| Topic: |
Religions > Atheism |
| User: |
"Enkidu the Atheist" |
| Date: |
12 Nov 2005 04:08:44 PM |
| Object: |
Inaccuracies in Bush's defense of lead-up to war |
Inaccuracies in Bush's defense of lead-up to war
Congress had far less information than White House had
Dana Milban, Walter Pincus, Washington Post
Saturday, November 12, 2005
Washington -- President Bush and his national security adviser have
answered critics of the Iraq war in recent days with a two-pronged
argument: that Congress saw the same intelligence the administration did
before the war, and that independent commissions have determined that the
administration did not misrepresent the intelligence.
Neither assertion is wholly accurate.
The administration's overarching point is true: Intelligence agencies
overwhelmingly believed that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass
destruction, and very few members of Congress from either party were
skeptical about this belief before the war began in 2003. Indeed, top
lawmakers in both parties were emphatic and certain in their public
statements.
But Bush and his aides had access to much more voluminous intelligence
information than did lawmakers, who were dependent on the administration
to provide the material. And the commissions cited by officials, though
concluding that the administration did not pressure intelligence analysts
to change their conclusions, were not authorized to determine whether the
administration exaggerated or distorted those conclusions.
More: http://tinyurl.com/dz5ba
--
Enkidu AA#2165
EAC Chaplain and ordained minister,
ULC, Modesto, CA
PGP ID: 0xC4CE8CF0
"We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the sense and
to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and
his children smart."
-- H. L. Mencken
.
|
|
| User: "Fred Stone" |
|
| Title: Re: Inaccuracies in Bush's defense of lead-up to war |
12 Nov 2005 06:41:31 PM |
|
|
Enkidu the Atheist <enkidu@leaddogs.org> wrote in
news:Xns970C52DF93D42255229@130.133.1.4:
Inaccuracies in Bush's defense of lead-up to war
Congress had far less information than White House had
Dana Milban, Walter Pincus, Washington Post
Saturday, November 12, 2005
Washington -- President Bush and his national security adviser have
answered critics of the Iraq war in recent days with a two-pronged
argument: that Congress saw the same intelligence the administration
did before the war, and that independent commissions have determined
that the administration did not misrepresent the intelligence.
Neither assertion is wholly accurate.
The administration's overarching point is true: Intelligence agencies
overwhelmingly believed that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass
destruction, and very few members of Congress from either party were
skeptical about this belief before the war began in 2003. Indeed, top
lawmakers in both parties were emphatic and certain in their public
statements.
But Bush and his aides had access to much more voluminous intelligence
information than did lawmakers, who were dependent on the
administration to provide the material. And the commissions cited by
officials, though concluding that the administration did not pressure
intelligence analysts to change their conclusions, were not authorized
to determine whether the administration exaggerated or distorted those
conclusions.
More: http://tinyurl.com/dz5ba
http://www.captainsquartersblog.com/mt/archives/005773.php
Dana Milbank and Walter Pincus "analyze" the President's speech last
night and try to rebut some of the details, claiming that "asterisks
dot" the argument throughout the speech. Already used in the comments
here in CQ, Milbank and Pincus -- the latter especially lacking any
credibility after his depantsing by Joe Wilson's misinformation campaign
-- still can't deny the overall truth of Bush's speech and the
despicable hypocrisy at the center of the Democratic Party's campaign to
smear him as a liar:
The administration's overarching point is true: Intelligence
agencies overwhelmingly believed that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass
destruction, and very few members of Congress from either party were
skeptical about this belief before the war began in 2003. Indeed, top
lawmakers in both parties were emphatic and certain in their public
statements.
Milbank and Pincus argue that Bush had access to more information than
Congress did, such as the PDBs that he didn't share with many outside
the NSA circle, and that Bush's staff overstates the scope of the later
Congressional investigations into the use of the intelligence pre-war.
Both of these get answered in two pretty simple steps:
1. None of the Security Council nations concluded that Saddam had
disarmed, either. Even staunch anti-war voices such as France, Russia,
and Germany didn't claim that Saddam had no WMD before the war started.
They just argued that sanctions had enough strength to keep him from
using them. All three countries have their own intelligence services;
did Bush "mislead" them as well? And of course, the sanctions that they
insisted we trust turned out to be a smokescreen for those three nations
to stuff Saddam's pockets full of cash for opportunities to buy cheap
oil for themselves.
2. The intelligence had not changed, but the circumstances did. The Post
notes an inconsistent threat analysis on Iraq in the Bush administration
but never explains why:
Even within the Bush administration, not everybody consistently
viewed Iraq as what Hadley called "an enormous threat." In a news
conference in February 2001 in Egypt, then-Secretary of State Colin L.
Powell said of the economic sanctions against Hussein's Iraq: "Frankly,
they have worked. He has not developed any significant capability with
respect to weapons of mass destruction."
Note when this assessment was given: one month after taking office. In
the first few months of the Bush administration, the policy towards Iraq
remained the same as it did during the Clinton administration --
vigourous containment based on the sanctions, with support for
humanitarian assistance through the Oil-For-Food program initiated
during the Clinton term. Bush had a rushed transition and had hardly
begun to go through all the information on Iraq.
[more at link]
http://powerlineblog.com/archives/012231.php
Dana Milbank and Walter Pincus attempt to pick at the Bush
administration's defense of its handling of pre-war intelligence and its
statements about what that intelligence showed. But they succeed only in
showing that the attacks on Bush in these regards are meritless and
hypocritcal.
Milbank and Pincus concede the essential point in their third paragraph:
The administration's overarching point is true: Intelligence
agencies overwhelmingly believed that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass
destruction, and very few members of Congress from either party were
skeptical about this belief before the war began in 2003. Indeed, top
lawmakers in both parties were emphatic and certain in their public
statements.
If that's true, two questions arise: (a) what's all the fuss about and
(b) why didn't Milbank and Pincus write this before, as the "Bush lied"
meme went essentially unchallenged for weeks.
Milbank and Pincus devote most of the rest of the article to arguing
that two sub-claims made by the Bush administration are "not wholly
accurate." The first is the claim by Stephen Hadley that "those people
who have looked at that issue [manipulation of intelligence], some
committees on the Hill in Congress, and also the Silberman-Robb
Commission, have concluded it did not happen." Milbank and Pincus note
that these bodies concluded only that that the administration did not
pressure intelligence analysts to change their conclusions, not that the
administration did not exaggerate these conclusions. However, the two
Postmen have already conceded that the intelligence agencies concluded
that Saddam clearly had WMD. So how did President Bush, in making this
same claim, exaggerate their conclusions? Milbank and Pincus imply that
this could have happened through the omission of caveats and dissenting
opinions. But if the intelligence was "overwhelming," it would have made
no sense to discuss caveats and dissenting opinions. The administration
lied or misled only if it affirmatively stated that there were no
caveats or dissents, which (as far as appears) it never did.
Milbank and Pincus also want to quibble with President Bush's claim that
Democrats in the House and Senate had access to the same intelligence he
did. They note that members of Congress do not have access to the
president's daily brief. But Bush didn't claim that the Dems received
every piece of paper Bush saw -- he merely said they had access to the
same intelligence. Milbank and Pincus do not suggest that the daily
brief contained anything materially different from what Congress had
access to. They do point out that Congress didn't get the National
Intelligence Estimate (summarizing the intelligence community's views
about the threat from Iraq) until "just days before the vote to
authorize the use of force in that country." But how does this rebut
Bush's statement about what Congress had access to? Are the Dems who are
feeding Milbank and Pincus this talking point claiming that they didn't
have time to read the report, which consisted of a mere 92 pages? What
was on their plates that was more important?
Milbank and Pincus also complain that some of the "doubts" expressed in
the NIE either were not cleared for public disclosure until the last
minute or were not cleared at all. But the legislators still had the
right to consider this material when they voted; indeed if they credited
those doubts, they had an obligation to do so. As noted, though, the
intelligence community overwhelmingly thought that Saddam possessed WMD.
To their credit, Milbank and Pincus ultimately seem underwhelmed by the
efforts of hypocritical, gutless, and/or lazy Dems to explain away their
vote to go to war. But it's unfortunate that they give voice to these
lame explanations and, in doing so, suggest that the Bush administration
is being less than honest in defending itself.
--
Fred Stone
aa# 1369
"You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up
for something, sometime in your life." -- W. Churchill
.
|
|
|
| User: "OS XI" |
|
| Title: Re: Inaccuracies in Bush's defense of lead-up to war |
17 Nov 2005 07:33:35 PM |
|
|
Fred Stone wrote:
... Democratic Party's campaign to
smear him as a liar
A man died and went to heaven. As he stood in front of
St. Peter at the Pearly Gates, he saw a huge wall of
clocks behind him. He asked, "What are all those
clocks?" St. Peter answered, "Those are Lie-Clocks.
Everyone on Earth has a Lie-Clock. Every time you lie
the hands on your clock will move."
"Oh," said the man, "whose clock is that?" "That's
Mother Teresa's. The hands have never moved,
indicating that she never told a lie."
"Incredible," said the man. "And whose clock is that
one?" St. Peter responded, "That's Abraham Lincoln's
clock. The hands have moved twice, telling us that Abe
told only two lies in his entire life."
"Where's Bush's clock?" asked the man.
"Bush's clock is in Jesus' office. He's using it as a
ceiling fan. "
.
|
|
|
|
|
| User: "Michael Gray" |
|
| Title: Re: Inaccuracies in Bush's defense of lead-up to war |
13 Nov 2005 12:32:58 AM |
|
|
On 12 Nov 2005 16:08:44 GMT, Enkidu the Atheist <enkidu@leaddogs.org>
wrote:
Inaccuracies in Bush's defense of lead-up to war
Congress had far less information than White House had
:
I can help shortcut this for everyone, by turning it around.
"Accuracies in Bush's defense of lead-up to war":
Zero.
.
|
|
|
|
|
Related Articles |
|
|
