<p>kluge, actually I did stick to what you said and was setting you straight - it wasn’t the “Bush” gospel, it was the Clinton gospel which Bush also bought into. </p>
<p>But speaking of not putting words into other’s mouths, you should take your own advice - I have never said that Bush/Cheney have never done anything wrong.</p>
<p>Yes, I find that I am in a “defensive” position - but only because most of the threads that I participate in is are those in which I defend someone who is being unfairly criticized. In this case it is Bush, but I have been known to also defend Clinton.</p>
<p>If you and the others who persist in these Bush bashing threads had evidence to support your claims of lies or manufactured intelligence it would be one thing, but if you note, the people that are providing actual facts to support their opinions are those defending Bush. </p>
<p>Your latest fabrication is that we are supposed to learn from this to “not attack the messenger” - implying that this is generally agreed to as to what happened. Yet, if you bothered to learn the facts, you would have learned that there is absolutely no evidence of that - even though they tried to find such evidence. You are welcome to have whatever belief you want about Bush, but you would be far more persuasive if you came from a position of knowledge rather than reverberating what you hear in the Democratic echo chamber.</p>
<p>Be honest, you believed that from the beginning. That’s why so much energy goes into making sure that everything meets that expectation even if the evidence has to be twisted to do so.</p>
<p>I will admit I’m attacking something. I’m driven nearly insane by people who claim Bush lied (or whatever) and then can’t back it up except with “so and so said he did” or out of context quotes that read carefully say nothing of the sort. I won’t jump in unless I see something that’s clearly not factual or patently illogical.</p>
<p>That’s not defending Bush, that’s just trying to keep the conversation honest.</p>
<p>How many times do I have to say that I don’t think Bush lied before you guys stop accusing me of claiming he lied? :)</p>
<p>Actually Strick, I didn’t vote for Bush, but I did not form my opinion about his arrogance and incompetence until long after he took office. (I never felt that way about his father.) I’m probably like a lot of Americans; on September 11 I took my flag out and flew it from my house, and rallied behind the president of the United States. It took a lot for him to squander all of that good will, but he has succeeded with me, as with a large majority of Americans, and, sadly, with other nations around the world. The question is: why do you cling so fervently to your belief that Bush is not incompetent in the face of the way actual events have played out? How much evidence would it take to change your minds? Or do you have an inexhaustible pool of denial and selective vision which allows you to create an endless series of plausible scenarios which “explain” how everything he does was really just dandy?</p>
First, things are not yet done “playing out” and while things have not gone as smoothly as was hoped for and there have indeed been mistakes made, I think that there is a lot of room for optimism. And we will never get to see how things would have “played out” had we taken the cross your fingers approach to dealing with Saddam. </p>
<p>But, all of that is irrelevant to your statement. It is not possible to evaluate decisions based on “how things play out”. The only proper way of evaluating a decision is to look at the information and the method of dealing with that information prior to making the decision. What the outcome eventually turns out to be is irrelevant to the soundness of the decision. An introductory course in Decision Analysis will teach you that. From what I see of the information that was available, how it was processed and given all of the available options and their potential outcomes as they appeared at the time, the path that was chosen appeared the best alternative. </p>
<p>Others may justifiably disagree with that position, but I think what both Strick and I are arguing is that many on the opposite side of the fence are there because of a) political reasons and b) Monday morning quarterbacking. These are the people who now claim that Bush lied, or in your case, exerted influence to get the information that he wanted. There is no factual data to support that view.</p>
<p>Okay - please pay attention: “exerted influence to get the information he wanted” - you still don’t get it. Different organizations have different approaches to acquiring information. Some organizations foster a “yes-man” attitude, where the prevailing culture rewards those who produce the “right” answers and fails to reward those who bring up contrary data. It’s not a matter of “exerting influence”. It’s a matter of setting the tone for the organization. “Stovepiping” selected information - the Pentagon “B team” - these are all outgrowths of a “tell me what I want to hear” mindset. Granted, most of the heavy lifting seems to have been done by Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, et al., but - the buck stops at the top. It’s really kind of sad.
Why was the “consensus” dead wrong? Read that quote again. Who is responsible? Where does the buck stop? And do you think Bush even recognizes the problem, let alone will do anything about it? I don’t.</p>
<p>Your argument would be more convincing if there had been a noticeable change in the perspective from the various agencies between the Clinton administration and the Bush administration. Which there was not. </p>
<p>It would also be more convincing if you found more than one person who made that claim and if it had come from a reputable source (I thought you claimed you didn’t get your information from far left blogs? So much for truth and honesty from those who preach truth and honesty.)</p>
<p>It would also be more convincing if it were supported, rather than unanimously contradicted, by David Kay, the Senate Intelligence Committee and the Silberman-Robb report.</p>
<p>It would also be more convincing had other intelligence agencies in other countries not arrived at the same conclusion.</p>
<p>FF: Stovepiping and the “B team” (also “cherrypicking”) are terms that were widely disseminated when it bacame clear that there were no WMD’s in Iraq and people were trying to figure out what went wrong . Google those terms (like I did) and you’ll find the Investigative Status Report of the House Judiciary Committee Democratic Staff. Footnote 276 has the quote from Mr. Goodman. Please don’t impugn my integrity. You have no basis for doing so, even if my arguments anger you.</p>
<p>Here’s more “far left blog” stuff for you, this time taken from the Silberman-Robb report commissioned by the White House:
I can’t personally vouch for Mr. Goodman. I would not expect career government intelligence workers to be lining up to say that they fudged their reports due to political pressure; but given the fact that the “consensus” was wrong, and the findings of the government’s own Silberman-Robb report, I’d venture to say that Mr. Goodman is probably not making it all up.
With regard to your “Nyah, nyah, Clinton did it too” argument, I actually don’t know how well the US intelligence agencies operated during his administration, but I will say that if Clinton had led us to invade Iraq based on false assumptions he would be equally subject to the criticisms I have of the Bush administration.<br>
As it happens, he didn’t.
As to the intelligence agencies in other countries, I seem to remember a lot of name calling directed at France, Germany, Canada, and various other former allies who had the nerve to fail to jump at the opportunity to march into Baghdad with us. Just what conclusions the intelligence agencies in those countries arrived at I’m not in a position to know. But those countries didn’t invade Iraq, either. Downing Street minutes? I doubt you want to go there…</p>
<p>So, where in your Silberman-Robb quote does it say anything about pressure from the White House to come to a certain conclusion? It just reiterates what we already knew the intelligence community screwed up.</p>
<p>And I’m not making the claim that “Nyah, nyah, Clinton did it too”. It is a valid point to look at in terms of whether the intelligence books were cooked. The fact that the intelligence reporting was quite consistent across two administrations is evidence to contradict a notion that the Bush administration was behind the intelligence blunder. </p>
<p>Actually, the countries that were not on Saddam’s payroll did attack Iraq.</p>
<p>I have been away from cc for a while and was surprised when I came back to see how excited the Bush apologists had become. Blogs are chat rooms are the only place you see this type of support. When you get out and about 2/3 of the country think the guy lied, screwed up and is leading us in the wrong direction…even his friends in congress are stepping out of the photo shoots…</p>
<p>I encourage Republicans to stand tough with our President…tell the American people how great they think he is…don’t stop until after the November elections…so we can get a congress in that won’t bleed this nation dry. </p>
<p>Don’t you miss the fiscal responsibility of the Clinton years?</p>
<p>I miss the fiscal responsibility of the Gingrich Congress, which was forced on the Clinton administration. Blogs are actually a better barometer of public sentiment than some of the polls currently being taken. Yep, I remember how accurate your MSM polls were in 2000…how accurate they were in 2004…and they look to be similar for 2006. And 2008.</p>