It's one front of the war.
There will be many more fronts...God willing, not here.
Beauseant!
Posted on 07/10/2004 5:46:59 PM PDT by FairOpinion
President Bush (news - web sites) took a hard hit yester day when the Senate Intelligence Committee released its scathing re port on the CIA (news - web sites)'s erroneous pre- war assertions about Iraq (news - web sites)'s weap ons of mass destruction.
As he should have.
Bush is the commander-in-chief; the buck stops with him.
The CIA's assertions — that Iraq had stockpiles of banned weapons and was well on its way to making nukes — were wrong, the report said. Those claims were based on false or overstated analyses, it said. The committee's Republican chairman, Sen. Pat Roberts, termed the CIA conclusions "unreasonable" and "unsupportable."
And yesterday's report was unanimous: Both Republican and Democratic committee members approved it.
So, no doubt about it: The report deals a body blow to Bush's — and America's — credibility.
And when folks like Sen. Jay Rockefeller, a Democrat, say, as he did yesterday, that much of the Senate wouldn't have backed the war "if we knew what we now know," they may well be right.
At the same time, the 521-page tome offers no evidence of bad faith — by the president or the analysts. Indeed, in that respect it exonerates Bush & Co.
There is nothing to support claims that analysts were subjected to "politics or pressure," Roberts noted. "What [Bush] said was what he got" from the CIA.
"And what he got was wrong."
In the end, what the CIA — and Bush — may be guilty of is, at worst, an over abundance of caution.
In the wake of 9/11, that's understandable — and, frankly, commendable: Better to be too cautious than not cautious enough.
Intelligence-gathering is as much art as it is hard science. And it didn't help that America didn't even have spies in Iraq after 1998.
Certainly, Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)'s refusal to cooperate with U.N. inspectors muddied the intelligence waters.
Indeed, Saddam accepted hefty sanctions rather than provide proof that he was WMD-free. Why would he do that, a reasonable person might wonder, if he had no stocks of banned weapons?
At the end of the day, though, the WMD issue is essentially peripheral.
The question before Americans at the moment is this:
Was the war justified?
The answer is: Unequivocally yes.
The Rockefellers and John Kerrys of the world suggest that only a discovery of large WMD stockpiles would make it right to have ousted Saddam.
But among many other reasons were:
* Saddam had flouted 17 U.N. resolutions and the terms of the 1991 Gulf War (news - web sites) cease-fire. He repeatedly tried to shoot down U.S. warplanes in the no-fly zone. America would have been justified in resuming the Gulf War much earlier on that basis alone.
* Saddam had been a regional menace for 20 years, having instigated two wars. He continued to make threats against his neighbors even after the Gulf War. His ultimate goal: to dominate the region — and its output of oil.
This would have given him virtually unlimited resources for his evil projects.
* Saddam had provided safe haven for terrorists, including Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian Palestinian with ties to Osama bin Laden (news - web sites).
Zarqawi is said to be behind the murder of an American diplomat, Lawrence Foley, prior to the war. Today, he is believed responsible for numerous attacks and beheadings in Iraq.
* Saddam had reached out to and supported terror groups like Hamas and Hezbollah. He paid the families of suicide bombers $25,000 apiece.
* Saddam milked the Oil-for-Food program for at least $10 billion for his own use — apparently corrupting the United Nations (news - web sites) at the highest levels in the process.
* He clearly flouted U.N. rules on conventional weapons, like ballistic missiles.
* And, of course, he had persecuted his own people for years, committing horrid atrocities — rape, torture, mass murder, not to mention political repression. He killed thousands with chemical weapons.
Among the most vital reasons for war was the need, post-9/11, to show the world's outlaws, from Saddam to bin Laden and beyond, that civilized nations would no longer ignore terror.
Bin Laden, remember, based his attacks on America's record of retreat in places like Beirut in '83 and Somalia 10 years later. He believed Americans had no stomach for a fight, and they could be attacked with impunity. Until the campaigns in Afghanistan (news - web sites) and Iraq, such reasoning, sad to say, was understandable.
All of this still leaves the question of the CIA's critical foul-ups. The Senate committee cited systemic "cultural" and management problems. It said ana- lysts had fallen victim to "group think":
"The committee found significant shortcomings in almost every aspect of the intelligence community's human intelligence collection efforts against Iraq's [WMDs] . . . Most, if not all, of these problems stem from a broken corporate culture and poor management."
Clearly, President Bush blundered in not moving more swiftly to show CIA Director George Tenet the door. Tenet has run the agency since 1997 — long enough to be fully responsible for its culture and operation.
Beyond that, he is the one who reportedly insisted to Bush that the matter of Saddam's WMDs was a "slam dunk."
Wrong.
Now that Tenet is finally leaving, the agency is ripe for a fresh start. The committee's recommendations may be useful in informing that process.
Democrats today are licking their chops over the ammo against Bush the com mittee provided yesterday.
While the Kerry camp's response was remarkably muted ("Americans deserve answers, not politics"), Rockefeller didn't hesitate to make ludicrous leaps from the report's conclusions.
"We have fostered a deep hatred of Americans in the Muslim world," he said. (Sorry, senator. They've hated us for a long, long time.)
He even questioned whether Iraq is better off today than before the war — suggesting that he, too, thinks Saddam's rule is preferable.
And, he said, "our nation is more vulnerable today than ever before."
No doubt, U.S. troops who have fought, and are fighting still, in Iraq will be thrilled to hear that. Yet, with Saddam gone and terrorists busy getting killed in Iraq rather than flying planes into American office buildings, there's no truth to that claim at all.
Indeed, Americans should feel good about Iraq. The work there isn't yet done, but success in Iraq will ultimately prove to be a key victory in the War on Terror.
And that's what counts.
bttt
The question before Americans at the moment is this:
Was the war justified?
The answer is: Unequivocally yes.
Indeed, Americans should feel good about Iraq. The work there isn't yet done, but success in Iraq will ultimately prove to be a key victory in the War on Terror.
And that's what counts.
Excellent article, Ernest. Bookmarked.
Well said. No President responsible for the safety of his countrymen can deny the combustibility of Petro dollars and WMDs.
It is all very well to say that "the buck stops here" in the oval office but consider the crippling effect on a President's ability to wage war if every time the intelligence world gets it wrong the President must suffer a political defeat for acting to protect his people. This is precisely the dilemma currently being faced by Tony Blair who is under attack for relying on "faulty" intelligence.
What a terrible precedent we will set in both countries if we punish courage and incentivise pusillanimity in our leaders in this shadowy but perilous world war against terrorists bent on using weapons of mass murder in our homeland. What a distortion of a noble motto meant to express the courage which must be the emblem of a leader, "the buck stops here!"
Bush has indisputably conducted himself courageously and honorably in waging this war in Iraq. If he is to lose this election as a result of honorably discharging his oath, the drama will have assumed the nature of a Greek tragedy. And we as a people will have no right to expect Kerry to sacrifice himself to his oath; the man is not stupid, he can read the lessons of history too, and it is not in his character anyway and certainly not in the tradition of the party of Clinton.
If we inflict this damage on ourselves, the buck is likely not to stop next time in the oval office but in the homeland and in a mushroom cloud.
You have it absoultely right. If Bush had waited the sanctions would have been lifted and Saddam would have rearmed without constraint of pocket book or conscience. This talk we hear today from Democrats that Saddam was "contained" is preposterous even apart from the reality of the stunning fraud of the oil for food program. The political reality was that the sanctions could not have stood after Hans Blix gave Saddam a clean bill. "Containment" of terrorists and WMDs is an illusion that can kill.
There was no substitute for regime change - but not regime change at home.
;^)
5.56mm
I still want WMD to show up......and continue to think more will.
It's one front of the war.
There will be many more fronts...God willing, not here.
Beauseant!
Absolutely right!
If the WMD's are no longer in Iraq, it is a bigger threat to us and the rest of the world. This report only justifies our actions, and these loony senators are second-guessing themselves. Doh!
That should be the next editorial.
The CIA's assertions — that Iraq had stockpiles of banned weapons and was well on its way to making nukes — were wrong, the report said. Those claims were based on false or overstated analyses, it said. The committee's Republican chairman, Sen. Pat Roberts, termed the CIA conclusions "unreasonable" and "unsupportable." And yesterday's report was unanimous: Both Republican and Democratic committee members approved it.
THANKS FOR SHOWING I'M NOT A TRAITOR OR APPEASER, BUT INSTEAD SOMEBODY WHO INSISTS ON LOOKING AT ISSUES HONESTLY. ! Have a nice day !
I hope you have a great rest of the weekend.
5.56mm
I have a great idea for the Republican Party as a way to educate those who "just don't get it!" They should manufacture a 100 piece puzzle with all of the credible threat evidences that weighed in on the decision to go to war. That way the deadheads might figure it out as they put the pieces together for themselves.
The Republicans could could also publish a simple "CONNECT THE DOTS" paint by numbers sort of poster too; one way or another we might convince the liberals that it's a good time to go to war before the other guy smokes you. That suggests a word scramble game using the term "DEFENSE."
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.