Originally posted by JaTo:
Originally posted by caltour:
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



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'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?



How do you know the CIA originally presented this intel to Bush as hard fact? Isn't it more plausible (in light of extremely cautious habits of the intelligence community, and the warmongering habits of the Bushmen), that the yellowcake story was originally reported by the CIA as potentially important, but largely unconfirmed, and it was later transformed by the Bushmen into "hard fact" to support their war aims? (All you need is a loyal team player like Tenant to make that happen.) Maybe the CIA never meant that info to be taken as anything more than carefully limited speculation.

And please stop trying to draw a false distinction between Bush and the Bushmen. Powell, Tenet, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Perle, Wolfowitz, they are all on the same team. Bush has to answer for everything they do (when they are on duty), because he's the boss.

Originally posted by JaTo:
You're telling me that Bush, not Tenet is DIRECTLY responsible for the veracity of EVERY piece of intel that crosses his desk?



No, but he is responsible for properly interpreting the info he's given, and recognizing when the evidence is too thin to support the conclusions.

In the run-up to the Iraq war, the British were working VERY closely with U.S. decisionmakers. By all accounts, they worked hand in hand. And the Brits now say the Bushmen were inventing and spinning the "facts and intel" to support the decision to go to war. It's an outrage, it's an abuse of power, and it's illegal. It's an impeachable offense.

Originally posted by JaTo:
Originally posted by caltour:
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.



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.



Challenge accepted. I don't even have to work very hard: just read the BBC article I linked, if you want to see a few examples of Bushmen trying to convince us of a connection between Iraq and 9/11. Here are two examples just from that article:

"As recently as last Sunday, Vice-President Dick Cheney, refused to rule out a link between Iraq and 11 September, saying "we don't know".

"We will have struck a major blow right at the heart of the base, if you will, the geographic base of the terrorists who've had us under assault now for many years, but most especially on 9/11."

You know as well as I do that Bush's cronies (especially Cheney) spoke like that for months in the pre-war period. They usually said it in a way that could be re-interpreted (or denied or spun) later on, when the truth became known. But DON'T deny they were trying to convince us of the connection. They succeeded in doing so, at least with 70% of the population.

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



I wouldn't trust Hilary any farther than I could throw her. She is an opportunist and schemer, just like Bush. Same with Slick Willie, Algore, and John Edwards too. None of them really stood up against the war when it would have made a difference. All turds.

Originally posted by JaTo:
I would say that . . .[the] Bush Administration did next to nothing to correct it until it was found out that the links were damn-well nonexistant.


What's this? JaTo admitting that Bush lied by omission? Fine, Iâ??ll take that.

Originally posted by JaTo:
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...




Did they? Remember the statement in the British memo: "the intelligence and the facts were being fixed around the policy." That summarizes the British intel community's analysis about the Bushmen's true intentions and motivations.

Some of our "coalition" allies may have agreed with the Bushmen in advance that they would all pretend Iraq was a massive, imminent threat, in order to appease the world's only superpower, and to get a big fat slice of the war pie. That doesn't mean that their own intel actually supported that conclusion. One thing is certain: we will never know the whole truth about other countries' intel re: Iraq.

Originally posted by JaTo:
Good luck trying to explain how Bush managed to take White-Out to their intel.



Who says he did? Have either of us ever seen the classified intel reports from other countries? Nothing to argue about until we do.

Originally posted by JaTo:
So, O Solomon the Wise, just who should US Presidential administrations rely on for their information? . . . 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.



There you go again. "Blame the CIA, don't blame Bush." Absolute nonsense.

First of all, yours is a "straw man" argument, i.e. an argument that does not address the issue at hand, but is just set up so that it can be quickly knocked down. In other words, a distraction.

NO ONE IS ARGUING ABOUT WHETHER THE CIA DID A GOOD JOB. WE ARE ARGUING ABOUT WHETHER BUSH MISLED US.

As a leader, Bush is responsible for applying good judgement to the facts at hand. He should never just adopt the conclusions of his handlers and minions. And you should not try to excuse his disastrous decisions by arguing that the CIA gave him bad intel. He was responsible for looking at the evidence and weighing it for sufficiency. (BTW, I think he did weigh the evidence, saw that it was ridiculously thin, and said "what the hell, boys, we're goin' in anyway!).

Just look at the shabby case his team made for war. It was, as the British memo said, a terribly weak case, much of it absolutely false. It was never strong enough to justify the war, even if you took it at face value. Which no sensible person would do, given the spotty nature of the evidence and the CIA's own admission that they had no real good intel from inside Iraq.

It was embarassing for the Bushmen to claim that WMDs existed when our own intel community admitted they really didn't know if they existed or not (Tenant, the Shill-for-hire, was nevertheless willing to blurt out that "slam dunk" nonsense). It was shameful for them to assert that the aluminum tubes were for WMDs, when the Energy Department had already TOLD them that was impossible. It was sick for them to insinuate a connection between Iraq and Al-Quaeda. And on and on.

Originally posted by JaTo:
Originally posted by caltour:
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

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.



Agreed.

Originally posted by JaTo:
Originally posted by caltour:
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

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...

All of which should have been balanced against the one thing we knew for sure: it was altogether possible that Saddam had already decommissioned/sold/disposed of the WMDs. That was always a sensible option for a country that was inevitably facing UN inspections. It turned out to be what (most likely) happened.

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:

Yes, it turned out to be way wrong. Why? Because it was "compelling" but not sufficient . By our legal standards, almost all of that evidence would have been laughed out of court. We just didn't have a case.

Given the intelligence in had at the time, the wrong decision was made . . . Knowing what we know today, the grounds for a "pre-emptive" invasion were close to non-existant . . .



Agreed.

Originally posted by JaTo:
Originally posted by caltour:
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

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...



Agreed.

Originally posted by JaTo:
Originally posted by caltour:
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.

Correct . . .



Agreed.

Originally posted by JaTo:
Originally posted by caltour:
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.

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...



Wait a goddamned minute! I pointed out CRUCIAL new evidence: the Brits thought Bush was falsifiying facts and intel to get the public to support his war. And how do you respond? Do you address the issue and acknowledge that our closest ally thought Bush was deceiving us? No. You go on about "fact-checking at the CIA"? Congratulations; you have taken â??dodging the issueâ? to new lows.

Originally posted by JaTo:
Originally posted by caltour:
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?

Manipulate information in the amount and magnatude that you bare-face suggest? HELL NO!



OK, so what amount and magnitude of manipulation are you acknowledging here? And how much is too much?

Now, finally, we are getting to the heart of the matter.