Posted on 07/14/2003 8:59:22 PM PDT by Utah Girl
On the ground floor of the White House is the Map Room, so-called because it was here that Franklin Roosevelt used to get his briefings on the progress of World War II. Over the mantel is the last map FDR saw before his death. It shows American, British, and Soviet troops racing toward Berlin. It also shows a frightening concentration of German forces in the Nazis’ last redoubt, the mountains of Bavaria.
We now know of course that this last redoubt did not exist. American intelligence had been deceived. And it’s possible that policymakers also deceived themselves. Roosevelt, for reasons of his own, wanted to let the Russians have the honor – and suffer the losses – of an assault on Berlin. The belief in the last redoubt was a very useful belief: It justified FDR’s wish to avoid joining the battle for Berlin.
Intelligence is a very uncertain business. And there’s no doubt that consumers of intelligence tend to be quicker to accept uncertain information that confirms their prejudices than uncertain information that calls those prejudices into question. Since consumers of intelligence are usually prejudiced in favor of doing little, most of the time they prefer intelligence that errs on the side of minimizing dangers.
9/11 changed the way American officials looked at the world. So when they got reports that Iraq was seeking to buy uranium in Niger, you can understand why they took the information seriously. That information has since turned out to be false – and its falsity has generated a major political controversy, as bitter-end opponents of this president and the war on terror try to exploit the administration’s error.
The controversy turns on the fact that some in the CIA doubted the story from the start. Their warnings were apparently disregarded, that is assuming that they were adequately communicated in the first place. Why? One reason may be that the CIA’s warnings on Iraq matters had lost some of their credibility in the 1990s. The agency was regarded by many in the Bush administration as reflexively and implacably hostile to any activist policy in Iraq. Those skeptics had come to believe that the agency was slanting its information on Iraq in order to maneuver the administration into supporting the agency’s own soft-line policies.
So when the Bush administration got skeptical news on the Niger uranium matter, it would not be surprising if mid-level policymakers mentally filed it under the heading “more of the same from the CIA,” filed it, and discounted it. The tendency was redoubled by the origin of the Niger-debunking report: Joseph C. Wilson. For more about him, see Clifford May's important post in last week's NRO. The result was the strange formulation in the State of the Union speech, in which the Niger story was cited – but attributed to British intelligence.
The story is an embarrassment for all concerned. But it no more undercuts the case for the Iraq war than FDR’s mistake in 1945 retroactively discredited the case for World War II. The United States did not overthrow Saddam Hussein because he was buying uranium in Niger. It overthrow him because he was a threat to the United States, to his neighbors, to his own people, and to the peace of a crucial region of the globe. All of that is just as true as it was on the day the President delivered his speech containing the errant 16 words – and the war is just as right and justified today as it was then.
I notice that you seem rather fond of that avenue.
If it's any comfort, I think you're far less important than you think you are.
An atheist?
Burn him at the stake I say....
I'm not the one who picked "One Who Knows" as a screenname.
Now you're getting it.
Nah, just let everybody see your pitiful wallowing in victimhood I say.
I do care that he is attempting to divert people into supporting someone other than the President, when all that will do is help the democrats.
One who knows, is the Turkish translation for the name of Diogenes.. the ruins of whose boyhood home I used to read philosophy in.
Strangely enough, I haven't uttered a peep of victim-speak.
I've taken to considering myself a rational anarchist (in the Heinlein tradition)...
Watch 'em pop a gasket now.. ;^]
(good to see you)
And to make sure others do not.
LOL! The replies you posted started out as big one big whine to Jim, that you aren't being heard, geting banned, yada, yada, yada.
Oh please stop, no more, I can't stop the laughter.
Such as?
To the impartial observer, I am pretty sure you and a couple others on this thread look to be a bit disturbed. Perhaps you might think about that before you post your next response.
633 posted on 07/15/2003 4:56 PM PDT by Miss Marple
-----------------------
And just like clock work out comes the guild with insinuations and threats.
Do your thing!
And before YOU open your pie hole and comment on thing you know not, perhaps you ought to check the thread to see who dragged it into the personal areana. Your little friend Howler, with her ' it shows me why kind of a person you are'.
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.