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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ilaine who wrote (45331)	5/19/2004 3:20:01 AM
From: KLP	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 793670

Hopefully, one of the "serious "WMD's are found, and only explode in the desert, far away from any people. But at least, people would be able to see that "oops....looks like Saddam didn't get rid of them after all..." What I really wonder is how the entire intelligence community for America, Britain, Israel, the UN, etc...missed this so badly. Did they all get their info from a single pair of boots on the ground? Or what?

To: Ilaine who wrote (45331)	5/19/2004 1:04:17 PM
From: frankw1900	Respond to of 793670

Everything you say is true, but I don't think that if Bush had gone to Congress and laid out things as you expressed them, Congress would have authorized the use of force against Iraq. Different subject. I was addressing this, what you wrote: I don't believe in getting involved in foreign wars without clear cut American interests at stake You are now writing about the presentation of what Bush et al gave to congress and the people. He pushed all the other stuff, which at the time, I said was more important than WMDs but all the Kerry clones and "realists" wanted to hear about was the WMD stuff. I think it significant the US people, as shown again and again in polls, think it was a good thing to put away Hussein and the regime. They thought so before and after the war. They listened to everything Bush said, unlike a lot of politicians inside and outside the US. Thinking further down the road, we really have yet to come to terms with the horrible blow to the credibility of our intelligence gathering abilities, because things haven't really fully resolved yet. .... But I am trying to put myself into the shoes of a senator or a congress critter, next time around By 2001 your intel services had been totally perverted to the requirements of PCers, who think you can do the job by never talking to a bad person - or to the good one in the agency next door - and technocrats who thought it could be done from thousands of miles away. Those critters with an attention span longer than that of a Mayfly know this, and what they will want to know is to what degree intelligence gathering has improved. I imagine they'll be very demanding. Fine. But, what I can not understand, after 9/11 and the previous twenty years of outrage, are the pluperfectly wierd non-ideas that the US would not/should not go to the Middle East, the source of the hatefulness, and start swinging a big stick. That any US politician might think otherwise after 9/11 utterly blows my mind! What the hell is the lesson for your enemies if your responses to their actions never hand them serious negative consequences? So if, and when it's necessary to go to Congress with a proposal to invade another country that's dependent on intelligence info to the kind of degree Iraq was, then yes, I imagine they'll be very cranky. The administration will have to demonstrate very clearly they have improved the quality of intelligence gathering operations. I they do so successfully then the congress critters will go for it.