doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Are these liberals you guys talking about?

Sadam had several months notice while the French stalled us at the UN. There was plenty of time to get it out to other nearby countries. Maybe by camel.

Of course, there is always the joke to fall back on. "We knew he had it because we had the receipts."

Ok,ok. You guys have convinced me.
Bush et.al. didn't mislead in any way. The invasion of Iraq was a good and necessary thing. It had nothing to do with oil or permanent bases in Iraq. Al Queda was in cahoots with Sadam. There were WMDs. (They were just hidden/deported right before the war.) Most of the world supported the invasion. More dead American boys and girls in the war is necessary for a safe America and a free Iraq. Let's "stay the course" and not "cut and run."
Now could someone please inform me the following:
What side we are fighting for and against in Iraq and why? If we are going to "win" this war, does someone know what that winning goal is or what it means? How will we know when we have "won?" Jake

Tenet, then director of the world's most powerful spy agency, believed the CIA case on Iraq, one of the sorriest dossiers in the history of intelligence assessment. Little wonder the intellgence community was unable to pinpoint al-Qaeda's intentions beforte 9/11. Tenet's book, which spreads the blame around, is worth reading.

Mr. Brown, I couldn't disagree with your interpretation more; and facts simply don't support your analysis. You are letting ideology and a stubborn mind set dictate your attempt to rationalize a failed and fradulent foreign policy. The Bush administration is quite possibly the most unscrupulous group to ever hold the White House.
Regards, Will

Will, Tenet, the "slam dunk" man, said he believed the CIA's assessment. I don't believe everything but there's a ring of truth in what he wrote. Colin Powell, with what many considered very circumstantial evidence presented to the UN, apparently believed the intelligence assessment, too. I thought it flimsy. Sometimes people believe what they want to believe, and this applies equally to institutions and countries under strain. (I don't know if I'd use unscrupulous for the White House; certainly proven incompetent. More than the towers have fallen.)

I worked in the intelligence business for about 30 years; 5 years with CIA (as a case officer in the Arab world); 25 years in Army Reserve Military Intelligence, involved with strategic analysis. So I do have a reasonably good idea of how the system works, how National Intelligence Estimates get written, etc.

The facts on Iraq are these: Saddam had (and used) chem weapons, both against the Kurds in his own country, and against Iran in the Iran-Iraq War. There is no dispute as to those facts. And no, we did NOT provide him with those chemical weapons. The "assistance" we gave Iraq during their war with Iran consisted largely of information based on satellite imagery, which was undoubtedly of great value to the outnumbered Iraqi military. But if you look at the equipment with which Saddam fought that war (and the Gulf War, and the 03 invasion), it is nearly all Russian. Not stuff we gave him.

In the intelligence business, when you know something for sure--as we knew that Saddam had chem weapons--you tend to cling to that knowledge with great tenacity, because there is a whole lot you don't know. And in the case of Iraq, after the Gulf War we simply did not have reliable assets in place, in country, to tell us what was going on. Therefore, when the UN inspectors left Iraq in 1997 and said there were hundreds of tons of chem weapons unaccounted for, there was absolutely no reason not to believe them. We did not have anyone telling us that Saddam had destroyed those stockpiles, given them away, or that the starship Enterprise had dropped by and beamed them up. And we did have a number of refugees--anti-Saddam types of course, who were not tested, reliable sources (but you go with what you've got)--telling us that yes indeed, those weapons were still there.

In my case, as a former intelligence officer--I retired with the rank of colonel, and was the first commander of the prototype Joint Reserve Intelligence Center, which was providing strategic analysis support to the US European Command--I often find it necessary to explain to the uninitiated how the whole process works. Many have criticized Tenet, saying he should have advised the president against invading Iraq. Wrong! The role of the Director of Central Intelligence (now taken over by the DNI) is that of chief intelligence ADVISER to the president. You cannot be both an intelligence adviser and a policy advocate. If you start advocating for a particular policy, then your objectivity as an intelligence adviser rapidly becomes suspect.

I'm not necessarily a Tenet supporter, and I thought his "slam dunk" explanation was particularly weak. However, he summed up the role of intelligence in relation to policy very accurately in his Feb 04 speech at Georgetown:

"The risks are always high. Success and perfect outcomes are never guaranteed. But there's one unassailable fact: We will always call it as we see it. Our professional ethic demands no less." Amen to that.

Interestingly enough, if you listen to any of the several former intelligence officers who have come out of the woodwork to criticize the Bush Administration and its decision to invade Iraq, you will not find a single one that makes a good case for the books having been cooked on WMD's. They'll talk about Cheney and Wolfowitz looking for links between Saddam and AQ, Saddam and 9/11--but the record also shows, quite clearly, that the CIA never caved to that pressure. They never stated that there was any substantial relationship between Saddam and AQ, and no connection at all between Saddam and 9/11. The fact that Colin Powell--no stranger to intelligence, given his military career--believed the WMD intelligence and made that now-infamous UN presentation is quite telling. As is the fact that the WMD assessment never really changed, from what the CIA told the Clinton Administration (and remember, Tenet was a Clinton appointee) and what they told the Bush Administration. It proved to be wrong, but I don't see any evidence that it was anything other than an honest (and quite understandable) mistake.

As for missing 9/11 . . . much of that had to do with internal problems within the intelligence community, caused to a great extent by legal interpretations which severely hindered information sharing between CIA and FBI, and even within FBI between counterintelligence/counterterrorism officers and law enforcement officers. We missed Pearl Harbor too, and if anyone were to examine the history behind both events, I think they would conclude--as I have--that we had a lot more to go on prior to Pearl Harbor than we did prior to 9/11.

I have been followed this thread off and on and trying to resist the temptation to jump in. Now I am at my own peril.

I think Larry is essentially correct. I have a great deal of respect for his experience and training.

As far as 9/11 goes, I think the Bush administration was basically drifting that first summer, sort of finding their "sea-legs" so to speak. I do remember reading right after 9/11 that the CIA had provided some sort of warning in the President's Dailey Briefings. Of course, they had no way to know specifics at the time, but they did have some idea that something was coming down. These warnings, whether they were too vague or not, have not been talked about too much since. We may not have been able to have prevented 9/11, but maybe, we could have tried.

I think this administration used the event of 9/11 to push an agenda and policy that probably would not have had much of a chance otherwise. I believe they used 9/11 as a vehicle to ride into a second term, that, without 9/11, would have been very "iffy." Even very recently, the Vice President is still trying to force the linkage of 9/11 and justification for doing Iraq.

Where I believe this administration has failed themselves miserably is in leading us as a nation into war. Congress voted to give the President authorization to use force, if necessary, to enforce the UN resolutions with regard to Iraq. From that point on, this administration was determined to have a war with Iraq. From what I have read, they were probably determined to do this before Congress' authorization, but now they had the green light. I think, a case could be made that we have enforced the UN resolutions so maybe, we should leave Iraq.

I would have thought after Viet Nam, we would have learned about getting the American people involved in the support of a war. This has never happened. Tax policy was structured so we would not feel the effects of the cost of the war. The media was controlled so we would not see the caskets and body bags being flown home. This administration is using war as a tool for policy and never convinced us that it was necessary.

Congress is given the power to declare war according to our Constitution. This has not happened since WWII. Military engagements that we have experienced since WWII have generally lost the support of the American people if they were of any duration. Presidents can do Grenadas and Panamas because they were able to have quick success, but without our support, uses of the military for geo-political purposes that ran into long durations have lost the support of the American people. What amazes me is that this administration seemed to believe that they were exempt from the lessons of history. So many people with beautiful educations, but just too full of themselves to have any common sense.

Time and history will judge the Iraq War, but it is fair to judge the leadership we have received right now. I think it has been terribly lacking, more a function of egos and stubbornness than good sense.

Ok, I am now fair game. Have a go at me fellas.

Ed Pirie
West Topsham, Vermont

Ed, the now-famous pre-9/11 warning to which you refer came in a Presidential Daily Brief, dated August 6, 2001. Title: "Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in US". However, that item did not contain anything specific in terms of timing, location, or the nature of the threat. The only mention of aircraft hijacking was in reference to the use of that tactic in an attempt to gain release of the "blind sheikh" who plotted the 1993 WTC attack.

What people who point to that vague warning and ignore is that, in fact, a more specific warning had been received by the Clinton Administration almost 3 years earlier, following the attacks on our embassies in Africa. PDB dated December 4, 1998, contained an item entitled "Bin Ladin Preparing to Hijack US Aircraft and Other Attacks". I never heard anyone complain that Clinton & Co did nothing to beef up airport security or harden cockpits as a result of that warning. If he had started the ball rolling then, might we have avoided 9/11? Maybe . . . but it's certain that no matter what Bush did in the 5 weeks he had between a warning about AQ attacking the US and 9/11, there would not have been time to implement significant changes in airport or aircraft security.

Highly recommended reading, from former Senator Bob Kerrey, in today's Wall Street Journal: "The Left's Iraq Muddle". And remember, Kerrey was a member of the 9/11 Commission (who kept asking "What were we waiting for?"), and thus has a good bit more expertise in the area than your average politician. And he's also a Democrat.

But I still think he should've married Debra Winger.

Hi Larry:

I did not know about the earlier PDB that Clinton received. I wonder why this was not talked about more seriously. I am not sure of my dates, but was this before or after the embassy bombings in Africa? It would seem to me that if the embassy bombings preceded this PDB, it would be hard to justify not being more proactive on this warning.

Something else I have wondered about is the number of top military people that seemed to have been ushered into retirement with the beginning days of Secretary Rumsfeld. Many of these people now show up as analysts on the network news. It looks like Rumsfeld cashiered everyone that subscribed to Powell's theory of "overwhelming force." I think there is a story here that is worth telling. Our Iraq experience could have been very different without this happening.

I think the "left," or whatever you want to call them are confused about Iraq. They were sucked in from the beginning as many of us were. It was just too close to 9/11. As a nation, we did not stop and really look at what we were getting in to. I wish people like Skowcroft, Baker, and Powell had said more at the time. We needed to have this debate that we have never had. It has only been very recently that we could talk like this without accusations flying around about a lack of patriotism.
Anything less than the "company line" painted you as un-American.

I think most Americans would not quibble if we put all our energies into finishing the search for Bin Laden. Why it is ok to leave that job as it is makes no sense to me. I understand the risk that this would pose with Pakistan's stabilty, but I think we owe it to everyone to bring those people to justice.
I believe the world would support us with doing this. Because of this, I do think we took our eye off the job that should have been our priority.

I am not an "east coast liberal," although I see nothing wrong with being one. I am an American. I have voted Republican more times than not, but I have a hard time agreeing with this current administration. I think it was the perceived arrogance that first turned me off, and then the substance followed.

I come from a family that served in the military. My uncle spent over thirty years in the 82nd Airborne. He went in just before WWII started, became an Army Ranger, served in Korea, at least two tours in Viet Nam, and finally retired to a home just outside Fort Bragg. He died shortly after and his ashes were taken up in a plane and dumped out over the fort.

My father served in the Army Air Corps during WWII. He turned 18 on Dec. 7, 1941. He was a freshman at Dartmouth at the time and the Emperor of Japan's son was a student there as well. The State Department hustled him out quickly before the students would have killed him. Most of my father's class enlisted right away. Those that survived the war, came back and finished after.

I started college in 1969 and my birthday was drawn #11 in the first draft lottery. I had student deferments until I graduated. At that time, Nixon had started to bring people home from Viet Nam so I received a letter from the draft board saying that I no longer needed to report for induction after graduation.

What I am trying to say is that I have tried hard to support our country and our country's leaders. I come from a family that would expect nothing less, but I have sure had a hard time with this bunch. Clinton was clearly morally challenged in many ways, but damn it, these guys are not much better. It may not be about sex, but it sure is about power.

America cannot hide behind our oceans. I think Tony Blair recently said that the world desparately needs an America that is involved. This, I agree with, but I do think we can be smart about our involvements.

best regards,

Ed Pirie
West Topsham, Vermont

This is going to beat the alkanet root thread if you're not careful.

Ask yourself what Al Gore would have done about 9/11.