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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Neocon who wrote (441703)	8/12/2003 2:00:35 PM
From: cnyndwllr	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769670

Neocon, I said, "It seems odd to attempt to justify our actions based on what we say the whole world believed, when the very basis for the whole world believing it was their acceptance of the accuracy of our intelligence assessments and the veracity of the politicians that reported those assessments." You said, in part: * >>"The French and Germans assumed, as did Blix, that there was substantial stockpiling and attempts to upgrade delivery systems, and our allies also agreed that Saddam was trying to develop a nuclear capacity."<< I recall Blix saying that he had reports from America that Saddam had substantial stockpiles BUT THAT he had asked them for their intelligence information so that he could inspect for it and had not gotten much help. I believe he said that the inspection process would confirm or refute the allegations but that with such strong assurances from the U.S. govt., they must have had some substantial intelligence information to back them up. As far as "upgrading delivery systems," there's nothing illegal about that. When we found the rockets that had a SLIGHTLY greater range than allowed by the U.N. provisions, Saddam Hussein trotted them out and they were being destroyed. This was not a major issue. He did, of course, have the general right under the U.N. resolutions to continue to develop conventional weapons. * >>"In general, the State Department tended to soft- pedal, while the CIA was more aggressive. That is not the same as to say that anyone knew better, or that political spin was necessary."<< The CIA was not the problem and there was no essential difference between their assessments. BOTH THE CIA AND STATE DEPARTMENT expressed strong reservations about the links to terrorists that were claimed by the politicians as well as the "nuclear" claim and the imminence of the threat. The "intelligence" group that promoted those claims was a group that had been created independently and was supported by Rumsfeld-Cheney political power. In essence, our traditional intelligence sources were trivialized in favor of this "new" group that provided a much more hawkish assessment evidently based, in part, upon the "information" gathered from Iraqi refugees who had strong political, ideological, personal and economic interests in the overthrow of the Saddam government. * >>"Inspection were worthless."<< The facts don't support this conclusion. Inspection had resulted in the destruction of a huge amount of illegal weaponry prior to 1998. We don't know whether we would have had effective utilization of inspection in 02 because we never gave it a chance. We do know that we were inspecting areas that had been closed to us before, that we had identified and destroyed some missiles that were slightly out of compliance and that the process would take time. For "imminent danger" reasons which are becoming more and more suspect, we were told there was "no time." * >>"After all, the Congress had called for Saddam's overthrow in 1998, and had voted to support the President in the run up to this one, as well. The time was ripe......."<< I agree "the time was ripe," if by that you mean that there would not have been more support later. I think that support for an invasion was lessening and would have dwindled further as more information became available to counter the "imminent danger," "mushroom cloud" fears that had been cultivated by the political rhetoric. I think the information that's come to light regarding the intelligence assessments of our best sources make that clear. The 1998 congress calling for the overthrow of Saddam Hussein is not the same as the congress advocating that we invade Iraq. There are many ways to encourage, promote and aid the overthrow of a dictator without invading and occupying a country. There's also a big difference between pressuring a country diplomatically with bluster and bluff versus acting on that bluff, declaring war and unleashing the might of the U.S. military on that country.