Forget the WMDs. What About the Intelligence?
How can one administration’s use of intelligence be reasonable and credible, but another administration’s use of the same intelligence be an unreasonable lie?
I think we all have a pretty good idea how to answer that question. The words “hypocrisy”, “money”, and “personal political gain” all come immediately to my mind.
The fact is, as she points out, the situations in 1998 under Bill Clinton and in 2001 under George Bush were pretty much the same, except that George Bush acted decisively and Bill Clinton acted weakly.
No, it’s not right that this double-standard should exist. It’s not right that President Bush should be castigated by people who, only months before, were calling Saddam Hussein a menace and telling us about the threat his WMDs posed.
It’s also not true that we found no WMDs. We did. Several times. What is true is that we did not find them in the quantities that nearly every major nation on the planet and the UN expected. We found dribs and drabs when we should have found truckloads.
The Anchoress proceeds, though, from an angle I’ve not considered (mostly because I don’t believe it is true) – that the intelligence that had our government so atwitter in 1998 was false. She then asks a few questions that are well worth considering.
Why was the intelligence false? That was a pretty big mistake, and it was a mistake made, it seems, around 1998. Where did the false intelligence come from, and who propagated it? And why?
Those are the questions that need answering. If the Senate wants to shut down until they are answered, I’m all for it. Let’s get a real investigation going, here. Let’s find out where the bad intel came from. Let’s find out why, when we believed such weapons existed, our FBI and CIA were not talking about it together. Let’s find out why the Senate Intelligence Committee and the Hutton Commission in England both declared that the Niger Yellowcake story was “credible” and why Britian still stands by it. Let’s find out what Able Danger did or did not confirm about WMD. Let’s find out if Sandy Berger spirited any information about what we really did or did not know, out of the National Archives. Was the whole thing another illusion, one that appealed to Saddam’s romance-novel writing machismo vanity? One that the whole world sustained because there was money to be made from the sanctions and the UN Oil-for-Food Bank for Big Guys?
It seems like back in 1998, and in the succeeding years, the possibility that Iraq had WMD served quite a few people with quite a few agendas. Was it all a lie laid-out-too well? One that “stupid Bush” was not SUPPOSED to believe and act on, because the things were never there?
It seems more likely to me that our CIA, the UN, and governments like France, Russia, Britain, and Germany said that Saddam had WMDs because he actually did. I can’t discount the possibility, though that they may have been exaggerating things a great deal for some other reason entirely.
I don’t know that we can ascribe the same motives necessarily to countries like Israel, Jordan, and Egypt, though. That seems to be the one sticking point in what The Anchoress may be considering here.
Still, it is ponderable and we should be asking these questions considerably louder than we ever have.
UPDATE: For the sake of clarity, she changes the word “false” to “wrong”. It doesn’t change the argument much, but it’s certainly clearer. She’s not saying that Bill Clinton lied, but that in this theory he was at least as wrong as President Bush.
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Category: Fighting the Islamists, President George Bush
You guys just can't get it can you. Certainly there are those who are pacifists; against war period.
That aside, the preponderance of criticism regarding the war in Iraq initiated by this Republican administration is directed toward incompetence.
The Clinton administration with Madeline Albright were very hawkish on the Balkans, Iraq, Al Qaida, etc… but according to Republicans, that was all about sex scandals and efforts to detract from the miscellaneous and sundried investigations.
Certainly, Clinton and his cadre who were competent, could have even taken Iraq down militarily, and he would have done it under a UN banner with all the typical allies behind him. Just like Dubya's Daddy did in the first Gulf War. That's because it was a UN show, and the violations were against the UN sanctions imposed after Iraq invaded Kuwait. Actually, 1998 would have been the time to do that, because that's when the inspectors were evicted.. a clear violation.. and intelligence was just as good, if not better in 1998 than it was in 2003. And at no time, not in 1998 nor in 2003, was Iraq's WMD ambitions an imminent threat warranting unilateral (outside UN or even NATO parameters) action by the United States. Colin Powell and Condaleeza Rice were saying exactly that in 2001, i.e. Iraq is contained and no progress has been made on Saddam's WMD program.
The fact is that Saddam was greatly hobbled after his invasion of Kuwait. The evidence of a nuclear program was all found after the war with Kuwait in the early 90's. The UN inspectors were all over it after that…breaking equipment, destroying weapons stockpiles, etc.
Saddam's mistake was that he invaded Kuwait before he had nukes. If he hadn't invaded Kuwait, there would have been no inpections and he may have actually acquired the bomb.
But after the war, he was boxed-in, and his efforts were going nowhere. Scott Ritter, who had actually been on the ground in Iraq with the UN inspection teams knew that and said so.
All the rhetoric during the Clinton administration was geared toward maintaining UN sanctions, getting/keeping inpections going, and maintaining the northern and southern no-fly zones, where we were essentially striking Saddam's forces with impunity.
So, incompetence. First incompetence in selecting Iraq as the next best effort in the war on terror; forgetting about Bin Ladin and taking the heat off Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Second, because of politically motivated timelines, rushing into the war with inadequate diplomatic and military preparations.
Third, underestimating the initial and continuing force requirements, and the capacity and willingness of the enemy to prosecute an insurgency for a real long time.
Fourth, underestimating the complexity of achieving a political solution post-war.
What Dubya has achieved, in view of the war on terror, is essentially re-establishing the terrorist breeder reactor al Qaeda had lost in Afghanistan, in Iraq.
Dubya has established the conditions for an entirely new generation of terrorists in the training-ground of Iraq, as those that had been hardened in Afghanistan during its war with the Soviets in the 80's.
In short, this Republican administration is guilty of a strategic military blunder of breathtaking proportions.
The troops deserved better political leadership than it has received from this incompetent Republican administration, and it was Republican votes that put them in place. So we understand why they might be a little defensive.
Lt. Gen. William Odom Director of the National Security Agency, 1985-88
It's a huge strategic disaster, and it will only get worse. The sooner we leave, the less the damage. In the months since the invasion, the U.S. forces have become involved in trying to repress a number of insurgency movements. This is the way we were fighting in Vietnam, and if we keep on fighting this way, this one is going to go on a long time too. The idea of creating a constitutional state in a short amount of time is a joke. It will take ten to fifteen years, and that is if we want to kill ten percent of the population.
Gen. Merrill 'Tony' McPeak Air Force Chief of Staff, 1990-94
We have a force in Iraq that's much too small to stabilize the situation. It's about half the size, or maybe even a third, of what we need. As a consequence, the insurgency seems to be gathering momentum. We are losing people at a fairly steady rate of about two a day; wounded, about four or five times that, and perhaps half of these wounds are very serious. And we are also sustaining gunshot wounds, when, before, we'd mostly been seeing massive trauma from remotely detonated charges. This means the other side is standing and fighting in a way that describes a more dangerous phase of the conflict.
The people in control in the Pentagon and the White House live in a fantasy world. They actually thought everyone would just line up and vote for a new democracy and you would have a sort of Denmark with oil. I blame Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and the people behind him — Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and Undersecretary Douglas Feith. The vice president himself should probably be included; certainly his wife. These so-called neocons: These people have no real experience in life. They are utopian thinkers, idealists, very smart, and they have the courage of their convictions, so it makes them doubly dangerous.
Get the idea. This Republican administration is the epitome of idiocy. And you voted for them, twice.
We know the White House was feuding with the CIA. What do you think it was they were feuding about? It was how the White House was doing a shake 'n bake on the intelligence to spin its argument for pre-emptive, extra-legal-based-on-defense from an imminent WMD threat.
And that was nonsense.
I think you should just go home and ponder about things "ponderable" – clearly your little head is stretched beyond it's little limit.
Sorry,I'm generally a fan of civil discourse, but you write a dishonest screed, not an opinion, There is not an honestly felt sentence in your article.
Sadly
bbbustard
White House defends decision to go to war
The White House sought to deflect questions Wednesday about Bush?s use of prewar intelligence in Ira
bustard, how do you know what I honestly feel?
Call my post dishonest as often as you wish, but the facts therein are confirmed and beyond dispute.
ghost dansing, I'm not even going to bother fact-checking your comment. I'll leave it as an exercise for other readers who aren't sick and tired of repeating themselves because folks like you prefer to ignore what doesn't suit your worldview.