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That's what I said.
powell admitted years ago that the evidence was deliberately misleading.
the key phrase (if people don't understand) is deliberately misleading.
That's what I said.
OK...
Here I thought my English comprehension was bad. Now I need to question yours.
He never said there was a certain connection. That's like betting against snake-eyes on a dice throw. 35/36 time, statistically, (pretty well certain) you will be right. It is not certain, and most people know that.
Let's have the quote, in context.
One needn't lie to mislead. When the President or VP refers to iffy intelligence as if it were something *like* certain, people are apt to take it for more than it is.
Repeating the claim, as Cheney did many times, only served to reinforce an inaccurate impression, and Mr. Cheney was smart enough to know it. Saddam had no operational tie to Al Qaeda or 9/11, and Cheney knew it.
So what purpose did repeating the report of Atta meeting Iraqi officials in Prague serve?
Funny thing about that intelligence is that the Democrats in Congress saw the same stuff and reached the same conclusions.
The intel was massaged, cherry-picked and stovepiped, and caveats were not included in the executive summaries. Bush fudged his case for war.
To be sure, the Dems went along with it, and are collaterally responsible for a war that has been ruinous to the national interest, to the international prestige of the USA and destructive to the public purse. I blame them too.
What was your point, Yoni? That the GOP and the Dems both suck?
If so, i agree 100%.
Yoni is on record stating that misleadng someone is the same thing as lying...
Bush didn't present the intelligence to Congress.
My point is Saddam Hussein, without the WMD's, had already run out the clock. Having WMD's and connections to terrorists -- some of whom had just destroyed the WTC, made it a more solid case.
It's good to know we went to war on iffy intelligence..I seem to remember us being told with certainty about the evidence for war..
1) The AUMF listed a whole host of grievances against Saddam Hussein...many of which were justification enough for restarting hostilities, ceased in 1991, after Saddam Hussein agreed to stop all of those activities -- and did not.
2) Saddam Hussein had harbored terrorists Abu Nidal and others.
3) Saddam Hussein was paying terrorists in Palestine
4) Abu Musab al Zarqawi fled Afghanistan to Iraq after we invaded there.
5) Personally, and I don't speak for Bush, I think the weapons were there or, at the very least, Saddam Hussein was recons uting his weapons making ability so that if he were able to get sanctions lifted, he would be ready to resume in days. If I"m not mistaken, that was a finding of the Duelfer Report.
6) There was a whole lot of pressure at the UN to lift sanctions and enable just that.
7) Germany and France were delivering war materials to Iraq (night vision goggles and gas masks)
8) Iraq was conspiring with many of our allies and the UN Secretary General's office in the biggest bribery scam in history, involving the Oil For Food Program.
9) Him. The world is better off now than it was in March of 2003.
Ah it we only lost 4,000 Gis...
If the war is unjustified, 1 death is too many; if it is justified, each death -- while tragic -- is worth the cost.Ah it we only lost 4,000 Gis...
Why don't you stick to arguing justification.
You're making the case that there was a compelling national interest in enforcing UN resolutions and the credibility of international law? You?
Which one of these is a compelling cause for war in the US national interest? IMO none of them are. No national interest was at stake for us, none that I can tell were threatened by Saddam. It's just a laundry list of gripes.
How do you know he didn't know it?
If you have evidence none of us have yet heard, I suggest you present it to those investigating 9/11.
No, only that is is one of several reasons.
Didn't know what, please?
OK, I worded that wrong.
How do you know that Cheney knew there was no ties?
Were you there?
What evidence do you have?
Cir stantial. His carefully hedged remark crediting a Czech report rather than verified intel is a strong clue.
If there was verified intel linking Saddam and Al Qaeda operationally you can be pretty sure it would have been disclosed in some fashion. It would have cemented domestic support for the war and silenced most of the critics for good.
Our intelligence has been lacking ever since liberals gutted the CIA. We often rely on other sources. His hedging may have been because he wasn't a certian as he wanted to be, but believed it. Even at that, is there better evidence to the contrary? I didn't follow that event.
You're talking about the Church Committee, right? That was nearly thirty five years ago. Are you suggesting that three GOP presidents in five terms did nothing to rectify this situation?
No, you didn't.
This is weak even by your own abysmally low standards, WC. You're basically saying the CIA sucks so bad we have to rely on British and Czech intel for the middle east.
Why do you hate the CIA, WC?
IMO the shoddiness of the CIA's work product has been wildly overhyped by pols who based bad decisions on whatever they wanted to see in the offered intelligence. Instead of taking responsibility for failures of their own making, like men of integrity, they point at "faulty" intelligence and hope that will cover their asses.
You are living proof, WC, that this craven shifting of responsibility sometimes works.
No I'm not.
Tenet in Slap at Clinton CIA Cutbacks
First three paragraphs:
If you say so. I'm only going by what I've known for years. President Clinton eliminated too many important overseas agent positions that the CIA relied on. You cannot simply place moles in foreign organizations overnight, like you can pull them out. It first takes years to prepare an agent for the field, and even more years to get them where you want them. That's why we have to trust other intelligence agencies, because we don't have much of our own anymore.Your fly is open... I mean, you don't know what you're talking about.CIA Director George Tenet delivered an unexpected slap to ex-president Clinton on Thursday, suggesting during a speech defending his agency that CIA cutbacks during Clinton's tenure were responsible for the agency's failures in the war on terror.
"When I came to the CIA in the mid-1990s, our graduating class of case officers was unbelievably low," Tenet told an audience at Georgetown University.
He said it had taken "years of rebuilding" for the agency to recover from the Clinton-era cutbacks, contending that the agency was now moving in the right direction.
Oh, it was all Clinton's fault. My bad.
I'll stick by my point. Our intel doesn't suck as bad as you say. The CIA was a convenient fall guy for Bush's epochal failure in Iraq, judged by his own benchmarks for success.
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