In an exchange with Sen. Kerry in the Senate last Friday, Sen. Kyl (R-AR) still maintained -- at this late date, after all we have learned -- that for all we know those aluminum tubes may indeed have been intended for use in a centrifuge to produce or process refined uranium.

But my understanding is that all of the experts who truly know something about this matter have said without question that this was not a possible use for those tubes.

So why didn't those could have known call the administration on it?

Because they would have been instantly crucified by rabid partisans, a complicit media and money-driven political parties.

The almost complete collapse of opposition to a blatant power-grab was one of the most disappointing things I have ever witnessed.

--Emma

irishkg, I would like to very much.  I would like to commend him for his courage and for sticking with the truth.

There were news reports on those who dissented from the administration's view, sometimes on the inside pages, but I certainly knew about them.  That was a major reason that I did not support the war, along with the certainty that Saddam had nothing to do with 9/11.

As the kids I work with at summer camp would say,"Me! Me! Me!"

actually, there's a third option: kyl (and so many others) don't care about the truth, only about defending their position.

I'm sure that Graham was far from being the only one in congress who had misgivings about strength of the NIE's conclusions regarding Iraq's WMD capabilities.  Many in congress voted for the war despite their doubts about whether Iraq had WMDs.  My own congressman told me as much in explaining that he voted for the arguments made by the neo-cons.

So now we are having this debate about the misuse of intelligence.  Of course, Bush misused the intelligence.  Indeed, the last thing Bushco wanted was accurate intelligence.  What they wanted war and what they got was war. 

The problem with the debate over the misuse of intelligence is that it is like chasing one's tail.  The moment you pin the other side down there will be an admission that the WMD claim was merely a pretext for other compelling reasons for war.
Fighting this fight is like fighting on shifting sand. 

We need to figure out how to get them to chase their tails while we push forward with our agenda. 

The fact that most of the Senators and Congressmen didn't read beyond the 5 page executive summary is an embarassment. Given the fact they were given the entire NIE with only a few days to sift through the entire report softens my stance a bit, but the fact that the majority of Dems in the legislative body didn't feel like it was important enough to read so that they could base their vote on the findings, is very disturbing.

By now the Medal of Honor is so demeaned, who would want one?
janeboatler
You mean the Medal of Freedom, the Medal of Honor still requires that you risk your life under fire to save the lives of others, oh most people don't want a shot at that one either.

SFCWallace, You are correct; I was mistaken.  As Ann Landers used to say, thirty lashes with a wet noodle for me.  My apologies to the recipients of the Medal of Honor.  In no way would I want to dishonor our brave service members who received this honor.

I imagine "Brownie" will be in line for one someday. The really scary thing is I'm not sure if I'm joking.

Don't forget that virtually none of them read the Patriot Act either.  What are they DOING up there?  I know that they have time to meet with lobbyists, and go on junkets, and stuff like that.  Couldn't they at LEAST get aides to read the bills that they have to sign?  Couldn't they get them to highlight really important parts of them, and bring it to their attention?  Who has a job that they could do so haphazardly and not be fired, other than politicians?

I've seen the Oct 2002 NIE and its Cliff's Notes counterpart.  The difference between the two is night and day.  The Dems need to assert that the intelligence they received did not contain the footnotes/caveats that were abundantly clear in the full NIE. Who assembled the small NIE brief? 

The Dems also need to give a bit more context regarding their vote to give Bush the authority to go to war.  They did NOT vote to invade Iraq, they voted to give Bush the authority to send our troops into Iraq or any other country he saw fit. 

So why didn't those could have known call the administration on it? Is it because no more than six senators and a handful of House members bothered reading past the 5-page executive summary of the NIE before casting what may have been the most important vote of their congressional careers?

They didn't call him on it because they didn't care.  Despite the intense and highly politicized current concern with the issue of prewar WMD intelligence, the state of Iraq's WMD program was of marginal importance in driving the United States to make war against Iraq in early 2003.

Back in 2002, leading Democratic politicians and operatives were convinced that the majority of the public was hungry for more war, anywhere, so long as it was against "terrorists" (i.e. Arabs and/or Muslims).  The President also clearly wanted war, and at the time the President was enormously popular with the public.  These leaders reasoned that the war was going to happen, one way or another, and assumed that it was likely to go very well, and lead to a quick and easy triumph.

The envisioned endless lines of happy, cheering Iraqis waving flowers and US flags, and bestowing candies and kisses upon beaming American soldiers. They imagined that the supporters of the war would be able to share somewhat in the glory of the victory, while its critics would be tainted with a yellow ignominy.  So they seized the opportunity to leap onto the bandwagon for the upcoming victory parade, a parade that was certain to assemble itself in short order.

Democrats were also terrified by the vision of G.W. Bush, the self-described "War President" enjoying a permanent Caesarian wave of unbeatable public support and loyalty, lasting well into 2004 and beyond, so long as he was successful in extending the prevailing climate of wartime arousal, mobilization and anticipation.  They hoped that by giving him his war quickly, and getting it over with, they could begin by the fall of 2003 to turn the public mood and debate away from national security - the Democrats' perceived weak suit - and toward their perceived strong suit in domestic policy.  They wanted to do to Bush the Younger what they had done to Bush the Elder: satisy the manic and lusty public war fever, in the process extinguish it, and then beat their opponent on their own turf rather than his.

Finally, war against Iraq was the natural culmination of a policy which Democrats themselves had fully supported throughout the late nineties.  The Clinton administration had steadily moved toward a frank policy of regime change, and had tried various, increasingly desperate moves to drive Saddam from power. The administration had pursued a policy of harsh sanctions and no-fly zones in their growing zeal to drive Saddam from power - underlined by Madeline Albright's now-notorious assertion about how killing hundreds of thousands of Iraqis was a price worth paying to get rid of Saddam.  The US had spent more than a decade softening up Saddam's regime by cutting off his military supply lines and encouraging Kurdish and Shiite separatism and revolt.  And most of the Democratic Senate leaders had already voted for the Iraq Accountability Act.  So for many of them, the attitude was "let's get on with it, and finish this job".

Far from being concerned about the "threat" of Iraq and its supposedly horrible weapons of mass destruction, most of our leaders in Washington knew Saddam was a defanged and declawed has-been, and his administration a debilitated shell of its former self.  We beat Iraq handily in 1991 when they were a much more formidable enemy.  So why wouldn't do the same this time?  It would be a very nice little war, one that would save the mighty United States from the humiliation of failure following ten years of scrambling defiance from a petty dictator in a vital region.

All of these recriminations and second thoughts about the WMD intelligence completely fail to reckon with the spirit of the times that prevailed three and four years ago.  I doubt even one Washington leader in ten had her or his mind altered by something they either did or did not learn about Iraq's dread weapons.  The WMD debate, the UN fiasco: those were just show pieces.

Recall the discussion in Act I of Shakespeare's Henry V about the Salique law.  Some lawyers come before the young King to make the case about his claims in France.  Shakespeare portrays these lawyerly disquisitions as excruciatingly boring and pedantic, and in the end as only dimly related to the motivations of the characters.  These antique laws serve only as a pretext for the war.  A much more important motivation is for young King Harry to make a show of strength, to satisfy the ambitions of his noble loyalists at court, to prove his mettle and defend his honor against a personal insult he receives from the French Dauphin, and to show his potential rivals that they may not infer from his notoriously dissolute past that he is a weakling.

You'd think a little detail like an obvious warmongering fraud of a President hellbent on starting a war might have attracted their attention!

I don't know what the phrase "blank check" means in the context of invading and occupying Iraq, but Presidents have had the unilateral right to use military force to invade other countries since at least 1950 and have done so in Korea, Lebanon, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Dominican Republic, Lebanon again, Grenada, Iraq, Panama, and Iraq again.

While Presidents may choose to come before the Congress for the purpose of forestalling later criticism, Congress and the Constitution(?) does not require that they do so. 

Please note that my main man (woman?) has rated me a 1 for having the temerity to suggest that someone such as "5 deferment Dick" - who was all for waging the Vietnam war to the last drop of someone else's blood - is a chicken hawk. Oh, how can I ever repent for the mortal sin of describing reality. At least W backed up his support for the Vietnam War by going over there and fighting - oh wait Gore and Kerry were over there - my mistake. I feel so chastened now - NOT!

9/11
9/11
9/11
trrrrst
trrrrst
God Bless America.

I am waiting for a couple of those in Congress who did not read the whole NIE to admit that they knew that this NIE, while mandated by Congress, was in fact thrown together in just a few weeks. Will anyone admit that they basically knew the Administration did not have a solid consensus intelligence case?

Whether anyone comes forward to say this, it is shameful so few read the NIE.

Please note that my main man (woman?) has rated me a 1 for having the temerity to suggest that someone such as "5 deferment Dick" - who was all for waging the Vietnam war to the last drop of someone else's blood - is a chicken hawk.
No, we were discussing the Medal of Honor, and the Medal of Freedom and the differance between them and you jumped in with a "chicken hawk" referance that had nothing to do with anything...call anyone you want names, I'll go back and forth with you all day (as you have seen in other threads) however, keep your "chickenhawk" comments out of discussions about the Medal of Honor, and you wont get rated as innapropriate.

It may be that the author now realizes that he was wrong earlier. If so, I hope that he  comes clean and admits his error.

The Bush Administration may have believed the Iraq had WMD, but that doesn't change the fact that they distorted and manipulated intelligence and lied to us about the intelligence.

By analogy, a cop may firmly believe that a suspect committed the crime. That cannot mitigate his guilt if he plants the suspects fingerprints. Nor does it mitigate any guilt if the cop knows that the fingerprints were planted but still tells us that the fingerprints prove the suspect's guilt.

If the cop knows that the fingerprints were planted, yet believes that the fingerprints prove the suspect's guilt, he is beyond incompetent. I haven't actually seen this kind of thinking on the part of cops, but I have seen it on the part of lawyers and judges. The Bush Administration may well have this kind of schizophrenia as well.