Perhaps I made a mistake in what you were talking about. I thought when you were referring to intelligence "mistakes" regarding WMDs that included not just presence of any possible weapon, but their nature, as in could they or would they likely be used.
The President used the
threat of WMDs. I was saying he was lying about WMDs, regarding their existence as a threat.
Here is what was
possible and our intelligence actually was mistaken on: There had been stockpiles of WMDs (chem-bio) from before the first gulf war, which were unaccounted for. Our intelligence assumed they were still there. No one was in a position to confirm or deny it and I actually thought they might still be there.
If this is all you were talking about then there is no issue from me. He could have had old stockpiles made for use in the 1980's in the heads of conventional munitions.
The problem was that even if they were there, they were unlikely to be usable in any real way. They certainly posed no threat to the US mainland. It had been pointed out that it was unlikely anyone could smuggle them in and it would be easier just to make the stuff here in the US.
There were also indications that they might have programs in place looking to create WMD technology. Unfortunately that also does not pose any sort of threat, and that is if they have them. Yet it was known at CIA that they had no real way of knowing anything. I leave you to do catch up and read through the Senate findings.
That is what caused a real scandal, and had Bush's original weapons hunter David Kay stunned when he learned about it. People like the French and extop US intel officials had publicly derided our capacity to have this intel. They were proven right.
The administration certainly did claim that there was a program for nuclear WMD technology using as evidence documents that had been publicly denounced by IAEA... and I believe Blix too... well before the invasion, and indeed before Powell's and Bush's public statements of their veracity. That was a lie, but got transferred as somehow Tenet's fault.
Remember this was also the cause of the scandal when one official publicly criticized Bush and Powell's claims, and then his wife's identity as a CIA agent was leaked to the press (and they still can't seem to find out who commited that federal offense).
If you feel that Bush is justified in asserting that his claims of WMDs were "mistakes", when the only mistake made (out of all of their claims) was that they may have had old stockpiles, even though they were by all accounts never going anywhere and not as effective as was repeatedly hyped (remember the "mushroom cloud" imagery?) counter to public facts, then so be it.
I am not going to go back over old materials at this point to dredge everything up if you feel you need to know more about this subject. This is old news and either you knew it or you didn't. If you think I'm hindsighting everything at this point then you can believe it but it's not true. In the end why should I care?
Such a thing was suggested in another thread and Schraf thankfully pulled up quotes from me on EvC about Iraq issues before the Iraq War happened, proving I was not hindsighting things. Then the person never said anything again. So at this point I don't care to prove myself... if there is a dispute at this point (which maybe there isn't).
Actually, I am not familiar with this particular event (I assume it occurred prior to the invasion). Could you help me out with more details?
I would think this is easy to find. I will look up this and the intelligence group (which is even more important). Give me a couple days, as this is low priority.
the "nucular" threat evidence was not claimed as the main reason for ending Sadaam's rule.
I simply cannot believe you are saying this. That was the top of the WMD threat that they hyped. How many times did Rice state if we wait for concrete evidence it may be in the shape of a mushroom cloud? They hit that button so many times.
That is what made that one official's denouncement so important, and then his wife was exposed as a CIA spy in retaliation. If it was nothing on their hype machine, this would hardly have been the response.
If you want to claim it wasn't
their reason, well that is true. It appears to have more to do with removing a threat to Israel and getting a gov't in place that will help us stabilize oil assets.
You seem to be of the opinion that because I support the troops now and advocate staying until the job is done, that I was for the war in the first place. I was not.
You and I share the same position then... with the exception that our level of intelligence on the existence and threat of WMDs was advanced to the level of a lie to the american public.
your statement that the government had evidence showing there were no WMD's and then hid that fact.
At the very least it is obvious to you that they did so with the existence of nuclear weapons and weapons programs, right? I should add that my position was that they hid the fact that they knew they had no way of knowing whether there were WMDs or not. They hinted that they had ways of knowing, but they knew they had none, one way or the other.
Like I said, one of the big bombshells in the Congressional report was that the CIA had no assets within Iraq at all. They had absolutely no way of saying what they knew.
holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)
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