<p>Regarding the Senate report on pre-war intelligence, this is what its chief author had to say:
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<p>Of course, all of these statements came before the war when Rockefeller, as minority chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, was one of the loudest drum bangers. Now, with this latest report, he shows his true colors as political slime. Any objective person looking at Rockefeller’s statements before and after the war would advocate having him removed from the Senate - their should be no room on the senate floor for such a weasel.</p>
<p>Following your assertion that Iraq is the focal point on terrorism, then how would anyone (and I presume you as well) conclude that we should withdraw from Iraq? Is it our policy to turn our backs on our enemies? How can the Dems make the claim that the “real” war on terrorism is in Afghanistan if, as you say, all the terrorists have flocked to Iraq?</p>
<p>Because I don’t think the war is really about terrorism (as it relates to the physical safety of Americans.) </p>
<p>Statistically speaking, Americans are more likely to die from any number of threats as opposed to a terrorist attack: car accidents, flu, appendicitis, walking across the street, falling, drowning in one’s bathtub, etc. Within our own borders, we have more to fear from a DOMESTIC terrorist attack than an international attack.</p>
<p>You’re right–I’m very much against the Iraq war from a moral viewpoint (based on why I think the US chose to invade Iraq). However, I believe I understand why the Bush administration thought it was in the best interests of our country, as well as the international community, to topple Saddam.</p>
<p>On September 10, statistically speaking, the probability of a plane crashing into a sky scraper and killing over 2,000 people was zero. The problem with statistics is that they are exclusively backward looking. If we should learn ANYTHING from the 9/11 report, it is that we had a failure of imagination about what our enemies could do to us. Check out some of the studies done at Harvard and other places about their FORWARD-looking view about the probabilities of a nuclear attack on a major city in the foreseeable future.</p>
<p>Since the amount of nuclear material in the world is finite, many believe the threat of nuclear terrorism can be substantially reduced or even eliminated. A first step would be to secure the existing nuclear material in the former Soviet Union. Not counting the US, the former Soviet Union accounts for 95% of nuclear warheads, 90% of highly-enriched uranium, and almost half of the weapons-grade plutonium in the world. Sure, the cost would be high–but look what the Iraq War is costing us.</p>
<p>If nuclear material does make it into the hands of a terrorist organization, I don’t see how the Iraq War will make one whit of difference if the terrorists decide to hit a US city. Like I said before, it would only take a few terrorists to complete the job.</p>
<p>As far as the nuclear threat is concerned, we might be better served to work on cutting off the flow of funding to the terrorists, as well as to make better use of our covert intelligence services.</p>
<p>“If nuclear material does make it into the hands of a terrorist organization, I don’t see how the Iraq War will make one whit of difference if the terrorists decide to hit a US city. Like I said before, it would only take a few terrorists to complete the job.”</p>
<p>Well, of course that’s true. But the point of the Iraq war was to prevent the “if nuclear material does make it into the hands of a terrorist organization” from becoming a reality.</p>
<p>A major purpose of the war was to prevent a regime with terrorist connections from developing its own nuclear capability (not to mention its existing capability to develop chemical and biological weapons). Nukes in Russia are a threat also, but at least for now, the Russian government is not likely to be complicit in providing these to terrorists. This was not the case with Saddam. We are in complete agreement that it only takes a handful of terrorists to do this, but for these terrorists to be able to accomplish this, they need access to state-developed weapons. Saddam (and eventually Iran unless they are stopped) would have provided this.</p>
<p>How exactly would the Iraq War accomplish that? Many experts believe nuclear material from the former Soviet Union is most likely to get into the hands of terrorists.</p>
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<p>The Bush administration cherry-picked Iraq intelligence to justify the invasion of Iraq. It knew Iraq had no nuclear capability:</p>
<p>“On Sept. 18, 2002, CIA director George Tenet briefed President Bush in the Oval Office on top-secret intelligence that Saddam Hussein did not have weapons of mass destruction, according to two former senior CIA officers. Bush dismissed as worthless this information from the Iraqi foreign minister, a member of Saddam’s inner circle, although it turned out to be accurate in every detail. Tenet never brought it up again.”</p>
<p>And how does the Iraq War keep Iran from developing nuclear weapons? Unless I’ve missed something in the news lately, it’s still on their agenda.</p>
<p>IMHO, Pakistan is a greater threat than either Iraq or Iran and always has been.</p>
<p>Fundingfather, I knew I could count on you to find a pony in what appeared to be just a huge pile of manure. Your blog guys aren’t even going to let you read the report before pre-emptively attacking the people who put it together, are they? If you did, you’d see how the Administration managed to twist the evidence through selective declassification, half truths and misrepresentation of the known lack of credibility of many of its sources - which is how they managed to get a lot of people on board. Not just politicians, but everyday Americans who weren’t used to having the White House deliberately mislead them. </p>
<p>My take? George Bush will go down as the Mike Nifong of Presidents. After all, I believed that the Duke Lacrosse players were guilty of rape at first like everyone else did. I also believed that there must be something behind the administration’s claims of the danger posed by Saddam in 2003, even with years of accumulated skepticism. I’ll be slower to trust a DA now. Presidents, too, I’m afraid.</p>
<p>I’m painfully aware that your latest echo of the right wing propaganda machine is substance-free. Ignore the detailed litany of facts, and just viciously attack an individual involved in exposing them. Classic right wing diversionary smear job.</p>
<p>Sorry to disappoint you kluge, but I have no idea what my “blog guys” are saying about this because I haven’t read any. So, I take it that you are comfortable with a report authored by someone who was MORE alarmist than Bush in the lead-up to the war but now seeks political points? That is not a “smear job”, that is exposing a rat for what he is.</p>
<p>I suggest you be as circumspect about the political games being played by your own party as you claim to be of DAs and Presidents.</p>
<p>Are you really going to rely on an article written by Sidney Blumenthal (the Clinton smear-monger) who uses anonymous sources to support his claim? Is that the best argument that you can come up with? With that kind of corroborating evidence, we may as well convict the Clinton’s of killing Vince Foster.</p>
<p>I’ve given you the facts about what Rockefeller said and could supplement that with pages of what other Dems said but, low and behold, they mysteriously do not appear in this report. Why would I want to spend time reading a report that is nothing more than a product of the Democratic slime machine? I’ll give Rockefeller the chutzpah of the year award for his efforts, though.</p>
<p>Facts. Lots of them. In the report. I dare you to read it.
Or do as you prefer, clap your hands over your ears and run around in circles yelling “I’m not listening! I’m not listening!” I think you’ve already decided what your best course is if you’re to remain true to the right wing theology.</p>
<p>This entire thead reminds me of the dog chasing its own tail: just going round and round gettting nowhere until it falls over exhausted.</p>
<p>We might as well be argueing the causes of WWI at this point (stupid Arch-Duke gone and got killed. Everybody into a trench!) Quite frankly, both sides are just looking for people to acknowledge: “I was right, you were wrong”. Pretty juvenille, when there is a much bigger issue at stake: What do we do about Iraq NOW?</p>
<p>I’m more in the mind of Colin Powell’s Pottery Barn analogy, “We broke it, we own it”. Or in this case, we need to fix it, at least to the point where it was at before the invasion, if not better. And we can’t rely on military solutions alone, but also through diplomatic, economic, and informational means. Right or not, true or not, most of the world thinks we were ultimately wrong for what we did. To earn their trust and respect back, we must make it up to the people of Iraq, and in a way that THEY want.</p>
<p>Lots of recommended solutions for the problem NOW is what is required, not a finger pointing match about events of the past.</p>
<p>kluge,
So, what is YOUR opinion of Rockefeller? Do you have any explanation for his pre-war and current behavior? Would you want him on the witness stand giving testimony to defend your client? If he were testifying against your client, how long would it take you to totally discredit his testimony?</p>
<p>Bullet, while I agree with you that a forward looking view is required, the Dems insist on looking backward in a politically motivated attempt to discredit the administration. By continuing to discredit it, they make it impossible to move forward.</p>
<p>This is what bothers me most, aside from the “we broke it, we own it” analogy: Assuming my belief is correct that the Bush administration has reasons for invading Iraq that aren’t readily apparent, how do we know it wasn’t the best course of action, even though colossal blunders were made in the administration of the war? </p>
<p>I admit I could never be a politician because I’m morally opposed to war. Intellectually, however, I know it’s sometimes necessary. That’s why I have to trust that our elected leaders know what’s best for our country. So why would the Bush administration go to such great lengths to get the US into a war for which it knew there was no explicit justification? There had to have been good reasons. Was the administration afraid of something? (I think it was.) If the Bush administration was right about its fears, what happens if we withdraw from Iraq? How can the American public choose between McCain and Obama (who have different views on the war) when we don’t even know the real reasons the Bush administration invaded Iraq in the first place?</p>
<p>Why do there have to have been good reasons? Wouldn’t you agree that leaders of other countries have sometimes launched totally unjustifiable wars? What makes our leaders immune to that problem?</p>
<p>It wasn’t just the Bush administration that thought it was the right thing to do. While you may buy into the notion that some members of Congress were duped into voting for it (although evidence points to the contrary), people on the Intelligence Committee who had better access to the classified material such as Rockefeller were also in favor of the war. In the case of Rockefeller, he was even more adamant about it than Bush. So, do you think it was just the Bush administration who thought it was a good idea?</p>