Plame's Lame Game

[Preechr]

What we knew was in Iraq was already taken care of. It's interesting to remember, given the destruction of the centrifuge equipment in that report, the discovery of those centrifuge parts in that scientist's rose garden... especially when you factor in for the renewed interest in yellowcake procurement.

It does say in that report that Iraq's known stores included some yellowcake, which was contrary to what I'd thought before... I thought what was in Iraq was nuclear fuel only, not part of a nuke program. Either way, it was locked up tight (at least until WE showed up) and Iraq was out to find new materiel to replace it in order to reconstitute it's nuclear weapons program.

I'm definitely no nuclear scientist. That guy that said I was dumb seems to know more than I do about this stuff... I wish he'd explain the actual difference between uranium oxide which is used for nuclear fuel and yellowcake, which is also uranium oxide, but used to make weapons.... Well, I can look up the exact differences... the problem seems to be that the media can't be bothered to make that distinction clear when it's reporting a story...

Your article seems to state that those warnings and suggestions to remove the 16 words actually referred to the SOTU address, which is false. Those were what had the reference removed from a prior speech. I posted a link in the original thread (I think... I can't find it) to the transcript of the press conference where the White House admitted the 16 words shouldn't have been in the SOTU, and the reason given was that it was controversial, not untrue.

Moving on, I wasn't as much saying we should agree to disagree as I was suggesting there just isn't enough information available yet to argue either side. At some point, enough time will have passed to have uncovered the extent of what was going on in Iraq in regard to WsMD. While the burden of proof may indeed lie on the side of the hawks, I think it's kinda silly to say at this point that there are no stockpiles still hidden when nobody has said they're done looking.

Additionally, I doubt any terrorists in possession of WsMD would leave them lying around in Iraq to prove Bush right. The more likely scenario would be that the terrorists could find something before we got there and use it in Europe or America (or on American bases in Iraq.) I suspect that the day Al Quaeda gets hold of any such weapon will be the day the plans for it's immediate use will be set in motion.

Yes, the various reports look terrible for the intelligence community at large, and I agree that there's a reason the White House isn't jumping on this bandwagon which is Wilson. Wilson's lie only carries political weight... the original hub-bub due to his Times Op-Ed and Novak's rebuttal, which started the Plame controversy, was always only political, but Wilson's accusations were the the impetus of the entire "Bush Lied" movement, so it's no small wonder this iteration of the story is being ballyhooed by the right.

Again, the fact that Wilson's lie is in the news is that was the start of the "He Lied!" anti-war stance...

Our intelligence services have ALWAYS, repeat ALWAYS, been an embarrassment and a tragic flaw in government. This is not Bush's fault, and he's far from the first President to look like an ass for having trusted the CIA. My personal opinion is that the CIA's "handling" of the Middle East for the last 50 years is exactly why we are having to fight a War on Terror now. I'm not the person that would point to past American transgressions, however, and conclude we should be disallowed from helping out in the present. I figure we screwed it up, so it's our job to clean up our mess to the greatest degree those we once used as pawns will allow us.

I have a hard time comparing Sandy Berger's pants-stuffing with Plame's "outing." Sandy's either up to something very questionable or, at best, far to inept to have ever held any sort of security clearance... and he had the highest clearance a civilian can hold as NSA, I would imagine. If his "comical" sloppiness resulted in his chucking "Eyes Only for the President" type documents in the trash bin at McDonald's, I guess we'd have to take a close look at whatever he's had in his hands over his entire career, wouldn't you?

That hardly compares to an unnamed WH staffer telling Bob Novak that Plame, a CIA employee but in no way a spy, was behind the otherwise stupifying decision to send him to Niger. THAT is the main question I remember about that spot in history: Why the Hell would they send him, of all people?! As for having once served "undercover," it's hardly a secret that the wife of any foreign ambassador works in a certain capacity for the CIA, just as all foreign spies are officially diplomats to whatever country they're working in.

...

Bush Hate does come from somewhere: Election 2000. It's entirely possible that it's roots even pre-date Bush the President, going all the way back to the endless Clinton vs. Starr circus. Let Kerry win and watch the Republicans behave the same way for 4 years. It's just LCD politics. An inevitability.

I'm not even so confident that Bush Hate doesn't come mostly from the Bush Administration itself, as I've said previously. An enemy blinded by rage is easier to defeat; his overwhelming desire to inflict pain limits the creativity necessary for victory. I can't remember if it was Sun Tsu or Yoda that said that... Team Bush© is becoming infamous for the unanswered accusation that eventually leads to ridiculous, and therefore self-defeating, charges.


You say many reliable sources have questioned this war. Hell, I have questioned this war! While I support what should be able to be done with this effort, and believe SOME sort of extreme action was inevitable in any plan with a hope of success, it's always been pretty damn obvious that this is the equivalent of nuetering your cat with a blender. I've been sufficently impressed along the way to see the skill with which our armed forces have learned to use that blender, but war is still a crude, and essentially unsuited, tool for peace.

Peaceful means, however, stopped working long ago. It's obvious now that the Oil-for-Food mess was just another method for graft, on possibly the largest scale ever in fact.

...our intelligence gathering capabilities are weak, and in the case of Iraq, they were flawed. But why? Were we kidding ourselves about how good we are? Was this all George Tenet's fault? Leave it to a Clinton guy to fuck up the country, right?

Again, from what I'm currently reading on that subject, it seems astonishingly clear that, to those who rely on intelligence, including the community itself, the system we have in place has been nothing but screwed from the very beginning. It's a total mess, though still capable of doing A part in the defense of our country despite it's imminently flawed structure and methods. I'm not yet to the point that I could explain it all in detail, but I'm working on it. I can say with complete confidence, however, that no single President can be blamed for the intelligence boondoggle we have in this country. It's an institutional problem, and I'm not sure if it will ever be, much less even could be, fixed.

But clearly, as we well know, the desire to invade Iraq was there prior to 9/11. You can't deny that it had already been a neo-conservative agenda. Throughout the intelligence committee's report, you see a general theme that our intelligence gathering related to Iraq was like tunnel vision.

Yes, of course it was. As I said, Iraq was a tactical choice in the larger war, and a very good choice at that. No, that's not how it was "sold" to the public, but you can bet your ass the leaders of every country involved knew what was truly going on and that the rest was all just so much posturing. Why did we go to the Balkans? Somalia? Why did we fight either of the World Wars?

The British had no less than three offers from German Resistance folk to assassinate Hitler from the inside, well before Poland or Czechoslovakia. They passed because they wanted to stop him diplomatically and set the course for their dealings with Germany on a path they felt was advantageous to them. Looking back, this was idiotic, but it's enlightening to note that this was not part of the public discourse at the time. Nazis were all just Nazis throughout the war... there was never any mention, publically, of any resistance, as that would have hurt the war effort by allowing sympathy for the enemy.

Hitler could have been stopped at several points during the war through military means, but the decision to take the fight into Germany itself instead was made in order to humble the country by essentially raping it and leaving it in tatters, subdividing it up among the allies. Was that what was said at the time? Did the papers relate that as the reason so many more troops had to die?

I'm not saying the Bushies didn't think there were WsMd in Iraq. I don't really have to look further than Rumsfeld's under-staffing of the invasion force to see how scared he was that most of our military forces could be wiped out in one big whomp... but I could give you more examples if you need them.

In addition to the predetermined attack on Iraq, you can look back and see the Patriot Act wasn't a new idea, either. 9/11 just scared us enough to let them get it through... and by them I'm not necessarily referring to just this administration. Federal prosecuters had been trying to get a version of that thing through the legislature for a decade before events made it palateable.

David Kay's report was not so much highlighting "tunnel vision," as you call it, but criticizing our lack of Human Intelligence, or spies on the ground.