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To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (27755)	2/3/2004 5:39:12 PM
From: Neocon	Respond to of 793623

That is what I never understood, with public sentiment about attacking Iraq tepid, at best, where was all of the alleged pressure on the Congressional Democrats to vote for the war? If they were so skeptical, why didn't they take their case to the people? The fact is, they were afraid of being on the wrong side of the issue when the deal went down, which is a different matter.

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (27755)	2/3/2004 8:02:06 PM
From: FaultLine	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 793623

But the main rallying factor was an incident that the Democrats seem eager to forget - Sept 11th. Is this the "say it enough and people will believe it" part? :o) --fl@comeon.com

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (27755)	2/3/2004 9:38:52 PM
From: Sam	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793623

Nadine, Iraq wasn't an uphill sell. One reason why at least some and perhaps many Democrats caved was that they knew he had the votes. The fact that the Senate was nominally Democratic was irrelevant: Zell Miller was going to vote with him; Mary Landrieu would have lost had she not voted with him; Max Cleland got clobbered on the issue even though it made about as much sense as saying that William Henry Harrison was a common man who was born in a log cabin. It was brilliant domestic politics. Brilliantly timed and executed. Even if the Senate hadn't voted with him, he would have made the same stump speech, only changing emphasis a little. To say that 9/11 was the "main rallying factor" is true, yes, but to point that is part of the case that the Republicans were being duplicitous: Saddam had nothing to do with 9/11, but they were slyly shading that truth, using the power of associative thinking that they and Madison are true experts at to make the connection between them. They were so effective that a majority of Americans still believe that Saddam had at least something to do with 9/11 even after Bush has said (sort of "whispered" it--it has served its purpose) publicly (finally) that he didn't. There was no war fever, no demand. I partly agree with this--there was no demand until the Bush admin created it that fall. But it wasn't that much of an uphill sell in this country, it was a very steep uphill sell in the rest of the world, because most of them don't share the same perception of the US as the Great Liberator of the World, as a number of American citizens do. with elections only two years apart you can accuse any President of conducting any foreign policy for the sake of the next election. Not like that, not pushing a major war like that. Of course it wasn't major like WWII. But it wasn't Grenada either. And that is especially true of the Aftermath. I can't believe you think that people in Bush admin actually thought long and hard about what to do after they defeated the Iraq army. You should listen to the Peter Galbraith talk that I linked yesterday and the day before. Galbraith is no wild eyed lightweight guy. It will take about 45-50 minutes or so, less if you don't listen to the Q&A (although the last question was something like, what would you have done? his answer wasn't as good as the talk generally was, but those questions aren't easy to answer in time constrained contexts, and any real answer has to take into account how various external relationships could have been different if a different administration had been in power the previous two years).

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (27755)	2/3/2004 9:52:30 PM
From: Sam	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 793623

And one more thing, only slightly off subject but related to the selling of the war. (Some of the links he uses won't work here, you have to go to the original to get them.) (February 01, 2004 -- 12:09 PM EDT // link // print) I confess: I'm just too gullible. This morning Post columnist James Hoagland endorses the 'CIA sold the president a bill of goods' defense. Hoagland is willing Advertisment The Cheating Culture “That Americans cheat more than they used to sounds like an impossible hypothesis to prove,” comments The Boston Globe about The Cheating Culture. “And yet, Callahan's book is thick with convincing examples.” For fresh examples and ongoing analysis of American ethics, visit www.cheatingculture.com. to concede that the president may have "inflated" the "flawed intelligence that [his] spy bosses and senior aides provided." But still, he writes, "Credulity, not chicanery, would be the plea, your honor." As I said, or rather as Hoagland says, the Agency sold the president a bill of goods. Now, here I am at my favorite cafe, laptop on my knees, latte at the ready, trying to make sense of the world. And this all throws me, because Hoagland spent the last two years telling me that the president and his top aides had to bully the Agency and the rest of the career types in the Intelligence Community and the national security establishment into getting religion on the Iraq threat. And now I hear it's just the opposite? For instance, take Hoagland's October 20th, 2002 column ("CIA's New Old Iraq File"). That's where he said that the Agency's record of underestimating the Iraqi threat was so dire that "it is no surprise that Bush has until now relied little on the Langley agency for his information on Iraq. There is simply no way to reconcile what the CIA has said on the record and in leaks with the positions Bush has taken on Iraq." The column -- which I really recommend you read -- describes how the president and his aides had bullied the analysts at the CIA into finally admitting what a threat Saddam posed. "As President Bush's determination to overthrow the Iraqi dictator has become evident to all, a cultural change has come over the world's most expensive intelligence agency: Some analysts out at Langley are now willing to evaluate incriminating evidence against the Iraqis and call it just that." A cultural change, indeed. In that column, and in the ones that followed, Hoagland praised the President's now-notorious October 7th Cincinnati speech as the kind of goods on Saddam that could be wrung from the Intelligence Community when the president asserted sufficient 'leadership.' So, for instance, a couple weeks later on November 3rd, Hoagland asked where the president got his info about Saddam's ties to al Qaida in the Cincinnati speech? "Sez who?," asked Hoagland, "The answer: Sez the CIA, when pressed to the mat." (Itals added.) Like so much else in this up-is-down, black-is-white world the president and his backers want us to live in, this new defense doesn't even hold up against the google test. And somehow I imagine that the folks on the inside have access to more evidence and examples than I'm able to track down with my wifi-enabled laptop and a nexis account. Late Update: And, of course, there's more. This from Hoagland's October 10th, 2002 column ... A sea change has occurred in official Washington since the president decided last summer that he would soon have to be ready to go to war against Iraq. Public attempts by officials to bury or explain away menacing information about Iraq have largely dried up or gone underground, although the CIA fights a rear-guard action. Now information and intelligence are marshaled to make the case, rather than deflect it. This is, broadly speaking, political use of information -- no more and no less so than was the previous phase of denial and obfuscation. Bush mobilized facts on Monday to mobilize the nation for a challenge that is no less dangerous for being "largely familiar," as the New York Times labeled Bush's arguments in Tuesday editions. The State Department and the CIA, institutionally wary and dismissive of the extensive intelligence about Saddam Hussein and his crimes provided by the dissidents of the Iraqi National Congress, had to listen Monday night to the president recite a dossier full of Iraqi National Congress information and insights that have filtered down over the years through the media, the government and academia to the skillful and alert speechwriters on Bush's staff. Ahh, yes. The INC and the president's speechwriters. Why do we need intelligence agencies when we've got these guys? The Hoagland archive, truly the gift that keeps on giving, and giving, and giving ... -- Josh Marshall talkingpointsmemo.com