If you could, please provide a link to such comments by Rummy..
On ABC's This Week, March 3, 2003, Rumsfeld said, "We know where they (WMD) are, they are in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north of it." (Google that phrase and see for yourself...the links at ABC News and at MSNBC no longer work, but that's another issue for another time).
This didn't have to be this way.. S. Africa dismantled it's WMD program voluntarily and no one invaded them.
No argument here that Saddam didn't contribute to the situation.
It all requires that we understand the "sources and methods" by which the intel was collected. It would seem that our inside source was a muckety-muck within Iraq's high command.. Thus, relatively high credibility is normally attached to such information.
Seems that Chalabi was the prime source, and he hadn't been in Iraq in decades. "High credibility" seems to have been, in reality, more of a desire on the administration's part to support pre-conceived notions than anything.
It really matters not if we knew where the weapons were or not, or whether our intelligence about their location was faulty.
It matters because the president and his senior staff stated unequivocally that we DID know.
The only way to overlook the hype and exaggerations we heard from administration members pre-war, is to believe that the ends justify the means. |
