A prior CIA director ?Stansfield Turner? was on the tube the other day. He made the interesting observation that in Oct. of 2002 there was a dramatic change in the intelligence assessments regarding Iraqi wmd capabilities. According to him, before October the intelligence wisdom was that it was "possible" that Iraq had some wmd capacities. That changed to "probable" and, according to him, the administration presented that assessment by claiming it was "certain."
For those that decry that Bush was "misled" by bad intelligence, I think those allegations, if true, blow them right out of the water.
Bush had the motive, the means and the arrogance to manipulate the assessment of intelligence to his own ends, and he and his staff did. It's naive to argue otherwise.
The thing that really makes me laugh is for the Bush people to claim "[those that oppose them] thought they had wmds too." Of course we did; who would have listened to the certainty with which the administration proclaimed it as a fact, and suspected that they would be so scornful of the truth? To lie to us and the world was to risk the credibility of the United States of America throughout the world. I know that I thought there must be some proof certain out there or they wouldn't be so stupid as to claim they "knew" there were stockpiles of wmds. For them to now say, "you thought so too" overlooks the fact that ALL OF THOSE who relied upon the credibility of the Americans would have believed at one time. The number of "believers" is now, thanks to them, much lower. |
