Hi Nadine Carroll; Re: " The "imminence" of the threat was not directly related to whether Saddam had WMDs (everybody believed he did), but on what he intended to do with them in the near future."
What you're doing here is trying to have your crow and eat it to. But I can't quite figure out what you're trying to prove here. As near as I can tell, you're hoping, by repetition, to bring truth to the lie that "everybody believed he did".
Anyone who bothered to read the newspapers, before the war, would have been exposed to a variety of opinions about the possible existence of Iraqi WMDs. A lot of people who were convinced of WMDs were convinced not by their own observation of WMDs, but instead were convinced by the Bush and Blair administration's vehement statements that the WMDs were there.
No one else was saying that the weapons existed, at least as far as I can recall. You guys repeatedly misquoted Hans Blix on the subject, for example. And you misquoted a French politician, but no, the world was not united in belief in Iraqi WMDs. And there were leaks to the press from within the CIA and DIA to the effect that the evidence had been exaggerated to the point of being accurately described as a fake job. All this was widely reported at the time. Here's a reminder of the famous dossier that Blair used to justify going to war:
UK accused of lifting dossier text
CNN, February 7, 2003
The British government has been accused of basing its latest Iraq dossier on old material, including an article by an American post-graduate student.
...
Al-Marashi's article, published last September, was based on information obtained at the time of the 1991 Gulf War, Rangwala said.
"The information he was using is 12 years old and he acknowledges this in his article. The British government, when it transplants that information into its own dossier, does not make that acknowledgement.
...
cnn.com
So no, not everybody believed in Iraqi WMDs. And of the people who did, most of them were basing their belief on misguided trust in the US and UK governments.
The government put out convincing lies about the Iraqi WMDs. "Everybody" (okay, at least everybody who is a bit feeble minded) was convinced that Iraq had WMDs. Therefore, you conclude what? That Iraq had WMDs? That the government didn't lie? That there was an "imminent threat"? Why not simply conclude the obvious: Bush convinced "everybody" based on intelligence that was not faulty, it was faked. If Bush and Blair had had real intelligence they wouldn't have been plagiarizing 12-year old college papers. The majority of the public deliberately ignored the warning signs of plagiarism, logical inconsistency, absence of real proof of WMD existence, repeated failures by the UN to locate WMDs, the family hatred between Bushes and Saddam, and the simple financial difficulty that Iraq, under sanctions, would have had pursuing expensive WMD programs. Was it willful ignorance? No, Bush told you what you wanted to believe about Iraq (that we had a legal excuse to invade, that invading was a military necessity, that the Iraqis would welcome us, Iraqi oil would pay for rebuilding, and that all this would fix various problems in the Middle East). Dupes are duped because dupes prefer believing what they want to believe to believing in reality. After they're duped, dupes go to great lengths to avoid admitting that they're dupes. Furthermore, it's not just a show, they really are internally convinced that they haven't been duped.
But hey, it's an election year. Let's cut to the chase. From the point of view of analyzing how well Bush leads the country, your analysis is, in essence, that in foreign policy he is worthy of that trust only because the fantasies he believes in are very convincing, LOL. I doubt that the American public is going to accept that as an excuse.
-- Carl
P.S. Also of note:
"The US staked the reputation of its intelligence on claims about fixed sites in Iraq, which are easily checked. If these claims are not borne out, then the whole claim to know about Iraq looks shaky," says Glen Rangwala, an Iraq analyst at Cambridge University in the UK. #reply-18499875
Here's a classic exchange between someone simply stating a truth and a dupe. This happened after the British government used a 12-year old academic report without acknowledgment or even mention that it was so dated. But in the exchange, note despite being repeatedly forced to retreat to a new line of defense, the dupe never figures it out:
Rascal, February 6, 2003
Downing St dossier plagiarised #reply-18545986
CobaltBlue, in reply
Sorry, it's impossible to take you or your "source" seriously when he can't even spell "Rangwala" correctly. If you have a real article by the real Ibrahim al-Marashi accusing British intelligence or the State Department of plagiarizig his work, please link it, because it doesn't turn up on Google. #reply-18546811
Rascal, in reply
[Links] #reply-18546922
CobaltBlue, in reply
OK, you're right, Ibrahim al-Marashi confirms that several paragraphs of his work, a historical backgrounder on Iraq's security forces, were copied without attribution in a report issued by 10 Downing Street.
...
Now let me see if I get your point. Powell said he liked the British report, and used some of the info in it, but the Brits did not attribute the sources, so that makes Powell a plagiarizer? #reply-18547030
Rascal, in reply
CB, only for you. Because this is really tedious.
I know you know. And you know I know you know.
Powell source for his UN presentation used this British piece and applauded the Brits for their abilities in this type of intelligence. The British report was plagerized, and they doctored it to make it more sinister. No one said Powell was plagerizing. Reread my original post. This is pathetic. We are going to war based on very, very shoddy assumptions. Better they should use Google. Just hours ago the President of the United States had this to say about the Powell presentation:
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Now I don't know anything about lawyering but I saw Perry Mason once and he said that if one tells a lie in one thing the jury may assume everything is lies. #reply-18547226
CobaltBlue, in reply
Sorry, I see no reason to believe that Ibrahim al-Marashi did a crappy job of research on a historical backgrounder on Iraqi intelligence, given his credentials. #reply-18547275 |
