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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Neocon who wrote (131469)	5/5/2004 11:02:33 AM
From: cnyndwllr	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

Neocon, let me add in your example to my hypothetical: ""The salesman tells you that he "knows" the car "doesn't burn oil." He's lying if he knows that the car does burn oil. He's also lying if he doesn't know whether the car is burning oil. The existence of the lie doesn't depend on whether the car burns oil or not, it rests on the representation that he "knows" when, in fact, he knows he DOESN'T know. He's NOT lying if he has information which a reasonable person would accept as proving that the car did not burn oil." With respect to the Bush Administration's decision to go to war, the level of certainty necessary to say that they "knew" that Iraq had "stockpiles of deadly wmds...had reconstituted it's nuclear weapons program...and was a grave threat to America" should have been very high. When we're talking about something as important as embarking on a course of action that will require the deaths of our children and the killing of at least thousands of Iraqis, many of them civilians, there is a tremendous RESPONSIBILITY to get the right information to the Congress and to the American people. And that information should not be "Madison Avenued" in an advertising campaign that relies on subtle misrepresentations and deceptions. It is, therefor, clear that when the issue is whether to invade another country and one of the criteria is whether or not they have weapons of mass destruction of such a volume and of such a nature that it is necessary for our self defense to preemptively attack, the proponents of such action owe a sacred duty to "tell it like it is." Did they lie? We NOW KNOW a lot more about the level of certainty of the wmd intelligence and the intelligence community's assessment of the level of threat to America as it existed at that time. We can now say clearly that there was no "knowing" that Saddam HAD wmd stockpiles and we know that there was no "knowing" that he did not. We now know that there was a consensus that he did NOT have an active nuclear weapons program even though Bush was implying that he did with his "African yellowcake" suggestions and even though Cheney said "we 'know' that Saddam has reconstituted his nuclear weapons program." We clearly understand that the intelligence community was saying that there was no near-term threat of a "mushroom cloud" over an American city. We now know that a number of intelligence experts were warning that the intelligence that indicated the existence of wmds was "soft" and potentially unreliable. We know that even at the time there were a significant number of analysts who were concerned that the threat was being "over hyped...exaggerated." It's true that many, or most, of the countries of the world believed that Saddam had some wmds, but no one was certain to the level of saying that "we 'know' that he has ..." It's also true that the Blix inspection team was on the ground checking out our latest, greatest U. S. intelligence leads and, without exception, THEY WERE ALL BEING DISPROVEN BY THE INSPECTION PROCESS. But the "we know" rhetoric just kept on coming. So when the Administration said they "knew," did they have information that a reasonable person would accept as proving the level of certainty they expressed, or were they representing that they "knew" something when they truly only suspected it? I think the answer is clear; they were lying about the level of certainty with which one could say the wmds existed. They were also exaggerating the level of threat that any wmds of Iraq posed to America. There was no "mushroom cloud" on the horizon. There was no impending unmanned drone launching off Iraqi ships to spray chemical or biological agents on American cities. And there was no justification for hyping the facts in order to promote fear and support for a war which is costing American and Iraqi lives, as well as hundreds of billion of dollars and the loss of face, friendship and security from terrorism for Americans across the globe. Sure, we're in up to our chins now and the past won't change, but don't think that these people who got us here are worthy of the "trust" you say you have in them. Only a non-thinking, true believer would fail to recognize that these people view the ends as justifying the means and view an informed electorate as an annoying obstacle to achieving their goals. That will be the legacy of the Bush Administration and, yes Neocon, that will be the enduring legacy of the Neocon movement.