Originally posted by: MartyTheManiak
Originally posted by: charrison
Originally posted by: Bowfinger
I have two thoughts re. this. First, if I accept your premise, there is still a world of difference between (1) having some intelligence that suggests Iraq still has some WMD stocks, and (2) intentionally twisting and inflating intelligence to dramatically overstate both the scale of Iraq's capabilities and our confidence in our assessment. The reports claim that (2) is what Cheney and Rumsfeld did.Originally posted by: charrison
Do you dismiss that the UN, france and germany that that iraq still had active weapons programs and stockpiles?Originally posted by: Bowfinger
Do you dismiss the complaints that Cheney and Rumsfeld were manipulating and filtering our intelligence to support their agenda? Not only did Rumsfeld set up his own intelligence agency, but it was reported that Cheney personally visited Langley multiple times to "work" with analysts. This level of personal involvement by the VP was called "unprecedented".Originally posted by: charrison
It bothers me that our intel and the worlds intel was that far off.
Not a flame, I'm curious re. your thoughts.
I am still interested in your thoughts re. those reports. If you don't want to debate them, just say so. I'd still like to understand what you think, and I will abide by your wishes to not discuss further.
Second, I am unclear on exactly what France, Germany, and the U.N. asserted re. Iraq's WMD capabilities. I acknowledge there was a passive acceptance that Iraq needed to prove it was in compliance; that's why we had inspectors in Iraq. I am not aware that any of the three made any specific claims like the U.S. and Britain. I am not saying they didn't. I'm just saying I don't know what they did and didn't say. If you have any links, etc., I am interested.
THe UN knew how much stock of WMD Iraq had and still does not know where they are, and how they were disposed of. Germany was quite sure Iraq possess small pox( i have posted this link many times). French intel also thought Iraq was up to no good. Other countries made other claims.
The US may have cherry picked intel, but the rest of the world is guilty of ignoring any intel that would make iraq look bad.
We knew Saddam used to have WMDs, but we did not know if he still had them or if he developed new ones. So we sent in UN inspectors, they did their work (destroying the missiles) and Saddam cooperated (getting a 'B' from Blix as I recall).
So why were you and the prowar people so opposed to UN inspectoins? Why all the hurry to get them out of there and start the war? Did you ever even want a peaceful resoluiton, or did you just view the whole UN think as a clever tactic to get the public to do what they did not want to? I honestly do want to know.
I was not apposed to inspections. I was to inspections run by those unwilling to give iraq a bad grade.
Saddam got a B, yet was not allowing interviews, not answering questions, forcing minders on the inspection teams and various other things that were not cooperative.
I would have much prefered a peaceful sollution. Had The world stood together and been tough on iraq, I think a peacefull resolution was possible. But a few members of the UN decided there could be serious consequences for iraq, nor could there be any firm timeline for inspections.