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Originally posted by caltour:

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You want more "direct" evidence? Have you just completely forgotten about the lies the Bushmen told us? Have you forgotten how they sold us this war? Have you forgotten how incredibly WRONG they were?

Let me refresh your memory:

1. Bush said Iraq had purchased uranium for nuclear weapons from Nigeria in his State of the Union Address. But he had been informed by intelligence officials months before his speech that the documentary evidence had been forged. U.S. embarassed by fake documents

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To this day, although the direct evidence that Powell referenced was found to be patently false by the IAEA, the British still contend that portions of it are true. I think the final decree by British Intel that the intelligence referenced and other intel left out was "inconclusive". So, if you'll swallow what certain Brits whine about impeachment and the like, I guess you should also swallow this, but I'm sure you'll throw your requisite pair of blinders on and scream that it was all GWB's fault, even though Rice, Powell, Hadley and Tenet all took a fair amount of heat for letting it slip through in his speeches.

Finally, are you so bloody ignorant to entirely wash over that AGAIN, it was the CIA that put forth this evidence? You're telling me that Bush, not Tenet is DIRECTLY responsible for the veracity of EVERY piece of intel that crosses his desk?

If Bush is responsible for anything, he's responsible for being far too loyal to those he believes in at times.

Originally posted by caltour:

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2. Bush led people to believe that Iraq was involved with 9/11. At one point 70% of Americans actually believed this. But he has since admitted that this is not true. Bush backpeddles on connection between Iraq and Al-Quaeda.

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Bush had said, along with Cheney and a SLEW of other people, Democrats included, that they initially felt there was a connection to Al-Qaeda and The Hussein regime and that there had been a number of contacts and meetings. It NEVER said that the 9/11 attacks were planned by Al-Qaeda in conjunction with Hussein. I fully and UTTERLY challenge you to find this.

Finally, if you insist on continuing this, you must also label Hillary Clinton a "Bushman" and a "liar":

"In the four years since the inspectors left, intelligence reports show that Saddam Hussein has worked to rebuild his chemical and biological weap ons stock, his missile delivery capability, and his nuclear program. He has also given aid, comfort, and sanctuary to terrorists, including al Qaeda members .. It is clear, however, that if left unchecked, Saddam Hussein will continue to increase his capacity to wage biological and chemical warfare, and will keep trying to develop nuclear weapons."
- Sen. Hillary Clinton (D, NY), Oct 10, 2002

I would say that the PRESS lead this piece and the Bush Administration did next to nothing to correct it until it was found out that the links were damn-well nonexistant.

I hate to keep pounding on Tenet, as I truly liked him, but the Bush administration asserted what they were told by the CIA and by Tenet directly:

"we have solid reporting of senior level contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda going back a decade"

"credible information indicates that Iraq and al Qaeda have discussed safe haven and reciprocal non-aggression."

So, what do you tell the CIA and the DCI when they come out with this in response to your questions on Iraq and Al-Qaeda? Who else do you go to for intelligence? MI6, Mossad? They had the same dossiers...

Good luck trying to explain how Bush managed to take White-Out to their intel.

So, O Solomon the Wise, just who should US Presidential administrations rely on for their information?

Your aim just flat-out sucks; seriously. As much as I admire and respect our intelligence organizations overall, they really screwed the pooch on certain claims on Iraq, though you're still clamoring all over yourself to denounce Bush for every single mistake that the CIA passed forward, even though both sides of the House and Senate were chanting the same mantra for the most part.

Originally posted by caltour:

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3. Bush insisted (and still insists) that there was a "relationship" between Iraq and Al Qaeda. But the 9/11 Commission released a report saying, among other things, that there was no "collaborative relationship" between Al Qaeda and Iraq. The nature of the relationship seems to be that Al Qaeda asked for help and Iraq refused. Al-Quaeda rebuffed by Iraq

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This is one of the few points you make that I'll agree upon that even after the evidence started piling up, the Bush Administration far and away kept pounding away at this particular point. Again, as I HAVE MENTIONED BEFORE, this sticks in my craw and really aggrivates the Hell out of me. Common sense to a degree should have pushed some level of doubt on this claim after a cursory glance at the differing ideologies at play.

I guess congratulations are in order that you've managed to pull a complete victory flag out of your ass one ONE single point you've managed to toss up and one that I've constantly agreed with.

Originally posted by caltour:

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4. Bush insisted that Iraq posessed weapons of mass destruction but his "evidence" consisted mostly of forged documents, plagiarised student papers Plagiarized student papers , and vague satellite photos. The United Nations was on the ground in Iraq and could find nothing. After extensive searches Bush was finally forced to admit that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction. No WMDs in Iraq

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BullFREAKINsh!t. You're intentionally ignoring tons of dual-purpose equipment that CIA and UN counts kept mentioning in their reviews, missing tallies of toxins from the UN counts themselves, testimonies from former associates of Hussein that defected/fled to other countries, Mossad intel, MI6 intel, Quasay Hussein's claims to a Jordanian diplomat during a dinner...

There was a bloody ream of evidence FAR more compelling that the fodder you've managed to try and prop up as the bulk of US evidence of Iraqi wrongdoing. Dig around in the search feature here on any particular former post of mine on this topic and it'll shut your half-assed attempt down on this point. Hell, dig through the UNIMOVAC, UNSCO and CIA reports that can be found on the Web.

Now, did the reams of compelling evidence ultimately turn out to be wrong, off-base or inconclusive? Absolutely and that's the entire crux of the reasoning behind the Iraqi war and why the CIA is in one Hell of a fix:

Given the intelligence in had at the time, the wrong decision was made for what were believed to ultimately consist of all the right reasons.

Knowing what we know today, the grounds for a "pre-emptive" invasion were close to non-existant based on exhaustive research and findings and I'm sure Iraq would have been left just as many liberals like yourself seem to prefer it regardless of the circumstances; destitute, broke, corrupt with a dictator at it's helm occasionally engaging in fits of genocide.

Originally posted by caltour:

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5. Bush wanted so much to convince people of the need to invade Iraq that the White House set up a secret team in the Pentagon to create evidence. "The Office of Special Plans routinely rewrote the CIA's intelligence estimates on Iraq's weapons programs, removing caveats such as "likely," "probably" and "may" as a way of depicting the country as an imminent threat." They also used unreliable sources to create reports that ultimately proved to be false. The Lie Factory

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This is a Rumsfeld outfit, not a Bush outfit; get your facts straight. I've been yelling for his (Rumsfeld) replacement for quite some time and would LOVE to seem him go; doubly now if any of this is indeed true and can be quantified...

...but I'm sure the Black Helicopters will keep the press away.

Originally posted by caltour:

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6. Bush said that aluminum tubes imported by Iraq were intended for use in a uranium centrifuge to create nuclear weapons.

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Again, the CIA pushed this and Bush talked to it...

Example: Someone unwittingly tells your wife a boatload of BS. She repeats it to you. Is it your wife's fault that you trusted her word when she has proven fairly reliable in the past?

Originally posted by caltour:

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These were the only physical evidence he had against Iraq.

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BS. Read something other than USAToday. There were masses of dual-use equipment and TONS of missing toxins on what were known to be reliable tallies (that came from Hussein's own documentation that the UN teams supposedly agreed with). Try again.

Originally posted by caltour:

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But it turns out this evidence had been rejected by the Energy Department and other intelligence agencies long before Bush used them in his speeches.
The tubes were never a threat.

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Correct, so who threw the herring back out to fish with? Once again, it was the CIA. There were references in a declassified NIE (National Intelligence Estimate) that clearly mentions that though they could be re-engineered for centerfuge use and definitely remain suspect as dual-purpose equipment, the most likely scenario is that they were going to be used for rockets.

Again, the CIA has a politically neutral charter and they made the best calls they could given their capabilities at the time. Was it a sub-par performance? Yes.

The difference between you and I is that you scratch anything and you see a Republican consipracy behind it 9form what I can discern so far from practically ALL of your discourses). I see a series of circumstances, misinterpretations, sloppy intel, poor funding and a hawkish administration intent on ending any doubt about a rogue state's WMD abilities in light of the security concerns of 9/11; a state that had screwed around for a decade on the issue until the ambiguity was finally unacceptable.

How nice of you to turn a VERY complex tale into a bumper-sticker rant that is akin to the semi-evolved, half-wit "Bush Lied; Troops Died" slogan.

Originally posted by caltour:

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Seen it all before? What's different now is that we have written corroboration from British intelligence that the Bushmen engaged in these falsifications knowingly and intentionally . Even a half-assed investigation would color this picture in for you. Only the most extreme partisanship can keep you from admitting that.

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Fact-checking at the CIA will definitely take a new shape and format in the post Iraqi invasion world. No doubt about it, but again, you're off-target. Most of the finger-pointing goes back to Tenet and the CIA. This isn't partisan scape-goating; it's a fact and one that I find VERY unfortunate that whoever grabs the next US presidency will have a LOT of fear, doubt and uncertainty on the quality and veracity of intel that they are presented...

There's a bigger picture here that you are missing.

Originally posted by caltour:

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WHO ARE YOU REPLYING TO HERE? IS THERE SOME OTHER THREAD THAT YOU ARE REPLYING TO IN A PARALLEL RED-STATE UNIVERSE, AND YOU JUST GOT THE THREADS MIXED UP FOR A SECOND? BECAUSE IN THIS THREAD, NOBODY IS ARGUING ABOUT WHETHER IT MADE SENSE TO HAVE WAR PLANS. PLEASE STOP IT.

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Just double-checking to make sure that you actually were aware of the salient fact that war plans were drawn up on Iraq in a time before Bush, Jr. and that he didn't grab a box of crayons and start scribbling on a napkin on the morning of 9/12...

Originally posted by caltour:

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This justifies the deceit?

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Absolutely not, though I take issue of much that you see as "deceit" for obvious reasons that you refuse to see past on your fervor.

Originally posted by caltour:

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I'm really getting the sense that you believe the ends (war in Iraq) justifies whatever means Bush used to get there, no matter how illegal.

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Not at all; some means, yes, as I wouldn't be too squeamish on dipping into the "grey" spaces of law on a loose cannon that killed over a million people in wars and acts of genocide over 2 decades and until we found out otherwise, was considered by most of the planet to be Public Enemy #1 on the WMD watch list.

However, means that has our politicians knowingly and purposefully flat-out lying to the American people on all points, no way. Honor and integrity are the two things that you take with you on your jounrey through life; I protect them rather fiercely and would much rather be proben wrong and "fold up shop" any day of the year than being proved a intentionally dishonorable liar due to circumstances of my own making.

Tangent: Didn't Capone get nailed on tax evasion instead of the slew of murders he facilitated, or are you the type that would be peeing all over yourself in order to defend such slime from a joke of a charge like this? Just curious.

Originally posted by caltour:

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You think that the most rigidly controlled, hard-driving, well-funded, and ruthless administration in history...

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Ruthless? Do some reading on Teddy Roosevelt. Hard-driving and well-funded? I'll give you marks for that.

Originally posted by caltour:

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is not capable of exerting whatever influence is necessary to manipulate the content of U.S. government intelligence assessments? How innocent your world must be. You believe in unicorns, too?

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Manipulate information in the amount and magnatude that you bare-face suggest?

HELL NO!

Originally posted by caltour:

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Oh. So the London Sunday Times, the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, and a hundred other mainstream news outlets are wild-eyed conspiracy theorists. Gotcha.

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"I have spent half my life trying to get away from journalism, but I am still mired in it -- a low trade and a habit worse than heroin, a strange, seedy world full of misfits and drunkards and failures."

- Hunter S. Thompson

Not all, but there's a fair amount of sensationalism that is peddled to the masses.