The Blame Game by David Corn

David Kay, the recently resigned chief WMD hunter who has declared that it is unlikely Iraq had any weapons of mass destruction in the years before the war, uttered these words while testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee on January 28. They were meant to explain the tremendous gap between the prewar claims that Iraq was loaded with weapons of mass destruction and the reality that Kay says he found: no actual weapons and "no indication of a production process that would have produced [WMD] stockpiles." Embarrassed by Kay's disclosures, defenders of the invasion of Iraq have wrapped themselves in his we-were-all-wrong pronouncement. President Bush has said, "We all thought [WMDs] were there." White House press secretary Scott McClellan--who as of this writing has not been able to say the word "wrong"--has repeatedly maintained that "our intelligence was based on views shared by intelligence agencies around the world and the United Nations." It's a variant of Kay's we-all-blew-it explanation. The intent is clear: If everyone was wrong about the WMDs, then no one--especially not Bush--is to blame now.

But Kay was incorrect. Not everybody was mistaken on the question of Iraq's WMDs. Not UN inspectors, including Hans Blix, who worried about Saddam Hussein's WMD capabilities but questioned whether discrepancies in Iraq's accounting meant stockpiles existed. Not US intelligence analysts who argued that critical pieces of evidence were not solid. And there were many nongovernment experts who disputed the Bush Administration's WMD allegations. It was Bush, Dick Cheney, Colin Powell and other aides who missed the mark. Bush, in response to mounting pressure, has created a commission to study the prewar intelligence, but there is already a record supporting the serious charge that he and his colleagues made assertions before the invasion that were not supported by the intelligence they possessed.

Administration officials and other war backers have pointed to an October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate to justify their prewar statements about Iraq's unconventional weapons. An NIE is supposed to be the summation of the intelligence community's best information on a subject, and this one did say, "Baghdad has chemical and biological weapons." This assessment, it seems at the moment, was a historic failure, and [u]it remains to be determined if it was the result of good-faith errors or political pressure and manipulation.[/u] But even this NIE--which included qualifiers and acknowledged serious disagreements within the intelligence community--did not contain evidence to support the more dramatic allegations that Bush put forward. A review of the declassified "key judgments" of the NIE and other pieces of intelligence--including a speech Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet gave at Georgetown University on February 5 to defend his agency--clearly shows that Bush and his national security team overstated what now appears to have been overstated intelligence.

First of all Corn the jury is still out on Saddam's WMD and capabilities. I love the way these liberals tout David Kay's claims of no WMD but then forget about everything else David Kay said. I underlined the part where Corn talks about political pressure and manipulation and David Kay has said he did not find any evidence of that.

Second, the President made a decision after 9/11 based on intelligence provided to him by the US intelligence agencies and he partly made his decision based those estimates. He also had to weigh into his decision Saddam's blatant disregard for his surrender terms from the first Gulf war, Saddam making fools of the UNSC resolutions for twelve years, Saddam having used WMD in the past, Saddam paying Palestinian homicide bombers families $25,000 and Saddam tried to kill a former President of the USA. I think President Bush's decision was a no-brainer for anyone with common sense and not for those reasons. Go look at the two wars in the WOT on a globe and read between the lines.

Once you've checked your globe take into consideration the inevitable revolution that is coming in Iran to overthrow the #1 terror sponsoring Ayatollahs by a pro-US youth that wants democracy. Also take into consideration Iran's 18 year nuclear program the IAEA knew nothing about. The UN cannot be trusted to disarm Iran of a nuke. Again Saddam playing games with their false threats for 12 years cannot be tolerated. N. Korea hide their nuclear program right under UN inspectors noses. A dissident informed the world of Iran's intentions. Now Corn, can you see why Iraq was such an important part of the WOT? Let's not forget the info Libya is giving us on Iran and Pakistan etc.. Let's also not forget that N. Korea is wanting to talk disarmament the way the President wants them to with other nations of the region. All of this progress would be undermined by a democrat Mr. Corn. Are you suggesting that President Bush should not be re-elected just because [u]you[/u] can't see the bigger picture? It's like you're watching a DVD movie made for wide-screen format with the picture zoomed in until it fits to your standard TV screen. You clearly are not looking at the whole picture Mr. Corn.

Then you go on to rip the administration for making statements about Iraq's WMD based on the intelligence reports that the Congress had access to and voted to give the President the power to go to war if he deemed it necessary. I believe the UN and nations such as France and Germany also believed he had WMD Mr. Corn. How convenient of you to forget all these quotes from democrats and other leaders in the world:

And the WMD search continues in Iraq--albeit with fewer resources. But the early returns are not good for Bush. As his new intelligence commission reviews the prewar intelligence, its members should not ask, Why did everyone get it wrong? Instead, they should wonder, Why did some get it wrong, but not others? Kay has said the intelligence community owes the President an explanation. But Bush owes the public one. The rap cannot be pinned entirely on the intelligence crowd. Bush has to answer for the way he used the intelligence. Kay, for one, has urged the commission--which will not release its findings until months after Bush stands for re-election--to examine whether there was "an abuse of the [intelligence] by politicians." That is a polite way of asking if Bush and his aides turned misinformation into disinformation. The overall assessment assembled by the intelligence community was, it currently appears, seriously wrong. The notion that the CIA messed up has become widely accepted, and Bush and his allies may attempt to hide behind the cloak of the spies. But Bush & Co. took the dubious work produced by the intelligence agencies and made it even more wrong. Can they--will they--get away with it?

You keep assuming the intelligence was wrong because we haven't found any WMD. It's not too far fetched to think that possibly Saddam buried his WMD in the desert and killed those who dug the holes etc...Is it? What about the UN stalling that gave Saddam almost an extra year to clear?

I see that pisses you off that the findings of the investigation won't be known until after the upcoming presidential election. You liberals seem to think that investigation should be all about how President Bush used the info instead of finding out the root cause of the intelligence failure if there was one. I'd say once the committee investigates where policy went wrong with our intelligence gathering capabilities you're gonna find liberal democrats policies through the years are the root causes.

The question is will you liberals get away with your deception tactics in playing politics with national security? I don't think the American people are as gullible as you are Mr. Corn, you are nothing but a partisan hack IMO distorting David Kay's words until you form them to your assumptions.

"Truth is incontrovertible; malice may attack it and ignorance may deride it; but in the end, there it is." -WInston Churchill

Iran Hard-liners Set to Win Polls, End Reform Era

"TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran's conservative clerics urged voters not to boycott Friday's widely criticized elections, which hard-liners look sure to win and bring an end to President Mohammad Khatami's struggle to reform the Islamic Republic."

"Nobel laureate Shirin Ebadi, whose surprise choice for the 2003 peace prize shone a global spotlight on the drive for human rights in Iran, said this week she would back the boycott campaign and stay away from the polling booths."

"Most analysts expect the turnout on Friday, in which some 46 million Iranians aged 15 and over are entitled to vote, to be well below the 67 percent who voted in 2000 elections, when reformist allies of Khatami triumphed. A low turnout could undermine the authority of the result."

"In what many reformers fear could be a sign of things to come, the hardline judiciary on Thursday sealed the campaign headquarters of the Islamic Iran Participation Front, led by Khatami's brother, and blocked access to its news Web Site."

"The Participation Front has refused to enter any candidates after most of its hopefuls were barred."

"Two of the most outspoken reformist newspapers were closed on Wednesday for daring to report an unprecedented scathing open letter to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei by dozens of the reformist lawmakers banned from Friday's poll."

"They are blocking our channels of communication with the people," Ali Shakourirad, one of the deputies and a leading member of the Participation Front, told Reuters."

"Criticizing the absolute Islamic leader is an offence, and the Supreme National Security Council had ordered newspapers not to report the six-page letter in which deputies accused Khamenei of presiding over a system that trampled on people's"

The harder the Ayatollahs press the quicker the revolution comes. God help us if Jane Fonda Kerry gets elected. Read between the lines on your globe people. Look at Afghanistan and Iraq and read between the lines. The Iranian youth want US style democracy and are pro-US. We must stay the fight in the WOT and Kerry or any democrat is a threat to that. The Ayatollahs in Iran know this and they also know Iraq can never become a democracy if they are to keep power in Iran. A democrat cannot be trusted to follow through to the true ending of a war on terror and that would be the fall of the Ayatollahs in Iran.

A vote for a democrat is a vote for terror because they do not understand the big picture and think the WOT is just about getting OBL. President Bush understands it is not only about OBL and will do what it takes to end this new war properly by draining the swamp. Iran is a big supplier of weapons to those mosquitoes hatching in the swamp, Iran is also the number one state sponsor of terrorist in the world today. The Ayatollahs must fall for the WOT to truly end!

Assume for a minute that it turns out difinitiely proven that Saddam had no WMDs and was nowhere getting them. The only way we could know that for sure was to depose Saddam. Everything else was just guessing. So the only relevant question is, are we safer with Saddam gone and knowing he had no WMDs, or with Saddam in power and never being sure? The bottom line is it's better to be safe than sorry.

The reality though is not so cut and dried. Missing in most of the reporting on David Kay's testimony is the fact that he said the situation in Iraq may have been more frightening that even the CIA had assesed. Various Iraqi agencies were being paid to produce components for WMDs with minimal centralized control. Scientists were keeping deadly toxins in their home refrigerators. WMDs were not adequately tracked, and Al Qaeda operatives were passing through Iraq on a regular basis. In short the Iraqi regime more closely resembled the Sopranos than the Third Reich. In that atmosphere it individual Iraqis may easily have passed WMD components and information on to terrorists without Saddam even knowing it. That is unlikely to happen now. Again, better safe than sorry.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.