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

To: Neocon who wrote (149126)	10/26/2004 4:00:15 PM
From: Michael Watkins	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

"She was also aware that at the highest level of the intelligence community, there was great confidence that these tubes were for centrifuges."... IF you are going to pose her bureaucratese as having real substance, given all the other facts, then lets be equally speculative: What Condi said, translated: 1. "we" (the admin / Cheney / Rumsfeld) had this special Office of Special Plans set up so that they could provide filtered intel to us, "we" only want to see nothing but "facts" and innuendo that support our case to go to war. OSP have some protection, some "plausible deniability" but not enough. So... 2. "We" had Tenet pass the same facts to us as a "slam dunk". Georgey B even coined the term "slam dunk" for Tenet. This allows "Condi" to pin the blame on Tenet (who'd agreed to retire if things got nasty). As for the rest, show me something that proves independent experts from the DOE favored the administration's desired analysis. I can show you incident after incident after incident where DOE, CIA and State Dept intel experts squashed the primary theory supporting the Nuclear WMD smoking gun argument. Who am I to believe? A political appointee? Or the real people whose job it is to make determinations? In this case, I will take the word of the scientist who actually builds nuclear centrifuges over Condeleeza Rice, any day. Not to worry: when Bush loses, there will be hearings and the details revealed will set the "neocon" (I don't even consider Cheney/Wolfowitz/Feith etc as neocons.. rabid-cons perhaps) agenda back decades. The internal bickering between the various conservative factions will be very interesting and entertaining. Eventually, something better will come out of the mess.. perhaps something I can even support.

To: Neocon who wrote (149126)	10/26/2004 4:07:30 PM
From: E	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

One has to laugh. One thing this very 'focussed' reaction of yours has to ignore is the massive evidence that was accumulating in other departments, too, on this question of motivated exclusion of inconvenient facts. I'll just mention (someone may have a link, I have to go paint a bookcase now) the telling case of the highly placed relative (son in law, I believe) of Saddam who had heavy responsibilities in the secret programs, who defected, gave a detailed deposition to the effect that the WMD programs had been terminated, and then, tricked by Saddam, foolishly returned to Baghdad, where Saddam murdered him. His deposition containing descriptions of the programs was published. But the concluding section, which contained the information that the programs described had been cancelled, was... missing! Somebody, after a while, got hold of the original. That's the only reason we know about this particular episode of info-management. So you believe that Clarence Thomas is the most qualified of the justices for the post of Chief Justice, do you, Neo? Edit: Besides 'qualified,' I should have mentioned 'respected by his peers' and 'distinguished,' of course. A 'brilliant' record would be a good thing, too, perhaps? 'Trusted'? 'Articulate'?; though those adjectives define 'qualified,' so maybe they would be redundant. : )