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

To: unclewest who wrote (86864)	11/22/2004 11:10:09 PM
From: Dayuhan	Respond to of 793549

The director of the CIA informed POTUS that WMDs in Iraq are a slam dunk. Are you suggesting that Tenat got his information from DOD rather than the agency he headed, the CIA? I’m told that a fair number of people in that agency wondered where the information came from. Possibly he was saying what he was expected to say. In any event, the debate was never over whether Iraq did or did not have some form of WMD, or whether or not there were ties to al Qaeda. Reducing this, or any significant policy debate, to such binary terms is ridiculous. The debate was over whether Iraq did or did not pose a threat to the US that was powerful and immediate enough to justify a rush to war. The debate was fairly acrimonious, and it has been a major cause of the friction between CIA and State on one hand and the more hawkish neocons on the other. Another major factor in the development of that friction was the question of how difficult it would be - and how may troops would be required - to control post-war Iraq – the neocons said it wouldn’t be a problem; many in the Pentagon disagreed, and were immediately denounced as “perfumed princes” by the think-tank dilettantes that dominate the neocon scene. Another debate was over the desirability of establishing an Iraqi government in exile. The neocons wanted to do that, and they wanted to put an Iranian agent with zero following in Iraq in charge. At least CIA and State got their way on that one, or our problems would be much worse than they already are. CIA and State have undeniably failed in significant ways, but the track record of the neocon hawks hasn’t been spectacular either. Treating this debate as a simple matter of good guys against bad guys – in either direction – would be a huge mistake.