is this:
a.) There were intelligence community estimates that substantiated a possible Iraq nuclear weapons program.
b.) There was intelligence information that substantiated Iraq\'s possession of biological agent, weapons, production capability and use of mobile biological laboratories.
c.) There was intelligence information that substantiated Iraq\'s possession of chemical weapons.
d.) There was intelligence information substantiating Iraq\'s possession of weapons of mass destruction.
e.) There was intelligence that substantiated that Iraq was developing unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) that could be used to deliver chemical or biological weapons.
f.) There was intelligence information substantiating Iraq\'s support for terrorist groups other than al-Qa\'ida.
g.) There was intelligence information that substantiated that Iraq provided safe haven for Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and other al-Qa\'ida related terrorist members.
There is plenty more, but I\'m pretty sure almost no one will even read what I have already provided.
You can read the report yourself, if you follow the link that Ken gave earlier in this thread.
Why aren\'t more people aware of all of the information that we DID have? I found this fact of the report (in the final conclusion), extremely interesting:
\"The Democratic majority, in the partisan way it attempted to suppress intelligence information and skew the historical record, is betting that the public and the media will not take the time to read those and other minority views that expose its hypocrisy.\"
NewResident...
i commend you for reading all 172 pages of that report...
but what you cite comes mainly from the dissenting remarks at the end of the report... led by Orin Hatch... not the conclusions of the full committee.
I know because i took the time to go back and check this morning in spite of having read all 172 pages myself when the report originally came out.
I am not surprised that the dissenting remarks are what you chose to focus on...
but do need to point out that your conclusions and quote came from the dissenting remarks at the end of the report... from 3 members of that bipartisan committee (if i remember correctly)... and not from the conclusions of the report itself.
The conclusions of the entire committee were not the same as those of the 3 (?) Republican members who posted their dissent at the end.
JoB - Of course you are going to disregard a quote that is unfavorable to your party. That was expected.
However, I\'d be interested in hearing why, given all the intelligence information that we had at that time, was it wrong to go into Iraq?
NewResident..
i didn\'t discard the quote because it was unfavorable to my party..
i pointed out that the quote you used to characterize the report was not supported by the majority of the evidence in that report... and therefore wasn\'t part of the majority opinion.
Go back and look at the list of committee members.. and then find out what party they belonged to.
There were Republicans who did not agree with the dissenting opinion.
In fact, your candidate for president was one who chose not to join in the dissenting opinion written by Orin Hatch.
The majority opinion was based on the evidence.. which you should know since you read the entire report..
the dissenting opinion was based on your quote..
it assumed any evidence which did not agree with it\'s opinion was fabricated or politically manipulated...
if you assume that everything you believe is correct.... and that all evidence to the contrary is incorrect... you can call anything truth... whether it is supported by the evidence or not.
given the suspect nature of all the evidence we had at the time and the fact that Iraq had absolutely nothing to do with the incident that triggered our reactions (911)...
i\'d say it was a bad idea.
but if reading that report didn\'t convince you of that, nothing anyone can say will.
And, JoB, if you cannot see ALL the evidence that was available to the President at that time that substantiated Iraq as a threat to the US and other countries and, therefore, continue to blame our President for acting irrationally by going to war, nothing will convince you otherwise, and nothing anyone can say will.
The Republicans didn\'t agree because it was a re-writing of history in an attempt to distort facts.
\"Although we are troubled by by all of the issues we have outlined thus far - that the report that was released today was a waste of Committee time and resources that should have been spent overseeing the intelligence community, that the report is part of a partisan agenda, that the report cherry picked information and distorted policymakers\' statements and intelligence, and that the majority refused to offer those it is accusing the opportunity to be heard - we are most concerned about the damage that this report will do, and that the whole Phase II effort has done for the past several years, in creating the impression that policymakers should be bound to make policy based on only that which is published in intelligence assessments. This is not only wrong, it is dangerous and contrary to everything else this Committee has done since it published its first report on the Iraq intelligence failure. It has the effect of encouraging intelligence community analysts to become policymakers, and encouraging policymakers to adhere strictly to whatever analysts write, when we know that intelligence analysis can be dangerously inaccurate. Have we forgotten how wrong the intelligence judgments were in the October 2002 Iraq WMD NIE and how many other intelligence failures we had before that one? Intelligence is not incontestable truth and it is only one factor out of many that a policymaker must consider before making a policy decision.\"
Obviously, there is much criticism of the report overall. Reading it, you get the idea that it is a waste of recourses and time (as stated) and just an \"attempt\" to prove our Administration wrong.
Obviously the quotes I share will be refuted, however, I feel that, definitely on this forum, they shed light on an opinion and conclusion that is important for people to be aware of.
NewResident...
pointing out that the quotes you chose to present as representative of that report were part of the dissenting opinion and not that of the committee itself is not refuting anything. It is simply identifying your source.
You read the report and chose to focus on the partisan criticism some Republicans made of the report instead of commenting on the actual evidence... or referring to the commission\'s findings.
That is your choice...
You assume that there is more damaging evidence that will exonerate the President... if only we had access to it.
That is also your choice...
However, i would point out to you that this committee included senators who are supposed to have access to that kind of information.. if it exists.
Perhaps you don\'t understand how the committee reports work.. the committee report is what the public sees after all of the partisan negotiation has already happened during committee meetings about what can and will be reported.
the dissenting opinion on the other hand is purely partisan.. not subject to any negotiation...
I would like to know what evidence the Republicans succeeded in having removed from this report...
i have more faith in the existence of that evidence than i do in the supposedly secret evidence that would contradict the conclusions of this commission.
i hope we learn some of those answers in my lifetime... tho i don\'t expect that we will.
I know you choose to see the world through the prism of Republican politics... but seeing the world through the prism of democratic politics is not the only other alternative.
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