Once Inspectors were on the ground the logic was clear and cold:

1) Either the Administration had actionable intelligence on WMD or it didn't

2) If the Administration had actionable intelligence it had a positive obligation under treaty to share it with Inspectors. If they had doubts about operational security, the US military could have supplied it.

3) The Administration (via Cheney) claimed they knew where the WMD was, that is that they had actionable intelligence, but did not in fact share that information.

You can draw (and some of us did in Feb 2003) two different conclusions here.

One) The Administration believed they had actionable intelligence but held it back so they could get their war on.

Two) The Administration knew their intelligence was flimsy to non-existent but wanted to get their war on anyway.

Or in other words they wanted to get their war on.

Everything else is just dust in the air meant to obscure the clear vision of what was going on. If the goal was to disarm Saddam the path forward was clear, this Administration decided not to go down that path assuming they would find enough evidence after the fact to justify getting their war on. And realistically all they needed is one dusty bunker full of operational artillery shells. They rolled the dice and crapped out.

But the logical answer was staring anyone who was paying attention right in the face: non-cooperation with Inspectors equates to willful rush to war.

Some good points, but aren't the allies usually referred to Russia and the UK (as opposed to the French and Italians)? Did their intelligence agree with us or not?

If so, did they have similar flaws in their intelligence? Perhaps a feedback phenomenon, although that's a little harder to believe (but not impossible) with Russian intelligence.

If not, why not address these specifically since they're the ones I usually hear mentioned by those on the right?

The war was a joke, an excuse for Dick Cheney's pet oil company, and the rest of the scruples-impaired war profiteers whose generous contributions helped propel the War Party along,
public accountability and fundamental principles be damned, it's worth noting that the national debt has climbed some 3 trillion dollars under this 'republican', the country is getting taken for a ride to the direct economic benefit of the oil peeps, and the best thing to do at this point would be to throw these clowns and their entourage out of office, maybe even dust off the original antitrust paperwork they drummed up against Standard Oil the first time around, re-review the history of Vietnam with a focus on American Standard Oil, and prepare to put an end to these festivities and their factually challenged justifications.
Walking is preferable to tanking up on BushCo gas...
Nuff said.

3) The Administration (via Cheney) claimed they knew where the WMD was, that is that they had actionable intelligence, but did not in fact share that information.

Actually, I believe they did share the information on several occasions. The leads came up cold; the inspectors never found anything. Then they would supply the inspectors with more bogus leads.

Accumulating Peripherals

The Russians were on record as being openly dismissive of Iraq's wmd's. In an interview, Putin essentially rejected the notion that Iraq might have any sort of nuclear program. His characterization of biological or chemical weapons were merely to acknowledge the possibility that there might be some old leftovers from the Pre-Gulf war days. He categorically rejected the likelihood of Iraq being any sort of threat to anyone.

End of story.

(I'm assuming that at least Tony Blair still thought they had them, since he did join us for our little invasion party.)

I have to ask why Blair was using Intel that he was told was no good to justify the war, and in fact told the Press that the Brits had other Intel to back it up - but never was able to present it. Blair's support of the invasion of Iraq seems, if anything, less rational than the similar decision of Bush/Cheney/Rice. Looking at each player, what did he or she expect to get out of invading Iraq?

it is very simple indeed: on the eve of the war, all intelligence on the subject was classified as

good, if it was supporting the evility of Saddam Hussein

bad, if it did not.

For example, bad intelligence from the experts from Department of Energy (who know a thing or two about making nukes) was that intercepted aluminum pipes are not appropriate for making centrifuges, and possibly quite right for making small rockets. Good intelligence from CIA experts established that it is possible that Hussein intended the pipes for making the centrifuges (after all, he knew much less about making nukes than DoE).

Or, bad intelligence established that there was no way for Hussein to purchase uranium from Niger (and Gabon) without the cooperation of French government, because the French controlled all aspects of uranium extraction and enrichment (from ore to the mineral) in their former colonies. Good intelligence established that Iraqi trade mission visited Niger, so it is possible that Hussein was contemplating a purchase of something else than cowpeas (the second Niger's export commodity after uranium).

So it is fair to say that the BEST intelligence was unanimously pointing to WMD threat emanating from Hussein, but MEDIOCRE intelligence was sceptical and BAD intelligence was outright contradicting it.

"The Bush administration should have known"

The Bush administration didn't give a damn. Cheney wanted oil. Rummy & PNAC wanted permanent bases. Bush wanted to kick someboby's butt. The rest was (and is) BS.

Tom

~

(I'm assuming that at least Tony Blair still thought they had them, since he did join us for our little invasion party.)

That the Bush administration "should have known" is of partial importance. What is far more serious is that they should have known, perhaps did know, yet still presented the WMD situation to us with a certainty that was not justifiable.

Remember when Ray McGovern confronted Rumsfeld about his assertions about exact locations of WMD stockpiles? That was the money shot, and that's the line of questioning we need to see from Congress.

The proof you can provide that there was much skepticism over the intel critically takes away the Bushies' favorite "no-one could have anticipated" defense. But the key question is why they presented certainty when it did not exist, because that gets to the core of the con-trick these jokers pulled on the country.

Just one question. You mention the text was signed by Niger's ambassador to Washington. Do you know if the signature was included in Sismi's "verbatim text" report or did it only appear on the forgery?

I think it does matter. If other governments came to the same conclusion, then that lends some legitimacy to that conclusion. (Legitimacy as in "even though it was wrong, it wasn't a completely unreasonable belief".) E.g., it might raise the legitimacy level from 0.01% up as high as 1%.

If our government was the only one who still believed that Iraq/Hussein had WMD in February of 2003 then that lends credence to the frequent claims in forums such as this that such a belief was actually just a lie.

If other governments came to that same conclusion independently (key word, independently) and still believed it in 2003, then one could say it was a faulty belief, but not necessarily a lie.

I realize that such statements are not popular in this forum, but I'm just trying to keep things honest on this end as well.

What other government that wasn't bribed or bullied felt that there were WMD (aside from neo-imperialist nitwit Tony Blair with his delusions of Rudyard Kipling).

Tom