Rumsfeld gets owned by CIA veteran

Originally Posted by Xiahou:
Forbidden by who? No one is going to "forbid" the Senate from investigating whatever it sets it's mind to.

By the Republicans who control the committee. Although they agreed that after phase I of the report was released (I am assuming this is the report to which you referred in your earlier post, but in fact it is only the first half of the report), they have been stalling for over a year now in begining phase II of the investigation, which would deal with how the intelligence was used.

You can read all about it here (specifically the last part, 'Phase two of the investigation,' which deals with all of this and also lists the most recent developments):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senate_...igence_on_Iraq

So, to reiterate: there has never been an independent report on how the intelligence was used, and it doesn't look like there is going to be until Democrats regain the Senate.

To keep parroting the Republican line that the committee found no evidence of lies, subterfuge or misleading statements is itself a very misleading statement. Only phase I of the report has been released; phase II, which will deal with how the intelligence was used, has not yet been completed-- or even started, apparently.

Originally Posted by rotorgun:
Let me just wade in here with just one question for all the pro-Rumsfeld people involved in this thread. Would you want to risk your skin, or the skin of your beloved teenage son, or the life of any patriotic person serving their country in a war, where real people are really killed, maimed and emotionally scarred, unless you were given 100% rock solid reasons for doing so? Any man who has the power of life and death over me had better have the very best integrity when he orders me to my possible death. There is no room for lies when the bullets are flying.

The man knew, hell they all knew, and they all lied. It is as plain as the nose on my French/American face that they did so, because they knew that their plan reeked from the smell of oil profits. I hope that everyone who thinks that they had such a great plan can have an opportunity to personally experience the operational end of Operation Iraqi Freedom. It will make a believer out of them. Talk about riding a merry-go-round. We should know, we'll be sending deployments there now for the next 30 years. That is a sobering thought. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, ad infitum, all have a nice party celebrating all of their wonderful oil profit windfalls. Will their grandchildren be going to the Persian Gulf? I doubt it, but ours (the tax paying middle class) most certainly will be. I can't wait for their sequel, Operation Iranian Mushroom Cloud. Do you have a ticket yet?

https://img489.imageshack.us/img489/...spiracy3hn.jpg
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heh

Originally Posted by Hurin_Rules:
To keep parroting the Republican line that the committee found no evidence of lies, subterfuge or misleading statements is itself a very misleading statement. Only phase I of the report has been released; phase II, which will deal with how the intelligence was used, has not yet been completed-- or even started, apparently.

I think you need to go back and read what the report says. Under various sections marked "Conclusions" (oddly enough), the committee concludes that many of the intel assessments are wrong- but there was also no evidence of pressure being applied to arrive at a certain assessment.

The "ethereal" phase2 you speak of is supposed to consider whether or not the administration's statements were supported by the intelligence info. Now that the committee has already found that the NIE conclusions that Iraq was seeking WMDs, ect were based on bad intelligence and not political pressure. I don't think we need the Senate to sort this one out. Tell me, what administration claims do you think were made that were not supported by the NIE?

This might help you- it covers many of the claims made by the pre-war NIE.

Iraq's WMD Programs: Culling Hard Facts from Soft Myths -
A Message from Stuart A. Cohen
Vice Chairman, National Intelligence Council

Originally Posted by Xiahou:
I think you need to go back and read what the report says. Under various sections marked "Conclusions" (oddly enough), the committee concludes that many of the intel assessments are wrong- but there was also no evidence of pressure being applied to arrive at a certain assessment.

When did I say pressure was applied? That issue has been resolved. We are now talking about how the evidence was used, politically.

Originally Posted by :
The "ethereal" phase2 you speak of is supposed to consider whether or not the administration's statements were supported by the intelligence info. Now that the committee has already found that the NIE conclusions that Iraq was seeking WMDs, ect were based on bad intelligence and not political pressure. I don't think we need the Senate to sort this one out. Tell me, what administration claims do you think were made that were not supported by the NIE?

Are you serious? The infamous 'sixteen words', the alleged mobile weapons labs, the aluminum tubes, the balsa wood 'chemical weapons drone'... the list is virtually endless.

Why, exactly, don't you think the Senate needs to sort this out? Aside from the fact that they had an agreement with the Democrats to do so, don't you think you might want to look a bit deeper into the greatest intelligence failure in US history?

I will reiterate what I said, because again you don't seem to be getting it: phase I of the report did not address the question of how the intelligence was used.

Perhaps you can clarify your argument for me here, because you seem to be arguing a couple of different things at once. Are you saying that the report already settled the issue of how the intelligence was used, or are you saying we don't need to find that out? Which is it?

Originally Posted by Hurin_Rules:
Are you serious? The infamous 'sixteen words', the alleged mobile weapons labs, the aluminum tubes, the balsa wood 'chemical weapons drone'... the list is virtually endless.

Again, if you look at the report they conclude that the notion that Iraq had tried to aquire uranium from Africa was indeed a reasonable one based on the Intelligence in hand. What's your issue with how that was used? As to the others, I think it was widely acknowledged that the materials were dual use, but based on what we knew of Hussein it was assumed his intentions were nefarious. Again, this was information recieved in the NIE- how was it misused?

Originally Posted by :
Perhaps you can clarify your argument for me here, because you seem to be arguing a couple of different things at once. Are you saying that the report already settled the issue of how the intelligence was used, or are you saying we don't need to find that out? Which is it?

Im wondering what you think remains to be settled. The anti-war arguments have evolved from 'Bush lied', to 'they pressured analysts', to apparently now he 'misused intelligence'. What is your claim? That administration statements were not backed by intelligence? If not, what do you mean by misuse?

Originally Posted by Xiahou:
Again, if you look at the report they conclude that the notion that Iraq had tried to aquire uranium from Africa was indeed a reasonable one based on the Intelligence in hand. What's your issue with how that was used?

It is a far cry from a notion being a 'reasonable' supposition to a fact. If not, why then were the sixteen words removed from earlier speeches? And how did they find their way into the later ones when they'd already been debunked? In fact, we now know that at the time of Bush's state of the union speech, they already had the report that said the story about yellow cake was probably crap. And yet they kept reporting it for another year--and not as supposition but as fact. You're really defending this?

Originally Posted by :
As to the others, I think it was widely acknowledged that the materials were dual use, but based on what we knew of Hussein it was assumed his intentions were nefarious. Again, this was information recieved in the NIE- how was it misused?

It was not at all 'widely acknowledged that the materials were dual use'. In fact, the intelligence community had grave doubts about the tubes and especially the 'mobile weapons labs', but none of these doubts made it into Powell and Bush's speeches.

Originally Posted by :
Im wondering what you think remains to be settled. The anti-war arguments have evolved from 'Bush lied', to 'they pressured analysts', to apparently now he 'misused intelligence'. What is your claim? That administration statements were not backed by intelligence? If not, what do you mean by misuse?

Well that's pretty rich. The arguments are the same as they were, in stark contrast to the administration's arguments for war in Iraq, which have made the even more remarkable evolution from 'Saddam has WMDs' and 'Saddam has 'bulletproof' links to al Qaeda' to 'the world is better off with Saddam gone' (just forget about the WMDs and links to al Qaeda please).

The intelligence was misused in the following way: matters that were under contention were presented as irrefutable fact. None of the doubts the analysts had about the evidence made it into the president's and Powell's speeches, but every half-cocked speculation that suggested links to al Qaeda or WMDs were trumpeted from on high.

And we've never yet had a single investigation looking into how this occured.

I'll take three days of silence as a win. :smile:

I wouldn't necessarily go there, Hurin. Everybody should be allowed to drop out of these back-and-forth threads, if nothing else than for fatigue.

You're right-- sorry Xiahou. I'll let it go. It's just that I feel very strongly that Rumsfeld shouldn't be allowed to outright lie and get away with it-- at least not so long as thousands of people are dying because of it.