BL suggesting genocide in the other thread?

What the f### are you talking about.  I never suggested genocide.  Prove it.

I guess BL and Mike B still haven't learned.

Learned what?  To agree with everything you say?  To roll over and play dead when the least amount of threat appears on the horizon? To give in to threats and reliquish our freedoms? To not question the party line? What?

[quote=babbling looney]

BL suggesting genocide in the other thread?

What the f### are you talking about.  I never suggested genocide.  Prove it.

I guess BL and Mike B still haven't learned.

Learned what?  To agree with everything you say?  To roll over and play dead when the least amount of threat appears on the horizon? To give in to threats and reliquish our freedoms? To not question the party line? What?

[/quote]

BL,

In one of the post Katrina threads you suggested genocide of those in New Orleans.  Kind of a sad commentary.

Mike B your full of sh*t.  I too was under stop loss.  When you are held beyond your contract and are force to serve it's force service.  Many reservists who were duped by the army after serving 8 years received recall stupid; not one's who were recalled prior to their 8 yrs being up and having stop loss authority over them.  Secondly, you need to study the US Code on the ability to recall reserves, the army absolutely stretched it extraordinarily to do what they did.  Open your eyes asshole.  And no, France did not say he had WMDs and yes they did say he had the abiliity.  The ability is the intrepretation, the inspectors found no evidence and yet we were all to willing to disregard their findings as further proof of not being able to believe the facts. 
Agencies that countered Bush's belief:  I already said one - the State Dept. intelligence service did.  There are absolute counters to findings w/i the CIA, DIA that also discounted the notion he had them.

Anyway, my argument isn't that we went to war there per se... it's this ass of a president and his crony Rumsfeld couldn't run it any more f'd up than they have and they continue to go down the same path they have from day 1 w/o regard to outside experts like I mentioned before who have explain why they are screwing it up so bad.  And if you want to get into the battle plan of it, bring it on - I have more than first hand experience in this game; a resume I am confident you can't come close too.

In one of the post Katrina threads you suggested genocide of those in New Orleans.  Kind of a sad commentary

Bulls##t. I did not suggest genocide.

http://www.carnegieendowment.org/static/npp/Iraq_Summary_Tab les.pdf

George Bush has made some false claims as part of the campaign to get support for war on Iraq. For example, at Camp David on September 7, 2002 he cited a report from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) saying that "a report came out of the Atomic -- the IAEA -- that they were six months away from developing a weapon. I don't know what more evidence we need."<?:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

Yet, as the Washington Post reports (October 22, 2002 or alternative location), "The IAEA did issue a report in 1998, around the time weapons inspectors were denied access to Iraq for the final time, but the report made no such assertion. It declared: 'Based on all credible information to date, the IAEA has found no indication of Iraq having achieved its program goal of producing nuclear weapons or of Iraq having retained a physical capability for the production of weapon-useable nuclear material or having clandestinely obtained such material.' The report said Iraq had been six to 24 months away from nuclear capability before the 1991 Gulf War."

Most observers believe that the threat is less than it was in 1991, when Iraq invaded Kuwait. The former head of the UN inspection team, Scott Ritter, states that 90 to 95 percent of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction were confirmed destroyed and that there is no evidence that Iraq retained any of its weapons or capacity for producing them. Because there have been no inspections since 1998, no one knows for sure just what Iraq has. Since 1991, Iraq has not used weapons of mass destruction nor engaged in war with any other country. Due to 12 years of UN sanctions, Iraq is now an impoverished country, making a large-scale weapons program far less feasible, Ritter said.

Few countries have had 93 per cent of their major weapons capability destroyed. This was reported by Rolf Ekeus, the chairman of the United Nations body authorised to inspect and destroy Iraq's arsenal following the Gulf War in 1991. UN inspectors certified that 817 out of the 819 Iraqi long-range missiles were destroyed. In 1999, a special panel of the Security Council recorded that Iraq's main biological weapons facilities (supplied originally by the US and Britain) 'have been destroyed and rendered harmless.'

As for Saddam Hussein's "nuclear threat," the International Atomic Energy Agency reported that Iraq's nuclear weapons programme had been eliminated "efficiently and effectively". The IAEA inspectors still travel to Iraq and in January [2002] reported full Iraqi compliance. Blair and Bush never mention this when they demand that "the weapons inspectors are allowed back". Nor do they remind us that the UN inspectors were never expelled by the Iraqis, but withdrawn only after it was revealed they had been infiltrated by US intelligence."

the Bush administration has for now dropped what had been a central argument used by supporters of military action against Baghdad: Iraq's links to al Qaeda and other terrorist organisations.

Although administration officials say they are still trying to develop a case linking Saddam Hussein to global terrorism, the CIA has yet to find convincing evidence, according to senior intelligence officials and outside experts with knowledge of discussions within the US Government.

Analysts who have scrutinised photographs, communications intercepts and information from foreign informants say they cannot validate two prominent allegations made by the government: links between President Saddam and al Qaeda members who have taken refuge in northern Iraq, and an April, 2001, meeting in Prague between September 11 hijacker Mohamed Atta and an Iraqi intelligence agent

The CIA Director George Tenet has become the unlikely source of embarrassment to President George W Bush, undermining Mr Bush's warning of catastrophic threats from Saddam Hussein and exposing disagreements within the intelligence world about the nature of the danger.

In a letter to Congress, Mr Tenet said: "Baghdad for now appears to be drawing a line short of conducting terrorist attacks with conventional or chemical and biological warfare against the United States."

Mr Tenet says that only if attacked would Iraq use whatever weapons of mass destruction it has.

George Bush said in his Cincinnati speech to the American people: "Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof - the smoking gun - that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud."

Assessing intentions

A central issue here is one of assessing Iraq's intentions. Numerous reports over the past few months have detailed its capabilities, though even some of those are in dispute.

Think tanks have put out several summaries. The British Government added new detail with its own dossier. The CIA has this month joined in with a document of its own.

Mr Tenet's assessment, however, deals more with intentions than with hardware.

And it raises the question whether President Bush has been exaggerating the threat to justify military action.

In March 1999, UNSCOM, reported on the state of the weapons inspections program to date and revealed the following:

The IAEA has been able, in the course of its eight years of extensive inspection activities, to develop a technically coherent picture of Iraq's clandestine nuclear programme covering the stages from the production and procurement of natural uranium compounds, through Iraq's development of enrichment processes, to the design and experimental work for the eventual weaponization of highly enriched uranium. Iraq's programme had been very well funded and was aimed at the development and production of a small arsenal of nuclear weapons, but there were no indications that Iraq had achieved its programme's objective. Most of the IAEA activities involving the destruction, removal and rendering harmless of the components of Iraq's nuclear weapons programme which to date have been revealed and destroyed were completed by the end of 1992. In February 1994, the IAEA completed the removal from Iraq of all weapon-usable nuclear material essentially research reactor fuel. On the basis of its findings, the Agency is able to state that there is no indication that Iraq possesses nuclear weapons or any meaningful amounts of weapon-usable nuclear material or that Iraq has retained any practical capability (facilities or hardware) for the production of such material. [Emphasis Added]

... With regard to ... verification of the material balance of proscribed missiles and related operational assets, UNSCOM was able to destroy or otherwise account for: (a) 817 out of 819 imported operational missiles of proscribed range; (b) all declared mobile launchers for proscribed Al Hussein class missiles, including 14 operational launchers; the disposition of 9 of the 10 imported trailers used for the indigenous production of mobile launchers; and the destruction of 56 fixed missile launch sites; (c) 73 to 75 chemical and biological warheads of the declared 75 operational special warheads for Al Hussein class missiles; 83 of the 107 imported and some 80 of the 103 indigenously produced conventional warheads declared by Iraq to be in its possession at the time of the adoption of resolution 687.

... UNSCOM has supervised or been able to certify the destruction,, removal or rendering harmless of large quantities of chemical weapons (CW), their components and major chemical weapons production equipment as follows: (a) over 88,000 filled and unfilled chemical munitions; (b) over 600 tonnes of weaponized and bulk CW agents; (c) some 4,000 tonnes of precursor chemicals; (d) some 980 pieces of key production equipment; (e) some 300 pieces of analytical instruments. The prime CW development and production complex in Iraq was dismantled and closed under UNSCOM supervision and other identified facilities have been put under monitoring.

UNSCOM ordered and supervised the destruction of Iraq's main declared BW production and development facility, Al Hakam. Some 60 pieces of equipment from three other facilities involved in proscribed BW activities as well as some 22 tonnes of growth media for BW production collected from four other facilities were also destroyed. As a result, the declared facilities of Iraq's BW programme have been destroyed and rendered harmless.  ... in spite of well-known difficult circumstances, UNSCOM and IAEA have been effective in uncovering and destroying many elements of Iraq's proscribed weapons programmes in accordance with the mandate provided by the Security Council. It is the panel's understanding that IAEA has been able to devise a technically coherent picture of Iraq's nuclear weapons programme. UNSCOM has achieved considerable progress in establishing material balances of Iraq's proscribed weapons. Although important elements still have to be resolved, the bulk of Iraq's proscribed weapons programmes has been eliminated.

In addition, Professor Glen Rangwala, a lecturer in politics at Cambridge University in Britain provides detailed analysis of the state of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Amongst many things he notes that

If the allegations that Iraq possessed a stockpile of illicit weapons were to be true, then the UK and US would need to present credible evidence that Iraq had managed to stabilise its chemical and biological agents to a greater extent than it is previously thought to have done. The UK dossier does not make this claim, except as an unsubstantiated assertion that Iraq had "the knowledge and capability to add stabiliser to nerve agent and other chemical warfare agents which would prevent such decomposition." The fact that this assertion falls short of the claim that Iraq actually achieved the stabilisation of its chemical agents can be taken as an acknowledgement that no evidence has been discovered - after over 7 years of intrusive inspections and 11 years of intelligence gathering - to demonstrate Iraq's retention of stabilised chemical or biological agents.

Furthermore, the claims about Iraq possessing a stockpile of biological weapons created before 1991 may suffer from the same problems as discussed for the notion of a stockpile of chemical weapons, above.

—       Glen Rangwala, Claims and evaluations of Iraq's proscribed weapons, February 6, 2003

—       Perhaps one of the biggest revelations (and one of the most silent in the mainstream media) has been how perhaps the most key defector, Saddam Hussein's son-in-law, General Hussein Kamel, the former director of Iraq's Military Industrialization Corporation had stated categorically in 1995 that "All weapons - biological, chemical, missile, nuclear were destroyed." He said this in an interview to UNSCOM and IAEA after he defected to Jordan in in August 1995. When he had returned to Iraq in 1996 he was assassinated. He was no friend of the Iraq regime, for in that interview, he said "I can state publicly I will work against the regime." Yet on the issue of weapons of mass destruction, he is clear that Iraq destroyed these weapons after the Gulf War.

As another common example also reported often by the mainstream media, Iraq supposedly kicked out the U.N. weapons inspectors in 1998.

Iraqi intelligence was successful in intercepting and recording CIA engineers in Iraq as part of the inspection teams.  They also were aware of the Israeli intelligence assisting the inspectors.  What is never mentioned is the United States in attempts to provoke Iraqi non-compliance, repeatedly sought to inspect the headquarters of Saddam Hussein’s personal security facilities.  As a sovereign nation and fully aware of the US desire to oust him as leader of Iraq, it is no surprise that such access was consistently denied.

By Jessica T. Mathews and Jeff Miller

Published: March 31, 2004

The failure to find weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in Iraq is frequently portrayed as the result of either intelligence failures or misrepresentation of the intelligence by others. In fact, both were involved. It appears that a third factor was involved as well: misrepresentation of intelligence by the intelligence community itself.

One week before lawmakers were to vote on the use of force in Iraq, the CIA released an unclassified version of its just-completed National Intelligence Estimate (NIE). As the intelligence community's definitive judgments on key issues, NIEs are always important documents on which great care is expended. However, this NIE was unusually important because it was the authoritative assessment of the Iraqi threat available to members of Congress on which to base a decision whether to support or oppose a war.

A close comparison of the unclassified version (CIA White Paper: "Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction Programs," published in October 2002) and the original classified NIE (parts of which were declassified and released after the war), reveals striking differences. In addition to changes presumably made to protect sensitive sources and methods, the differences are of two types. Some convey the impression that the intelligence community was much more confident and more united in its views than it actually was. Others appear designed to portray a sense of heightened threat, and particularly of a threat that could touch the U.S. homeland. Sentences and phrases in the classified NIE expressing uncertainty were deleted while new formulations alluding to gathering danger were added.

The words "we judge" and "we assess" were deleted from five key findings of the classified document. For example, the classified version read: "We judge that Iraq has continued its weapons of mass destruction (WMD) programs." The unclassified version stated: "Iraq has continued its weapons of mass destruction (WMD) programs." The classified NIE opined: "We judge Iraq has some lethal and incapacitating BW agents." In the unclassified version, this was a certainty: "Iraq has some lethal and incapacitating BW agents." The classified version expressed the view: "We assess that Baghdad has begun renewed production of mustard, sarin, GF (cyclosarin) and VX." The unclassified version was unequivocal: "Baghdad has begun renewed production of chemical warfare agents." In each case, uncertainties turned into fact.

The unclassified version had no reference to the dissenting opinions of the Department of Energy, U.S. Air Force, or the extensive dissenting views of the Department of State's Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) on Iraq's nuclear weapons program and its attempts to acquire aluminum tubes. Instead, where there was agency disagreement, the unclassified version used the phrase "most analysts assess" or "most analysts believe." Only on one occasion did the unclassified version mention the reason why "some" analysts disagreed. We now know that entire government agencies rejected many of what were portrayed as consensus judgments and that they held less alarmist views of Iraqi behavior.

A summary box that assigned confidence levels to key judgments was expunged. Only in the classified NIE did the intelligence community reveal that it had "low confidence" in its ability to assess: when Saddam would use WMD; whether he would engage in clandestine attacks against the United States; and, whether he would share chemical or biological weapons with Al Qaeda. The judgments themselves, also omitted, were that the intelligence community believed Saddam was unlikely to engage in such risky activity unless he was provoked by fear of regime change; in other words, unless he faced imminent attack.

The following excerpts detail more of the striking differences between the two documents. They raise a disturbing question: why the director of central intelligence would release a document purporting to reflect the consensus judgment of the intelligence agencies that distorted those views in highly significant ways.

In recent congressional testimony, CIA director George Tenet asserted: "You have the confidence to know that when I believed somebody was misconstruing intelligence I said something about it." (3/9/04) In this case it appears that he misconstrued the available intelligence himself.

Key sentences omitted from the unclassified version:

Material added to the unclassified version (additions italicized):

However, some omissions arguably make the unclassified version less alarmist than the original (information that was only in the classified version is italicized):

Jessica Mathews is president of the Carnegie Endowment and Jeff Miller is a researcher in the president's office.

By Joseph Cirincione

Published: April 01, 2005

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The president’s commission on intelligence delivered half a report. Like the colonel played by Jack Nicholson in "A Few Good Men," the commission acted as if America can’t handle the truth. The commissioners would have us believe that those who provided the false intelligence were solely to blame, and the senior political leaders who ordered and presented the claims to the public were passive victims. Conservative pundits have quickly declared, "case closed," and urge us to focus on rearranging the deck chairs on the intelligence ship. But buried deep inside the report is evidence that contradicts the commission’s own conclusions and raises serious questions about their recommendations. Most damning is the tale of two CIA analysts who were removed from their positions for "causing waves" when they questioned the reliability of the defector known as "Curveball."

This story only appears 200 pages into the report. It is at the very end of the Iraq section (pg. 192) after Conclusion 26 that finds no evidence of politicization of the intelligence.

An analyst with WINPAC (the CIA’s Weapons Intelligence, Nonproliferation and Arms Control Center) was in Iraq in the summer and fall of 2003 and reported serious doubts about the reliability of Curveball’s claims that Saddam built mobile biological labs and conducted biowarfare experiments. We now know that the analyst was correct. Curveball lied. There were no mobile biolabs or bioweapons of any kind. The commission reports that in late 2003, the CIA did not want to admit that "Curveball was a fabricator…because of concerns about how this would look to the ‘Seventh Floor’ and to "downtown.’" Instead, says the commission, the analyst was "read the riot act’ by his office director who accused him of ‘making waves’ and being ‘biased.’" He was kicked out of WINPAC. The same punishment was meted out to a chemical weapons analyst in Iraq who pressed for a reassessment of the CIA’s claims of a large-scale CW program. He, too, was forced to leave WINPAC.

To most reasonable observers, this would be a clear case of senior management not wanting to change a threat assessment that was heavily used by the White House "downtown." Political considerations trumped the findings from the professional analysts. However, the commission does not agree. . They label this "bad management" and a "failure of tradecraft."

No Evidence?

Only by applying this tortured logic is the commission able to reach Conclusion 26, "The Intelligence Community did not make or change any analytic judgments in response to political pressure to reach a particular conclusion.” The commission chairmen say they found "absolutely no instance" in which anyone reported feeling pressure to change an assessment.

The Los Angeles Times notes in an April 1 editorial, "Somehow, the panel must have missed the intelligence agents who told reporters for The Times on several prewar occasions that they thought their product was being politicized and that they were pushed to provide evidence to support the Bush administration’s claims." The panel must have also forgotten (even though it cites the article from the Washington Post December 9, 2004 in footnote 860) about the lawsuit filed by an analyst who said his superiors at the CIA "insisted that Plaintiff falsify his reporting" and when he refused, he was removed from his position. These claims may not be correct, but they are not even mentioned by the commission. In fact, their existence is denied.

The panel did note on page 11, "It is hard to deny the conclusion that intelligence analysts worked in an environment that did not encourage skepticism about the conventional wisdom." Further on page 14, "In ways both subtle and not so subtle, the daily reports [to the president] seemed to be ‘selling’ intelligence—in order to keep its customers, or at least the First Customer, interested."

Despite the "gossamer nature of evidence" regarding Iraq allegedly importing uranium from Niger, which President Bush infamously referenced in his 2003 State of the Union address, the Department of Energy concluded that Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear weapons program. A senior intelligence officer quoted in the report noted on page 75 that DOE’s "position had ‘made sense politically but not substantively’ and that one analyst said "DOE didn’t want to come out before the war and say [Iraq] was not reconstituting."

Finally, if it truly was management and tradecraft failures that skewed the intelligence, then why didn’t these failures skew the intelligence prior to 2002? Same management, same tradecraft, but the estimates in 1998, 1999, 2000 and 2001 were decidedly more cautious and more accurate. It is only in 2002 that the estimates make several unexplained dramatic leaps in findings and certainty. The Carnegie Endowment study, "WMD in Iraq: Evidence and Implications" detailed this pattern in January 2003.

The dots are all there, but the commission did not connect them. The commission did not question the president or the vice-president, or apparently any senior official outside the intelligence agencies. Thus, we do not know what happened in the repeated meetings Vice President Cheney had with CIA officials. We do not know what impact the vice-president assertions of "absolute certainty" of an Iraqi nuclear program in August and September 2003 had on the development of the deeply flawed October National Intelligence Estimate. We do not know how the intelligence activities of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Deputy Secretary Stephen Cambone and Under Secretary Douglas Feith impacted the assessments because the commission never examined their work. They could have done all this, even with their purposely narrow mandate to examine only the performance of the intelligence agencies. They did not.

Thus, we do not have an adequate basis for judging the validity of their recommendations. Is one of the keys to "push" the intelligence community more, as the commission recommends, or was it too much pushing by the White House that caused the problem? We cannot say. The report may have some useful findings and recommendations, but until we get the whole truth we cannot have confidence in many of the changes now being implemented.

The truth is out there. And we can handle it.

09 June 2003

To add to Blair's woes, Paul Wolfowitz, US deputy Defense secretary and the man credited with being the architect of the Iraqi war, told American magazine Vanity Fair last week that the Bush administration only focused on alleged WMDs because it was a politically convenient means of justifying the removal of Saddam. 'For bureaucratic reasons we settled on one issue, weapons of mass destruction,' the leading neo-conservative hawk said, 'because it was the one reason everyone could agree on'.

Then to cap it all, a secret transcript of a discussion between US Secretary of State Colin Powell and Foreign Secretary Jack Straw came to light on Friday showing that, even while they were telling the world that Saddam was armed and dangerous, the pair were worried that the claims about Iraq's WMD program couldn't be proved. Powell reportedly told Straw he hoped that when the facts came out they wouldn't 'explode in their faces'.

So how on earth did the British people come to believe Saddam was sitting in one of his palaces with an itchy trigger finger poised above a button marked 'WMD'? And if there were no WMDs, then why did we fight the war? The answer lies with Rumsfeld.

With September 11 as his ideological backdrop, Rumsfeld decided in autumn 2001 to establish a new intelligence agency, independent of the CIA and the Pentagon, called the Office of Special Plans (OSP). He put his deputy, Wolfowitz, in charge. The pair were dissatisfied with the failure of the CIA among others to provide firm proof of both Saddam's alleged WMD arsenal and links to al-Qaeda.

Regime change in Iraq had been a long-term goal of Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz. Even before Bush took over the presidency in September 2000 the pair were planning 'regime change' in Iraq. As founders of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), one of the USA's most extreme neo-con think-tanks, the pair were behind what has been described as the 'blueprint' for US global domination -- a document called Rebuilding America's Defenses.

Other founders of the PNAC include: Vice-President Dick Cheney; Bush's younger brother Jeb; and Lewis Libby, Cheney's chief of staff. The Rebuilding America's Defenses. document stated: 'The United States has for decades sought to play a more permanent role in Gulf regional security. While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein.'

The PNAC document supports a 'blueprint for maintaining global US pre-eminence, precluding the rise of a great-power rival and shaping the international security order in line with American principles and interests'.

It also calls for America to 'fight and decisively win multiple, simultaneous major theatre wars' and describes US armed forces as 'the calvary on the new American frontier'. The UN is sidelined as well, with the PNAC saying that peace-keeping missions demand 'American political leadership rather than that of the United Nations'.

That was the policy blueprint, but to deliver it Rumsfeld turned to the Office of Special Plans. Put simply, the OSP was told to come up with the evidence of WMD to give credence to US military intervention.

But what do conventional intelligence experts make of the OSP? Colonel Patrick Lang is a former chief of human intelligence for the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) in the 1990s. He was also the DIA's chief of Middle East intelligence and was regularly in Iraq. He said of the OSP : 'This office had a great deal of influence in a number of places in Washington in a way that seemed to me to be excessive and rather ill-advised.

'The regular organizations of the intelligence community have very rigorous rules for how you evaluate information and resources, and tend to take a conservative view of analytic positions because they're going to dictate government decisions.

'That wasn't satisfactory in Secretary Rumsfeld's Pentagon so he set up a separate office to review this data, and the people in this office, although they're described as intelligence people, are by and large congressional staffers. They seemed to me not to have deceived intentionally but to have seen in the data what they believe is true. I think it's a very risky thing to do.'

Most of the OSP intelligence was based on debriefings with Iraqi exiles -- a tactic, says Lang, which is highly questionable as the exiles have clear, personal agendas that might taint their claims. But even if the US was using selective intelligence to justify war against Iraq, does that mean that Tony Blair was also being briefed with OSP intelligence ? According to Melvin Goodman, veteran CIA analyst and current professor of national security at the National War College in Washington, the answer is an unequivocal 'yes'. Goodman says that there is 'no question' that Blair was 'brought along at the highest level' by Bush and Rumsfeld, adding that the Prime Minister was 'vulnerable because of his own evangelical bent' over bringing democracy to the Middle East.

That US view has been corroborated by British intelligence sources who have confirmed to the Sunday Herald that the UK government was being influenced by the selective intelligence emanating from the OSP. Senior UK intelligence sources representing a range of views from across all the spying services said: 'There was absolute skepticism among British intelligence over the invasion of Iraq. The intelligence we were working on was basically of a technical nature coming from satellite surveillance and eavesdropping. The only real Humint (human intelligence from agents) that we had was from Iraqi exiles and we were skeptical of their motives.'

It was this 'tainted' information which was used to compile the crucial dossier on Iraq which Blair presented to MPs last September. The most sensational part of the dossier claimed that Iraq could deploy chemical and biological weapons within 45 minutes -- a claim based on one single Iraqi defector. A British intelligence source said: 'The information had been lying around for ages. The problem was we didn't really trust the defectors as they were working in their own self-interest and really doing their master's bidding -- by that I mean us, the UK. They also had one eye to the future and their role in any new Iraqi government.'

The British intelligence source said the best Humint on Saddam was held by the French who had agents in Iraq.

'French intelligence was telling us that there was effectively no real evidence of a WMD program That's why France wanted a longer extension on the weapons inspections. The French, the Germans and the Russians all knew there were no weapons there -- and so did Blair and Bush as that's what the French told them directly. Blair ignored what the French told us and instead listened to the Americans.'

Another source -- an official involved in preparing the Iraqi dossier for Blair -- told the BBC: 'Most people in intelligence weren't happy with [the dossier] as it didn't reflect the considered view they were putting forward.' Other sources said they accepted there was a 'small WMD program in Iraq, but not one that would either threaten the West or even Saddam's neighbors. Another said they were 'very unhappy' with the dossier, others said they were 'pissed off' and one described the claim that WMDs could be ready in 45 minutes as 'complete and utter bollocks'.

The Sunday Herald was told: 'The spooks were being asked to write this stuff. The dossier had been lying around for about six months. When it came time for publication Downing Street said it wasn't exciting or convincing enough. The message was that it didn't cut the mustard in terms of PR as there wasn't much more in it than a discerning newspaper reader would know.

Despite the Bush Administration's assertions, allies of the United States did not fully agree with the Administration's assessment on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Prior to the war in Iraq, some foreign countries questioned U.S. assertions on WMD presence in Iraq. Now, some in the U.S. Congress question whether or not the intelligence agencies manipulated intelligence to gain support for the war in Iraq. However, the White House insists that U.S. intelligence on Iraq's WMD were fairly presented. National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice said that the efforts of the Saddam Hussein regime to conceal its actions "clearly give a picture of a regime that had weapons of mass destruction and was determined to conceal them."1

The debate on Iraqi WMD continues. For example, Russia was not convinced by either the September 24, 2002 British dossier or the October 4, 2002 CIA report. Lacking sufficient evidence, Russia dismissed the claims as a part of a "propaganda furor."2 Specifically targeting the CIA report, Putin said, "Fears are one thing, hard facts are another." He goes on to say, "Russia does not have in its possession any trustworthy data that supports the existence of nuclear weapons or any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and we have not received any such information from our partners yet. This fact has also been supported by the information sent by the CIA to the US Congress."3 However, Putin was apprehensive about the possibility that Iraq may have WMDs and he therefore supported inspections. The Russian ambassador to London thought that the dossier was a document of concern. "It is impressive, but not always…convincing."4

French intelligence services did not come up with the same alarming assessment of Iraq and WMD as did the Britain and the United States. "According to secret agents at the DGSE, Saddam's Iraq does not represent any kind of nuclear threat at this time…It [the French assessment] contradicts the CIA's analysis…"5 French spies said that the Iraqi nuclear threat claimed by the United States was a "phony threat."6

After Secretary of State Colin Powell's speech on February 5, 2003 to the United Nations Security Council, the focus of discussion among U.S. allies changed. France, Russia, and Germany did not find Powell's "evidence" strong enough to support the U.S.'s stance on the Iraqi threat. However, having already questioned the veracity of the dossier and CIA report, they instead concentrated on persuading the international community to continue UN inspections.

[quote=csmelnix]

Mike B your full of sh*t.  I too was under stop loss.  When you are held beyond your contract and are force to serve it's force service. 

[/quote]

It's in the contract you sign when you join. "Forced" is nonsense.

[quote=csmelnix] .... the army absolutely stretched it extraordinarily to do what they did. 

[/quote]

You mean they acted within the law, right? Yeah, that's what I thought you meant...

[quote=csmelnix]

 And if you want to get into the battle plan of it, bring it on - I have more than first hand experience in this game; a resume I am confident you can't come close too.

[/quote]

You're blowing smoke, pal. We can compare service records, if you like.  When did you attend C&GSOC? No? OK, when did you attend CAS3? Nope? OK, how about the IOAC? Again nothing? Hmmm, ok, when did you get out of BCT? 

[quote=menotellname]

Gee...I believe there is an extremely long thread on here covering these same topics.

I guess BL and Mike B still haven't learned.

Heck...wasn't BL suggesting genocide in the other thread?

Hmmmmmmmm...

[/quote]

Sounds like menotelltruth is still up to his old habits....

[quote=csmelnix]

http://www.carnegieendowment.org/static/npp/Iraq_Summary_Tab les.pdf

George Bush has made some false claims as .....

[/quote]

Wow, all that wasted bandwidth in a failed attempt to try to counter the fact that the head of the CIA, appointed by Clinton, said it was a "slam dunk”…..

For those confused by some incorrect reporting here, here's a source, a critic of Bush as a matter of fact, who sheds light on what the French Intelligence agencies thought;

http://www.acronym.org.uk/dd/dd77/77iraq.htm

In contrast, according to Blix, President Chirac had a healthy scepticism about intelligence. Although the French intelligence services were convinced WMD remained in Iraq, Chirac recognised that the intelligence services "sometimes intoxicate each other". His thinking "seemed to be dominated by the conviction that Iraq did not pose a threat that justified armed intervention".9

Blix's book; Disarming Iraq: the search for weapons of mass destruction

CX you hate Bush? Did you vote for Gore?

So we should have just sat back like Clinton did and the world we be a wonderful place? During Clintons years terrorists were running around the world and breading like rabbits. A few of my dorm mates died in the Kobar Tower bombing. Embassies around the world were being blown up. US Cole. World Trade Center I and II. Extreme idology spreding throughout the world. Mostly they focused on societys that were illiterate and poor (Africa, Middle East and Palestine). They were the easiest to influence.

Oh wait I am sorry Bush should have prevented World Trade Center II since he was in power for 7 months.

It sucks that US troops (100% of them were not drafted) have died, but the fact is the world is a better place. There are a lot of studies that show countries have a better opinion of America then they did pre 9/11. Who is helping the Pakistani's? Who freed 50,000,000 in Afganistan and Iraq? Lybia now has an open policy. Jordan, Saudi, Pakistan, Turkey, Spain, Eastern Europe, Kuwait, Iraq, Afganistan, Indonesia, Poland, Japan, Singapore, Ukrain, Moldova, New Zealand, Britian, Lithuania, South Korea, Kazakhstan, Columbia, Bolgeria, Netherlands, Finland, Czech Republic, Denmark, El Salvador, Estonia, Georgia, Italy, Norway, Yamen, Australia and most of the world is on our side with the war against terrorism.

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/iraq_orbat_coalit ion.htm

I don't know your stop loss situation, but since you type here you are alive. Thanks for serving. As I serve I am proud that we have a leader who does not flip flop. He said before he became president we need better home land security. He stated we will follow terrorists to the end of earth and we are. He utilizes all means necessary to protect the mother land and for that he is one of the best presidents in our history. Don King agrees with me on this.

Remember September 11th did happen and everything from the New Years, Brooklin Bridge, Buffalo 6, Los Angelas and everything we don't know about was prevented due to a strong NATIONAL DEFENSE and intel policy.  Saddam is in prison. 50 of the top 55 terrorists in IRAQ are dead or captured. Bin - Ladden is in a hole in Tora Bora and his training camps and army are gone. Talaban is dead. Our intel is 100% better then it was in the 90's. The list goes on and on, but if one is against BUSH then the sky is falling.

One final thing..... George Bush is gone in 3 years. Then Mitt Romney will be the president.

[quote=SonnyClips]This blind love of Bush is about to cause its adherence a great deal of pain. [/quote]

Gee, that sounds so much like the "We'll take back the House in 1994, 96, 98, 2000, 2002, 2004..." it's a broken record.

BTW, what's about to cause some adherents a great deal of pain is the irrational Bush-hatred on the part of people who can't even form a rational alternative. Oops, too late, it's already destroyed the Democrats...

[quote=SonnyClips]

 Oh and 7 months after your elected you have the largest attack on the US by foreign forces should reflect poorly on your leadership. If not when do we draw the line for when you're responsible?

[/quote]

You may have forgotten, but your side already had an election to make that case and John "You bet we might have" Kerry lost.

[quote=SonnyClips]Mitt Romney is as likely to be our next President as Hillary. As far as Bush nothing will prove his failure like history.

Or success.  I agree that Hillary will never be President.  She has too many skeletons in her closet.  Can we all say Rose Hill law firm records and Vince Foster.  Basically she is hard, cold calculating, self centered b#tch.

Mitt Romney strikes me as one of the more capable candidates that the Republicans can put forward.  Who else have they got?   Certainly not McCain.  He is about at popular with the Republican base as Hillary is.


This blind love of Bush is about to cause its adherence a great deal of pain.

There is no blind love of Bush. I see his failings and am not happy with everything he has done.  He should do more to stop illegal immigration and enforce the deportation of illegals.  He needs to veto and veto and veto bills until Congress quits spending like drunken sailors.  He needs to keep the Federal Government out of issues like the Oregon suicide law.  He should have stood firmly on the side of Denmark in the cartoon jihad.  He needs to be much tougher on calling the Democrats who actively want to see us fail in the war on terror for their own political benefit what they really are...greedy treasonous cowards.

It is only the BDS people like yourself (I presume) who see things in black and white only.  If you hate Bush then I must love him.  Not so.

 The facts are not breaking in your favor. Oh and 7 months after your elected you have the largest attack on the US by foreign forces should reflect poorly on your leadership. If not when do we draw the line for when you're responsible? If something screwed up in your job of a similar magnitude don't you think you would be held accountable, and rightly so?

Bush was only in office for 7 months and he is supposed to be responsible for 15 or more years of irresponsible foreign policy?!?  8 years of Clinton allowing the US to be pushovers for terrorists and bitch slapped by the extremists and the folly of the Carter administration by allowing Iran to box us into a corner by holding hostages for over a year set the stage for 9/11.  The years of intelligence gathering that is now questionable in its quality is Bush's fault?   You can't be serious.  He wasn't in office even long enough to rearrange the furniture in the White House, much less undo years of bad policy.

Let's put it this way.  I bring you my portfolio that has stocks that I bought in 1999, like Cisco, Lucent, Enron etc.  I have lost a lot of money and now it is YOUR fault because you have control of my portfolio.  Right!!!  You must also feel accountable for Wounded Knee, Slavery and the Japanese internment camps too if this is your rational. You can't go back and change the past. All you can do is work with what you have and try to change the future.  To expect Bush to be a mind reader who could travel to the past and fix all the problems of the world in his first 7 months in office is just ludicrous.  I think you are smarter than that, if you can just overcome your BDS.

[/quote]

MB- resume chk douche. 

YG'92; 1 rifle plt 2/327 101:  '94 3 Bn/75th B Co right down on Heart attack hill:  Q Course in '96 along w/ IOAC and CAS in Leavenworth and later w/ SFAS in Bragg and 2 yrs w/ 5th group in Campbell.  Their  focus - do you know?   

Of course you do - you are so much a better expert on that area of the world w/ no real world experience.  Pogue good indicator of that is your are an employee v an owner and your resume was laughable, pretty standard.  Isn't it about time for another b/d change.

Now on to the contract: When somebody signs up they sign up for 8 years.  When after 8 years you get called back that's beyond your obligation.  The army stretch is when they pull some bull crap out of their hat and know full well not a court in the country will rule against them.  US Code gives Congress the right and the President the right under national emergency to hold members beyond 8 years.  However, when you are already beyond 8 and have resigned or been discharged - this is my complaint.  I have zero sympathy as well when somebody has 6 plus months or so left on that 8 year commitment.

Say what you will about Scott Ritter, but isn't it funny how everything he said about what we will find in Iraq has come to fruition? 

To clarify:  I am a conservative just like Pat Buchanon who by the way has almost identical views as I, does that make him a traitor too.  The fact is, Pat comes from the cloth of true conservatism, where we MIND governmental intrusion, expansion of their power and the sticking of their nose in other countries business.  NO I DID NOT VOTE FOR GORE nor JOHN "why the long face" Kerry. 

The quote you pull on Iraq is 3rd source opinion...Chirac made straight his belief that we would not find any WMDs there because they actually had humint on the ground and also because they believed what our administration didn't; that is, when we sent over 40 family members of Iraqi regime heads to Iraq to seek the "truth" about their WMDs program - every one of them came back stating just what SCOTT RITTER, the State Dept Intell and parts of the CIA and DIA stated - they were destroyed by 1994. 

Again, regardless if you believe we should have or shouldn't have gone to Iraq at the end of the day is not my issue with the Bush administration.  It is what I said last time - you couldn't mismanage a war any better than he has.  This is undeniable even to a well respected IOAC graduate like yourself.  And just in case it isn't clear answer the questions I pose in my first thread (that you conveniently glossed over):  Do you know from your big army training what the basic rule of thumb is to determine size of force necessary to begin offensive ground operations?  It's a far cry from what Rumsfeld used - here's a hint; according to Rumsfeld Iraq would be a nation of say 12 million.  Guess how many are in Iraq's capital?  How about Basra?  How about Mosul?  How about Tikrit, Ramadi, etc etc...

What's our mission in Iraq?  (recall the who, what, when, where and why).  What metrics are we using to determine success/failure in Iraq?  How do we know when we have success there?  What does it mean, "when they stand up we stand down?"  How many have to stand up for us to stand down?  What criteria are we using to determine when stand up occurs?  

You and I can ask 100 people these questions inside and outside the military, you will get consistently several different answers for each.  When you decide as a commander to commit our forces you have an obligation to ensure you have done everything in your power as their leader to provide them with the weapons, equipment and information necessary to win and that you will win at all costs.  Bush has failed miserably here and that is why I hate what he has done with our fight there.  Good bad or in different it is what it is and these facts or indisputable by events on the ground; even you, with that powerful resume must see this too.

7GOD - you are putting words in my mouth.  I am not sitting here bragging about Clinton; My service was under him and he didn't do our nation proud either.  Read what I am complaining about - and I will take issue that our world is a better place; this is going to get a lot worse, before it gets better.  My stop loss has nothing to do with my dispute here either; it never played a role. 
I love that we waited zero time to destroy the Taliban I am not so happy we left as quickly as we did there.  We are fighting a war on Terror right?  Why Iraq and not Syria or Iran?  They have been the two biggest state sponsors of terror for over 4 decades yet we pretty much gave them a pass for Iraq?  That's a big contention of mine 7G that's all.  As my last post stated; this is where I hate our situation, we went to Iraq and have just bungled the execution of that war and now we are in a situation of not being able to handle a far greater threat to our world, not just us, in Iran.

Romney I think is a tough sell in alot of circles because of his churches baptizing dead Jews and such. The Mormons don't get such a great reception at the Holocaust museum when the do these posthumous baptismal rights. Sounds crazy don't it? That and evangelicals think the LDS are heretical. Hell the irony is it takes a state full of open minded libs to elect I like Mit, other than say Utah. You see the courting of the Religious Right has its problems

This is problematic for Romney. It is predjudice pure and simple. The same crap that Kennedy, as a Catholic, faced and one of the reasons that Lieberman, who I think is one of the best Democrats, would never be allowed to run for President or even VP.   He is a Jew, and that can't be forgiven by the Muslims and the Evangelical Christians. Too bad. I would probably have crossed party lines and voted for him. 

What ever happened to separation of Church and State?  Or does that only apply if  liberals want to ban the Ten Commandments (part of the Christian, Jewish and Muslim faiths), get rid of Christmas, or try to remove In God We Trust from billions of dollars.  I know the idea that people could or should be able to separate some one's personal faith (or lack of faith) from their public abilities as an elected official is idealistic.  This will probably never happen.  People are such hypocrites.

[quote=SonnyClips]

sh*t Cheney just shot a 78 year old man in the ass. Wake up the sons a bitches are going down in flames. <?:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

[/quote]

There you go, a hunting accident = "going down in flames" roflmoa...

[quote=SonnyClips]

I think your party is due for an enema.

[/quote]

Golly, a Democrat that has dim views of the GOP's future, will wonders ever cease...

Your problem is that for all the minor hiccups the GOP is going through your party can't capitalize on it because you're not only in more disarray,  but because the loony left has seized control. The Moore/Soros/Sheehan wing of the party has the reigns. But don’t believe me, take the word of two guys that drove your party’s only successful national campaign in the last 30 years, Carville and Begala.

[quote=SonnyClips]

Mike. Look at your post again and tell me how your responses have to do with my post. Come on now.

[/quote]

They have everything to do with you post. For example, you tried the “But Bush was in charge on 9/11” trope and I pointed out your side ALREADY tried that and the public didn’t buy.

[quote=csmelnix] <?:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

<?:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />MB- resume chk douche. 

[/quote]

You continue your pattern of trying to bolster your weak posts with childish asides. Do it once more and you can chat by yourself….

[quote=csmelnix]

YG'92; 1 rifle plt 2/327 101:  '94 3 Bn/75th B Co right down on Heart attack hill:  Q Course in '96 along w/ IOAC and CAS in Leavenworth and later w/ SFAS in Bragg and 2 yrs w/ 5th group in Campbell.  Their  focus - do you know?   

[/quote]

Nice resume, if it’s real. I was YG 82, RNGR SCH in 83 (Jan course, white stitches), ABN SCH as a student. PLT, TRP command in Europe during a tour twice extended, as a 12A attended IOAC in 86, sent to grad school in 87. CAS3 in 88, CGSOC correspondence in 90 while attached to the State Department in Europe.. Left in 1991. (the prior enlisted service part would bore you, so I won’t bother)

[quote=csmelnix]

Pogue good indicator of that is your are an employee v an owner and your resume was laughable, pretty standard.  Isn't it about time for another b/d change.

[/quote]

Awww, I wounded, the little fella doesn’t agree with my career choices. I’m also sure every vet working at any wirehouse hangs his head in shame….

[quote=csmelnix]

Now on to the contract: When somebody signs up they sign up for 8 years.  When after 8 years you get called back that's beyond your obligation. 

[/quote]

If you really WERE AD and then IRR, you should know better. You have to request a discharge from the IRR if you’re commissioned. (one small niggle here, I have sympathy for guys called back because the Army said they never requested a discharge, when in fact they had. I had to request it twice. The first time I thought the matter was closed until almost a year later when I got a letter telling me about an upcoming promotion board that I had to prepare for) It isn’t automatic and if you don’t do it, your obligation continues. In fact, even those discharged and those officers retired face a recall obligation to meet the needs of the service. Again, if you ever were a commissioned officer, you know that. The one same

[quote=csmelnix]

Say what you will about Scott Ritter, but isn't it funny how everything he said about what we will find in Iraq has come to fruition? 

[/quote]

You can seriously be mentioning the guy that turned out to be on the payroll of an Iraqi with Saddam sympathies, are you? Did ANYONE in the US government or any other believe Ritter?

[quote=csmelnix]

To clarify:  I am a conservative just like Pat Buchanon who by the way has almost identical views as I, does that make him a traitor too. 

[/quote]

So who used the word “traitor”? Do you make things up often?

[quote=csmelnix]

The quote you pull on Iraq is 3rd source opinion...

[/quote]

Sorry, no sale. Blix says in his book just what I told you. French intel agencies said Saddam had WMD.

[quote=csmelnix]

Again, regardless if you believe we should have or shouldn't have gone to Iraq at the end of the day is not my issue with the Bush administration.  It is what I said last time - you couldn't mismanage a war any better than he has.

[/quote]

Right. You see, Bush sits around a table every morning with Rummy and they “manage” the war. And they’ve done a horrible job ignoring the commanders on the ground, as every retiring commander in the CoC has come out in public to say. Oh, wait, none of that’s true….

BTW, since we’re talking military history below, how about pointing out a war where there weren’t critics of the plans and operations on the ground?

[quote=csmelnix] Do you know from your big army training what the basic rule of thumb is to determine size of force necessary to begin offensive ground operations? 

[/quote]

Hmmm, seems to me the ground operations went pretty well, even without the 4ID being there. If you’ve been watching you’ve heard commanders on the ground, current and retired, saying that troops levels are a balancing act. Too few and you can’t combat the insurgents, too many and you actually help the insurgents by putting too much of an “American face” on the fight.

Given a choice between taking your word for it, LT, and the commanders on the ground, I’m going with their views…

[quote=csmelnix]

What's our mission in Iraq? 

[/quote]

If you need that reexplained to you you’re wasting my time….

[quote=csmelnix]

When you decide as a commander to commit our forces you have an obligation to ensure you have done everything in your power as their leader to provide them with the weapons, equipment and information necessary to win…

[/quote]

Please, not another round of “why aren’t all humvees the heavy armored version” gibberish. Please cite for me a war when the US DIDN’T face similar issues on the ground. Come on, LT, you must have some military history somewhere in your background, name the war…

[quote=csmelnix]

“…that you will win at all costs. ..”

[/quote]

“All costs”? You want to level Iraq? That would fall within “all costs”. We could make it a large mass of glass, then again, we wouldn’t really “win” that war.

BTW, are you suggesting we’re losing? Based on what?

As far as bringing me that portfolio. Well if you had that much tech focus with a poor allocation and I didn't begin to unravel the positions then it would be my fault. Hell the same thing happened to me after jan 1. A client had all tech including Intel. We balanced out the portfolio, not because I thought the earnings reports were going to slam him but because its what you are supposed to do. I looked good and it was because I was doing my job

My point on the portfolio analogy that the damage had already been done in the portfolio long before you had control of it. When you get the portfolio you do damage control and it is stupid for the client to blame you personally for decisions that were made that you had no control over.  It is the same stupidity to try to blame Bush for events that were set in motion years and decades before he was in office for only 7 months.  As I said he was there barely long enough to rearrange the furniture, put the "W"s back on the keyboards and learn where all the bathrooms are.  Yet you want to hold him accountable.

How would you feel about voting for someone who's church does something that is seen by your faith as desecrating your ancestors. He could be a helluva politician but would ya vote for him. I don't think its a church and state gotcha its more like "hey his church does rude sh*t to my dead grand daddy." That'd be a tough sell for anyone

Why should it be of any importance at all what religion or lack of religion a candidate adheres to?  This "Hatfield and McCoy" generational vendetta mentality is what perpetuates friction between people.  What difference does it make if Alito or Roberts are Catholic, as long as it has been shown that they keep their religion separate from their public function. 

Snipped from your link from Jefferson:

Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should "make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," thus building a wall of separation between Church & State.

I agree with this entirely. The reason that this was even a consideration then, was because people who didn't belong to the approved Church of England were prevented from holding offices, becoming judges and so forth.  The government in those days dictated what religion was official and discriminated against people who didn't belong to it.  This continual harping, by the media and politicians who want to harm their opponents, on the private religious affiliation of people is bringing our political environment back to the poisonous one of the 16th century when we had witch hunts.

sh*t Cheney just shot a 78 year old man in the ass. Wake up the sons a bitches are going down in flames.

He shot him in the face. Get your facts straight. The old fart snuck up from the side. Cheney couldn't hear him because they all wear ear plugs (the weenies) and the old guy was where he wasn't supposed to be when you are hunting quail or pheasant or other upland game birds. Anyone who has ever been hunting knows that.  It was an accident<?:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />. 

But hey......any tempest in a teapot to make political hash out of somebody is the Democrat's moto

[quote=dude]

For all those Bush lover's out there (that's George w. Bush lovers, to clarify ). 

http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0210/dailyUpdate.html[/quote]

You may not really be interested, dude, but here's the otherside of the debate about Pillar, his history and his views...

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/00 0/006/713hkkee.asp?pg=1

Paul Pillar Speaks, Again
The latest CIA attack on the Bush administration is nothing new.

by Stephen F. Hayes
02/10/2006 4:15:00 PM

IN A BREATHLESS front-page, above-the-fold article in today's Washington Post, Walter Pincus reports that a former senior CIA official named Paul Pillar accuses the Bush administration of "misusing" intelligence to take the country to war in Iraq. According to the Post account, Pillar uses a forthcoming article in Foreign Affairs to claim that the Bush administration "politicized" the intelligence on Iraq.

Bush administration policymakers did this subtly, Pillar says, by repeatedly asking the CIA questions about Iraq, its weapons programs, and its support for terrorism. This "politicization" was apparently so subtle that it escaped the notice of both the Robb/Silberman Commission and the bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee report, which both found that no such politicization took place. If Pillar entertains the possibility that Bush administration officials asked tough questions because after September 11 they were genuinely concerned about the threat from Iraq, the Post article nowhere mentions it.

MB,

Will stop the personal attacks, it makes sense.

You couldn't be anymore wrong again with the former generals and current ones.  Gen. Sheneski, forced to retire because his views differed w/ that of Rumsfeld.  Gen. Zinni, Grange, McCaffrey, Schwarkopf all had similar opinions.  I'll spare you the Gen. Clark example for obvious reasons.  Gen. Downing is another example.  Sure, there are always the ones who argue about the prosecution of the war but you have got to be blind and just flat out stupid if you think this war has been executed properly from the top (BUSH).  When in charge be in charge so yes, it's execution falls upon his shoulders. 

Read my posts again, I said stop loss didn't affect me with this deal, I was under stop loss prior but had no bearing on serving beyond my obligation - never was an issue; it does appear however that we do agree on the notion of serving beyond 8 yrs; that was my contention all along that's all.

Not arguing about the armored humvees either; arguing that most leg units in the military still use things like Korean war era flak vests, or reserve units sent to Iraq still use sub par weapons and equipment - just another sign of failure to plan. 

About Blix's book and comment on France - it's negligible in the end w/ my argument but it is just what I said; Blix is the 3rd party referencing an opinion.  Chirac was recorded telling British intelligence that we/they wouldn't find WMDs because they were convinced due to their humint on the ground there, that Iraq no longer possessed them.  At the end of the day, it doesn't really matter as my big contention is the goat f*$k this war has been.  It was clever of you to forget about trying to address the Iraq mission and the other questions I poised; care to try again?

And so you know, I was a captain not an LT - I will rescind my personal attack on your pogueness as well; please accept my apology.