Points 1-3 don't realte at all to the Presidents statement.
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They relate to the "He LIED!!!" hysteria. Our decision to go to war was not at all dependent on the State of the Union address or that little bitty comment it contained.
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Point 4 is utterly circumstantial. One of our principle exports is computer tech. Does that mean Sadam got his computer chips from us?
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Niger doesn't have anything else to offer Iraq, at least nothing Iraq couldn't get anywhere else in the world.
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Point 5 is sophistry and just the sort of word parsing this administration promised not to resort to. It's nice it says it, but what are the facts that back it up? Are they more or less reliable than the forged Nigerian Documents?
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I don't know. BS doesn't normally make it all the way into an NIE, so it's relevant. To blanketly disregard it is to unfairly doubt our Intelligence Community's ability to collect facts and make assessments, which isn't a supportable basis to fight from. Despite it's failings, our Intel is as good or better than anyone else's... and it is inarguably VERY good.
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Point 6 'a foreign government'... hard to check that one out, but a good guess would be England. You know, the guys who 'learned' about this transaction, and are sticking by it, based on other evidence that they won't share even with their allies? Why, exactly, especially now that the Sadams government has fallen?
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Yep. UK intelligence. They have disclosed more info in private committee meetings with relevantly concerned intelligence agencies from Coalition nations, according to Mr. Straw, but they've yet to publicize this stuff, other than to say it has now been discussed privately...
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Point 7: as long as we are parsing, 'reports indicate' is not that same as 'confirming'. Have thesee reports been submitted to rigorous background checks to see if they aren't.... you know... really bad forgeries?
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The entire issue is not completely dependent on those "forged" documents. The Brits are standing by their original assesment of the topic based on twelve years of other, assumedly less forged, intelligence.
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point 8: Really? Can you ellaborate on that? Since the CIA seemed more than willing to allow corrupted information into the state of the union speech, which agencies are we talking about, and how is this 'consensus' vetted? And prior to vetting how many tikmes does Dick Chenney get to visit?
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"Thus the first, and by all odds most important, legal and constitutional aspect of the National Intelligence Estimate is that it was and is the Director's estimate, and its findings are his. Although many experts from perhaps all intelligence components of the community participated in the production of the papers in the NIE series, and although the intelligence chiefs themselves formally passed on the final text, they could not bend its findings to suit their own judgments contrary to the will of the DCI. They could try to win him to their sides by full and free discussions, but they could not outvote him and force him to join them, nor could they make him dissent from them, even though they constituted a clear majority of the Intelligence Advisory Board, Intelligence Advisory Committee, or the Untied States Intelligence Board as it was successively known. By the same token, the DCI could not oblige them to join him in a matter at dispute. They could of their own accord concur with his findings, or, not being able to, they could dissent and make their alternative views known in footnotes to his text.
http://www.cia.gov/csi/books/shermankent/5law.html
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Point 9: No way, seriously? An unamed businessman? An unamed official? That's pretty damning evidence. It makes me think of the unamed iraqi scientist pointing to a burried cache of weapons of mass destruction. I'd want to know something about where this intel came from and if the BBC has yet investigated the claim or is merely reporting a report.
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Surely you don't require full knowledge of every bit of information regarding everything pertaining to an issue before you can make a decision other than "I doubt it." Things are classified for a reason, even if it's just because the government is slow as Hell to de-classify innocuous details of mundane events.
In this case, I'd say that there's a pretty good reason to keep some of this stuff secret. I'd say those unnamed sources are still pretty worried about their lives, wouldn't you?
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Point 10. Your first even remotely valid point. But Jack Straw will need to do an awful lot more than just make claims. His PM's constituency is even more irate about the flimsyness of the case than W's is. He's very high level official to stick his neck out, but if concidering the only publicly vetted piece of intel on this whole issue turns out to be a really, really, really bad forgery, I think I'll want more than just his word.
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Yep. I bet they as well as W's administration are scrambling to determine what can and what cannot be de-classified to quell the mobs that are calling for their heads on platters. Again, I'd say that's an indication that there are pretty good reasons why these things are being kept secret for now.
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point 11: "Iraq also began vigorously trying to procure uranium ore and yellowcake" If the evidence is solid, show it.
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*points up to last comment*
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"acquiring either would shorten the time Baghdad needs to produce nuclear weapons." Based on that statement, we should probably pre-empt the entire non nuclear world.
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...or maybe just the rougue one's that are illegally pursuing WMD programs to threaten the world with... :D
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