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On the other hand
Joined: 19 Apr 2003
Location: I walk along the avenue
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 Posted: Fri May 25, 2007 3:49 am Post subject: Bush ignored warnings about Iraqi aftermath |
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In a move sure to raise even more questions about the decision to go to war with Iraq, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence will on Friday release selected portions of pre-war intelligence in which the CIA warned the administration of the risk and consequences of a conflict in the Middle East.
Among other things, the 40-page Senate report reveals that two intelligence assessments before the war accurately predicted that toppling Saddam could lead to a dangerous period of internal violence and provide a boost to terrorists. But those warnings were seemingly ignored.
In January 2003, two months before the invasion, the intelligence community's think tank � the National Intelligence Council � issued an assessment warning that after Saddam was toppled, there was �a significant chance that domestic groups would engage in violent conflict with each other and that rogue Saddam loyalists would wage guerilla warfare either by themselves or in alliance with terrorists.�
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I am not a conspiracy theorist, but it is becoming increasingly believable that Bush and Company delibertately set out to create chaos and destruction in Iraq.
The alternative possibility, of course, is that the Bush clique was even more detached from reality than has previously been assumed. Like seriously, these guys would have to have been the Scientologists of international statecraft to go into this expecting smooth results. |
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On the other hand
Joined: 19 Apr 2003
Location: I walk along the avenue
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Fri May 25, 2007 11:28 am Post subject: |
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On the Other Hand: it is incompetence. Utter incompetence. At least that is what foreign-policy elites and the military have been saying "between-the-lines" for about a year now.
Your "Bush-and-Company-delibertately-set-out-to-create-chaos-and-destruction-in-Iraq" hypothesis is possible -- what isn't? -- but it is much more unlikely than my explanation, above.
Same goes for Katrina. Not even Nero was as bad as some of W. Bush's opponents are currently making him out to be. |
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On the other hand
Joined: 19 Apr 2003
Location: I walk along the avenue
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| Posted: Fri May 25, 2007 11:40 am Post subject: |
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Your "Bush-and-Company-delibertately-set-out-to-create-chaos-and-destruction-in-Iraq" hypothesis is possible -- what isn't? -- but it is much more unlikely than my explanation, above.
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I basically agree. I was entertaining the conspiracy theories as a demonstration of just HOW incompetent the Bush gang has been. That is, it's so bad that the only plausible alternative to a conspiracy theory is to say that the architects of the invasion must have been stark raving bonkers.
And I'm not saying that the CIA report had to be taken as gospel. But when an agency like that tells you that X Y and Z are likely results of a course of action, you should at the very least plan for the possibility that X Y and Z will come about. |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Fri May 25, 2007 11:50 am Post subject: |
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| On the other hand wrote: |
| the CIA report... |
Interesting you mention this. I could cite clear and concrete examples of the Johnson, Nixon, Reagan, and now W. Bush Administrations' simply refusing to listen to or consider the Intelligence Directorate's information and analyses.
They sent in a "Team B" of their own analysts, and simply wrote their own, more convenient, analyses -- on a range of issues.
In fact, the only presidents CIA felt comfortable with post-1945 were Eisenhower and H.W. Bush -- strong, capable, competent managers, who knew exactly what CIA was about. (I suspect Clinton, too, but have seen nothing on this yet.)
People who complain about CIA's covert operations miss the biggest thing to complain about. We need Senate oversight on the good information the Agency provides but various administrations ignore on political grounds. The alleged bin-Laden-Iraq link, for example.
We created one hell of a nonpartisan intelligence service. If the Oval Office is going to outright ignore the information this system produces, then the President ought to have to explain to someone why.
Helms, for example, produced a highly-confidential memo called something like "the Vietnamese Will to Persist" for LBJ that said, essentially, this: we have found that our "domino-theory" assumptions do not hold true and also that no vital American interests are at stake in Vietnam. And no escalation will succeed in winning this war, either. Mid-1960s. Yet Johnson ignored it.
Why did Johnson chose to escalate the war, then? The Deputy Director for Intelligence asked Helms this in outrage...
| R. J. Smith wrote: |
"How in the hell can the president make that decision in the face of our findings?" I asked.
[Helms] fixed me with a supphurous look. "How do I know how he made up his mind? How does any president make decisions? Maybe Lynda Bird was in favor of it. Maybe one of his old friends urged him. Maybe it was something he read. Don't ask me to explain the workings of a president's mind." |
Smith, Unknown CIA, 187.
As for W. Bush in Iraq. I understand that part of his alcoholic counseling has stressed that he turned to alchohol because he had failed to follow anything through in his life. To reverse this, he needs to take charge of himself, to persist through adversity, and follow-through what he starts to its finish. On such personalities turn the fate of nations and world affairs...
In any case, the Senate needs to raise these issues at the time, when they count, and not hold them in reserve for election-year show-politics. |
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EFLtrainer
Joined: 04 May 2005
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| Posted: Fri May 25, 2007 6:39 pm Post subject: |
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From Daily Kos
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This country's reputation is in tatters. It will take generations for us to wash off this stain.
***UPDATE 3*** Some have understandably commented that this is not really news. After all, we already knew all this. True, but now it's codified from a previously classified CIA report revealed by the Senate Intelligence Committee... So yes, we all knew it, but it was never officially acknowledged ANYWHERE in the manistream. This is significant because a) responsible people in the CIA were attempting all along to warn the Bushies that this would be a disaster; b) thus George Tenet is even more to blame for downplaying this kind of information when stepping up to the plate would really have counted for something, and was most clearly stabbing his own people in the back; c) brutally confirms that Bush and his people were cherry-picking intel that fit their agenda; d) makes publicly clear with unimpeachable evidence what all of knew - that Bush and his crowd had all the information they needed to make a decision.
It was not incompetence. Everything was structured in a most deliberate fashion. |
Here's the full report in .pdf:
Pre-war Assessment of Intelligence on Post-war Iraq
Some of what they ignored:
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_ Establishing a stable democracy in Iraq would be a long, steep and probably turbulent challenge. They said that contributions could be made from 4 million Iraqi exiles and Iraq's impoverished, underemployed middle class. But they noted that opposition parties would need sustained economic, political and military support.
_ Al-Qaida would see the invasion as a chance to accelerate its attacks, and the lines between al-Qaida and other terrorist groups "could become blurred." In a weak spot in the analysis, one paper said that the risk of terror attacks would spike after the invasion and slow over the next three to five years. However, the State Department recently found that attacks last year alone rose sharply.
_ Domestic groups in Iraq's deeply divided society would become violent, unless stopped by the occupying force. "Score settling would occur throughout Iraq between those associated with Saddam's regime and those who have suffered most under it." |
And from our esteemed expert on world affairs:
| Gopher wrote: |
On the Other Hand: it is incompetence. Utter incompetence. At least that is what foreign-policy elites and the military have been saying "between-the-lines" for about a year now.
Your "Bush-and-Company-delibertately-set-out-to-create-chaos-and-destruction-in-Iraq" hypothesis is possible -- what isn't? -- but it is much more unlikely than my explanation, above.
Same goes for Katrina. Not even Nero was as bad as some of W. Bush's opponents are currently making him out to be. |
This is just more excuse-making. Incompetence is at issue when the idea is good, the goal is honorable and the reasons just. These conditions do not exist, and have never existed, in the Iraq invasion.
1. The invasion was unnecessary: A. Saddam was contained. B. Al Queda did not exist there. C. There were no WMDs. The inspectors were months away from proving this,a s we all know now, and as many of uis knew then. (Because we actually listened to the inspectors.) D. Iraq was a threat to no other nation, particularly the US.
2. The reason for the invasion, if not for any of the above, was for what, then? To free Iraqis? Bull. There are many repressed peoples around the world, why are we not invading and toppling their governments?
2A. Cheney himself told you. Did you listen? No. He stated before the war that the key to future oil security, i.e. access and supply, lay in the Middle East.
2B. He held meetings, still-secret meetings, with oil companies before the war. Why? What had that to do with the price of tea in China? Nothing. Did Cheney need them to tell him where the wells were and that they needed protecting? No. Did he need them to plan the war, being this generation's embodiment of Sun Tzu? No. They had no usefulness. It is ridiculous to claim that oil barrons had anything worthwhile to say about waging war. Their purpose was singular: to craft what would later be presented as the administration's oil laws for Iran.
2C. Even Joo's position that the invasion was to intimidate those ME nations they could not attack because they were ostensibly allies holds more water than the administration's bullshit lies.
3. The execution did show some incompetence, but it was not, in fact, incompetence. It is not as if they tried real hard to do it right. People told them how to do it right. They screwed up due to delusions and hubris - pure arrogance. hey lied about why, but the screwing up of everything had to do with their belief in their own infallibility. Arrogance does not equal incompetence: they never even tried to do it right. They listened to nobody.
Do I believe they set out to create chaos? No. I think they set out to control the oil. Virtually every person in that administration - even Rice - came from the oil industry. They knew the score on oil. Cheney was part of groups that addressed the very idea so many of you scoff at: Oil security. Let me put it to you the way it is discussed these days: Peak Oil. Go ahead, do the searches.
No, gopher, you don't get away with pretending to be disgusted with the people you support in order to convince others that they really aren't that bad. The lies of this administration are over. The PSAs giving foreign companies 80 percent of oil profits over the first five years of the agreements prove this. How does Iraq rebuild when 80 percent of its oil revenues are going to Chevron, et al.?
This was not incompetence: it was intentional rape and pillage. It was about oil supply and nothing else.
And then this little gem:
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| In any case, the Senate needs to raise these issues at the time, when they count, and not hold them in reserve for election-year show-politics. |
Since the Senate got lied to and bullied and peed their pants, it is inappropriate for them to ever redress the issue and try to repair the damage done.
Freaking brilliant.
do you *honestly* believe that getting out of Iraq is nothing but show politics? Disgusting. |
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mindmetoo
Joined: 02 Feb 2004
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| Posted: Sat May 26, 2007 7:28 am Post subject: |
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| Don't blame on conspiracy what can be blamed on moronic religious faith. I think Bush just figured he was doing god's work. Jesus would never let America lose Iraq just as Jesus would never let the levees fail in New Orleans... |
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On the other hand
Joined: 19 Apr 2003
Location: I walk along the avenue
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| Posted: Sat May 26, 2007 7:42 am Post subject: |
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Don't blame on conspiracy what can be blamed on moronic religious faith. I think Bush just figured he was doing god's work. Jesus would never let America lose Iraq just as Jesus would never let the levees fail in New Orleans...
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I would agree with this, but I think the culprit ideology extended somewhat beyond evangelical Christianity(though that was probably part of the mixture for Bush). Remember, many of the prominent architects of this war weren't even nominally Christian. And this quote always sticks in my mind...
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The aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." ... "That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality�judiciously, as you will�we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."
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The way the aide talks sounds like something you'd hear from someone caught up in a multilevel marketing scam, angling a potential recruit. "Oh, I know you think that you actually have to get out of bed in the morning and make phone calls in order to earn money, but that's because you're part of the 'getting-out-of-bed-in-the-morning' community. But once you start selling Shamway, you experience an entire paradign shift and you realize that the old thinking just doesn't apply."
http://tinyurl.com/93xz8 |
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EFLtrainer
Joined: 04 May 2005
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| Posted: Sat May 26, 2007 9:26 am Post subject: |
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| mindmetoo wrote: |
| Don't blame on conspiracy what can be blamed on moronic religious faith. I think Bush just figured he was doing god's work. Jesus would never let America lose Iraq just as Jesus would never let the levees fail in New Orleans... |
Then you need to read more and connect a few more dots. First, your comment indicates Bush has been in charge all along. He has not. He is not. He will never be except for those times he throws a little tantrum and they let him actually do something.
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Quote:
Don't blame on conspiracy what can be blamed on moronic religious faith. I think Bush just figured he was doing god's work. Jesus would never let America lose Iraq just as Jesus would never let the levees fail in New Orleans...
I would agree with this, but I think the culprit ideology extended somewhat beyond evangelical Christianity(though that was probably part of the mixture for Bush). Remember, many of the prominent architects of this war weren't even nominally Christian. And this quote always sticks in my mind...
Quote:
The aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." ... "That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality�judiciously, as you will�we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."
The way the aide talks sounds like something you'd hear from someone caught up in a multilevel marketing scam, angling a potential recruit. "Oh, I know you think that you actually have to get out of bed in the morning and make phone calls in order to earn money, but that's because you're part of the 'getting-out-of-bed-in-the-morning' community. But once you start selling Shamway, you experience an entire paradign shift and you realize that the old thinking just doesn't apply." |
Basically, yes. The Plan B/New American Century/Oil Magnates Cadre really thought they were going to recreate the world as they wanted it. They may yet succeed. |
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Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee
Joined: 25 May 2003
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| Posted: Sat May 26, 2007 5:08 pm Post subject: |
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Saddam loyalists would wage guerilla warfare either by themselves or in alliance with terrorists.�
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I thought there was no chance that Al Qaeda/ jihad international and Saddam loyalists would ever work together?
Wait US intel does mention the possibility that they would doesn' t it? |
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EFLtrainer
Joined: 04 May 2005
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| Posted: Sat May 26, 2007 7:51 pm Post subject: |
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| Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee wrote: |
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Saddam loyalists would wage guerilla warfare either by themselves or in alliance with terrorists.�
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I thought there was no chance that Al Qaeda/ jihad international and Saddam loyalists would ever work together?
Wait US intel does mention the possibility that they would doesn' t it? |
The enemy of my enemy is my friend. If we left Iraq I think you'd see the Iraqis slowly toss Al Queda out. I say slowly only because Iraq will be a nation in name only for quite some time due to the decimation and divisions there. |
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