Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Don't Blame Me, I Voted For Kerry -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Dan B. who wrote (73958)	3/1/2006 5:44:06 PM
From: Orcastraiter	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 81568

More proof of cherry picking intelligence: seattletimes.nwsource.com WASHINGTON — U.S. intelligence agencies repeatedly warned the White House beginning more than two years ago that the insurgency in Iraq had deep local roots, was likely to worsen and could lead to civil war, according to former senior intelligence officials who helped craft the reports. Among the warnings was a major study, called a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), completed in October 2003, that concluded that the insurgency was fueled by local conditions — not foreign terrorists — and drew strength from deep grievances, including the presence of U.S. troops. The reports received a cool reception from the White House and the office of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, according to the former officials, who discussed them publicly for the first time. President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Rumsfeld and others continued to describe the insurgency as a containable threat, posed mainly by former supporters of Saddam Hussein, criminals and non-Iraqi terrorists — even as the U.S. intelligence community was warning otherwise. Robert Hutchings, chairman of the National Intelligence Council (NIC) from 2003 to 2005, said the October 2003 study was part of a "steady stream" of dozens of intelligence reports warning Bush and his top lieutenants that the insurgency was intensifying and expanding. "Frankly, senior officials simply weren't ready to pay attention to analysis that didn't conform to their own optimistic scenarios," Hutchings said in a telephone interview. Hutchings said one theme that ran through intelligence analyses as early as 2003 was that there were "signs of incipient civil war." "The invasion and occupation opened issues for which the Iraqi people had no answer," he said, including the role of religion and relations among Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds. The NIC is the intelligence community's foremost group of senior analysts, and Hutchings presided over the drafting of the October 2003 report and other analyses of the insurgency. Wayne White, a veteran State Department intelligence analyst, wrote recently that when it became clear that the NIE would forecast grim prospects for tamping down the insurgency, a senior official "exclaimed rhetorically, 'How can I take this upstairs?' [to then-CIA Director George Tenet]." Oh yeah...the scientific proof: According to the military newspaper Stars and Stripes, a new poll shows that 72 percent of U.S. troops serving in Iraq favor complete withdrawal from that country within a year. news.yahoo.com Orca