>>With virtually every intelligence agency in the world believing in WMD's in Iraq, I'm not at all sure the idea that coalition nations believed the case made for war in Iraq, is naive at all.<<
Dan -
The main thing that the different countries' intelligence on WMD in Iraq had in common was that it was not solid. Our own intelligence was full of caveats and equivocation. Basically, most of the world was looking into a fog, and all the intelligence agencies, including our own, knew that.
This is why the French, Germans, Russians and Chinese were not on board with the invasion. They were not convinced by the little they and we knew that there really were WMDs in Iraq. If they had been convinced, we wouldn't have had to send Colin Powell to the Security Council to make that ridiculous presentation. Even after the presentation, they didn't buy the story. What was presented as a certainty by Bush and Blair, et al, was just a pile of supposition, inference, and conjecture.
Almost all the nations that refused to join the Iraq coalition had not had to be convinced, cajoled, or bullied to join us in going into Afghanistan. Why do you suppose that was? The difference was in the strength of the two cases for invasion. One was a slam dunk case, the other was called that by George Tenet, but wasn't even close.
- Allen |
