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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jim McMannis who wrote (177652)	11/6/2003 5:09:16 PM
From: tejek	Respond to of 1574681

Published on Wednesday, November 5, 2003 by the Oregonian Futile Chase for WMD Has Cost American Lives by Jon Zall As a veteran and unashamed patriot, I am once again incensed at the effects of the Bush Doctrine on our troops. The mounting toll of U.S. casualties has made it clear to me that the stubborn, unyielding stance by the president regarding weapons of mass destruction not only got us into war but also directly contributed to deaths and injuries after the announced "close of hostilities" May 1. Here's how. The misuse of large numbers of our intelligence experts, who were pushed hard for six months in the futile attempt to prove the president's case for WMD, prevented the carrying out of essential intelligence functions in Baghdad and the Sunni Triangle. These resources could have been used to help prevent the deaths and wounding of many American and Iraqis. According to reports in The Washington Post, a senior intelligence official said the United States had not been able to devote enough attention to understanding the anti-American groups in Iraq because intelligence resources have been devoted to locating weapons of mass destruction. As a result, the intelligence community and the military have little precise information about the resistance. "I am not happy with the kind of information we are getting," the official said. And now it comes out (in a Reuters report) that the Pentagon is considering shifting intelligence personnel in Iraq from the fruitless WMD search to strengthen efforts to combat the intensifying resistance. Officials said Pentagon leaders are considering reassigning a number of intelligence officers, interrogators, translators, linguists and others from the 1,400-member Iraq Survey Group, which is conducting the hunt for weapons of mass destruction. Any shifted staff would augment efforts to prevent further attacks like those that have killed dozens in Iraq in recent days and better identify who is involved with the resistance. So what do we now know? More U.S. forces have died since hostilities were declared over than during the war itself. Intelligence resources were pushed hard to chase WMD in a failed effort to prove the president's assertions. Many of the more than 1,400 intelligence experts chasing WMD could have been used over the past six months to obtain critical data and accomplish vital analyses. More importantly, they could have been used to help prevent the daily killings of our troops and Iraqi citizens. The president's push to find WMD helped get us into war, and the continued push to find WMD after the war "ended" clearly contributed to lost lives and injuries that could have been prevented. Jon Zall is a retired U.S. Air Force colonel with 27 years of military service, including seven years at the Pentagon in strategic planning, business process engineering and policy development. Copyright 2003 Oregon Live. ###