It's over.

Mariner

Active Member
Nov 7, 2004
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Boston, Mass.
With Boehner and Lott both suggesting that meaningful progress must be shown by early fall for them to continue to support Bush's Iraq policy, the Iraq war is now on its way into the history books.

Petraeus has made clear that he feels the real solution is not military, but political. And he has made clear that Maliki, the elected president, is not strong enough (or interested enough) to face down his Shiite supporters' demand for Sunni blood. Sunni Saudi Arabia and Shiite (but Persian, not Arab) Iran, are now faced with a regional crisis. A civil war will likely follow, just as in Algeria many years ago (the reason the French knew better than to support our invasion of Iraq). Petraeus also said casualties are going up before they go down, to the chances of meeting the new Republican benchmarks (supported by an array of Republicans who nevertheless voted against Democratic benchmarks) is minimal.

The forces that Bush, Cheney, Wolfowitz, and the other neoCons unleashed, who thought they knew better than the established political scientists and the CIA, will now do their thing. There aren't enough troops in the U.S. military to prevent it--and we're not going to try.

It's over. Let's take Iraq off the "War on Terrorism" board, since we're outta there this fall, and the Iraqis will just have to fend for themselves... like so many other peoples this lovely country of ours abandoned over the years, from the rebelling Kurds of Iraq during GWB's time to the Rwandans during Clinton's to the South Vietnamese and the Cubans in the Bay of Pigs.

Mariner.

PS, the recent letter of several high CIA officials on the occasion of the publication of George Tenet's book makes excellent reading. It reinforces everything we fringe lunatic "libs" and "Dems" were saying from 2003 onward:

http://www.amconmag.com/2007/2007_05_07/feature.html

Dear Mr. Tenet:

We write to you on the occasion of the release of your book, At the Center of the Storm. You are on the record complaining about the “damage to your reputation.” In our view the damage to your reputation is inconsequential compared to the harm your actions have caused for the U.S. soldiers engaged in combat in Iraq and the national security of the United States. We believe you have a moral obligation to return the Medal of Freedom you received from President George Bush. We also call for you to dedicate a significant percentage of the royalties from your book to the U.S. soldiers and their families who have been killed and wounded in Iraq.

We agree with you that Vice President Dick Cheney and other Bush administration officials took the United States to war for flimsy reasons. We agree that the war of choice in Iraq was ill-advised and wrong headed. But your lament that you are a victim in a process you helped direct is self-serving, misleading and, as head of the intelligence community, an admission of failed leadership. You were not a victim. You were a willing participant in a poorly considered policy to start an unnecessary war and you share culpability with Dick Cheney and George Bush for the debacle in Iraq.

You are not alone in failing to speak up and protest the twisting and shading of intelligence. Those who remained silent when they could have made a difference also share the blame for not protesting the abuse and misuse of intelligence that occurred under your watch. But ultimately you were in charge and you signed off on the CIA products and you briefed the President.

This is not a case of Monday morning quarterbacking. You helped send very mixed signals to the American people and their legislators in the fall of 2002. CIA field operatives produced solid intelligence in September 2002 that stated clearly there was no stockpile of any kind of WMD in Iraq. This intelligence was ignored and later misused. On October 1 you signed and gave to President Bush and senior policy makers a fraudulent National Intelligence Estimate (NIE)—which dovetailed with unsupported threats presented by Vice President Dick Cheney in an alarmist speech on August 26, 2002.

You were well aware that the White House tried to present as fact intelligence you knew was unreliable. And yet you tried to have it both ways. On October 7, just hours before the president gave a major speech in Cincinnati, you were successful in preventing him from using the fable about Iraq purchasing uranium in Africa, although that same claim appeared in the NIE you signed only six days before.

Although CIA officers learned in late September 2002 from a high-level member of Saddam Hussein’s inner circle that Iraq had no past or present contact with Osama bin Laden and that the Iraqi leader considered bin Laden an enemy of the Baghdad regime, you still went before Congress in February 2003 and testified that Iraq did indeed have links to Al Qaeda.

You showed a lack of leadership and courage in January of 2003 as the Bush Administration pushed and cajoled analysts and managers to let them make the bogus claim that Iraq was on the verge of getting its hands on uranium. You signed off on Colin Powell’s presentation to the United Nations. And, at his insistence, you sat behind him and visibly squandered CIA’s most precious asset—credibility.

You may now feel you were bullied and victimized but you were also one of the bullies. In the end you allowed suspect sources, like Curveball, to be used based on very limited reporting and evidence. Yet you were informed in no uncertain terms that Curveball was not reliable. You broke with CIA standard practice and insisted on voluminous evidence to refute this reporting rather than treat the information as suspect. You helped set the bar very low for reporting that supported favored White House positions, while raising the bar astronomically high when it came to raw intelligence that did not support the case for war being hawked by the president and vice president.

It now turns out that you were the Alberto Gonzales of the intelligence community—a grotesque mixture of incompetence and sycophancy shielded by a genial personality. Decisions were made, you were in charge, but you have no idea how decisions were made even though you were in charge. Curiously, you focus your anger on the likes of Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld, and Condi Rice, but you decline to criticize the President.

Mr. Tenet, as head of the intelligence community, you failed to use your position of power and influence to protect the intelligence process and, more importantly, the country. What should you have done? What could you have done?

For starters, during the critical summer and fall of 2002, you could have gone to key Republicans and Democrats in the Congress and warned them of the pressure. But you remained silent. Your candor during your one-on-one with Sir Richard Dearlove, then-head of British Intelligence, of July 20, 2002 provides documentary evidence that you knew exactly what you were doing; namely, “fixing” the intelligence to the policy.

By your silence you helped build the case for war. You betrayed the CIA officers who collected the intelligence that made it clear that Saddam did not pose an imminent threat. You betrayed the analysts who tried to withstand the pressure applied by Cheney and Rumsfeld.

Most importantly and tragically, you failed to meet your obligations to the people of the United States. Instead of resigning in protest, when it could have made a difference in the public debate, you remained silent and allowed the Bush Administration to cite your participation in these deliberations to justify their decision to go to war. Your silence contributed to the willingness of the public to support the disastrous war in Iraq, which has killed more than 3300 Americans and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis.

If you are committed to correcting the record about your past failings then you should start by returning the Medal of Freedom you willingly received from President Bush in December 2004. You claim it was given only because of the war on terror, but you were standing next to General Tommy Franks and L. Paul Bremer, who also contributed to the disaster in Iraq. President Bush said that you “played pivotal roles in great events, and [your] efforts have made our country more secure and advanced the cause of human liberty.”

The reality of Iraq, however, has not made our nation more secure nor has the cause of human liberty been advanced. In fact, your tenure as head of the CIA has helped create a world that is more dangerous. The damage to the credibility of the CIA is serious but can eventually be repaired. Many of the U.S. soldiers maimed in the streets of Fallujah and Baghdad cannot be fixed. Many will live the rest of their lives missing limbs, blinded, mentally disabled, or physically disfigured. And the dead have passed into history.

Mr. Tenet, you cannot undo what has been done. It is doubly sad that you seem still to lack an adequate appreciation of the enormous amount of death and carnage you have facilitated. If reflection on these matters serves to prick your conscience we encourage you to donate at least half of the royalties from your book sales to the veterans and their families, who have paid and are paying the price for your failure to speak up when you could have made a difference. That would be the decent and honorable thing to do.

Philip Giraldi, Ray McGovern, Larry Johnson, Jim Marcinkowski, Vince Cannistraro, David MacMichael, Tom Maertens, Pat Lang
 
Yup, sure thing. I find it interesting that these "CIA" operatives can at the same time claim Bush and Cheney "shaded" the Intelligence AND claim that Tenant was part and parcel of the process. They can't have it both ways. Unless of course they are claiming a nefarious conspiracy by Bush/Cheney with tenant to 'cook" the books.

I love this "intelligence" was shaded or other words to imply lying. The people that keep claiming it cant answer why ALL 8 years of the Clinton Administration the EXACT same intelligence was cited and acted on. They cant explain how it is that Congress got lied to, since the president doesn't control what the CIA and other Intelligence agencies brief Congress on, nor can he prevent Congress for asking for more information.

They can't explain why the UN continued inspections if it was common knowledge that Saddam hussein had no weapons. They can't explain why EVER western Intelligence Agency believed just as we did that he still had stockpiles. They cant explain why it wasnt possible for Saddam Hussein to have used the delay provided by France to move, destroy or both his stockpiles. They cant explain the chemicals found in Iraq, other than to pretend they were old "forgotten" weapons. They can't explain why the Iraq generals all thought they had weapons of mass destruction.

These people can't explain an array of problems BUT they can make unsubstantiated claims that Bush lied. I love how they cite things like claims from crack pot members of Congress but ignore the report that clearly states there is ZERO evidence that anyone LIED. A Senate and a House investigation as I recall.

Basicly, in order for the Charge that Bush/Cheney and staff lied one must either believe that the entire Clinton Administration also lied, that all of the western intelligence agencies lied, that the UN inspection teams lied, that Iraq generals with no reason to, also lied after the ground invasion was over, or as most do, just conviently ignore all that.

Bush must be the Anti-Christ with special mind powers to have controlled the Clinton White House for 8 years before he even ran for office, to have convinced every one, even France and Germany to lie for him, to have convinced the UN to continue inspections for no reason and of course he somehow got the entire Intelligence apperatus of the US ( which is stock full of liberals at all levels) to not only lie for him but to remain silent on the details for all these years. He even got almost every Democrat in Congress to do his bidding, somehow thwarting their power to get independent Intelligence briefings and do their own investigating.

Lets recap, the CIA lied for Bush or Bush lied about what the CIA said, the CIA, the organization that has spent the last 4 years trying to undermine the president with leaks other classified information and a bogus claim that plume was a covert agent, BUT no one can provide one shred of evidence that Bush lied. They cant provide one shred of evidence that Bush 'cooked" the books either.

Tenant's book doesn't even claim Bush lied or "cooked" the books. He just claims there was a rush to invade.

Lets see, what should a reasoning, intelligent person believe.... Bush lied and got the whole world to back him up? Or the claims he lied are idiotic?
 
lying. Rumsfeld disliked what he was hearing from the established intelligence agencies, so he set up his own shop designed to "cherry pick" intelligence. Many career intelligence people complained that they were being pressured by Cheney and Rumsfeld. Bush claimed that his intelligence that Saddam was pursuing was classified--in fact, we now know that much of it was old intelligence that had already been discredited. Curveball, for example, was a known drunk and exaggerater--he was the administration's main source, along with other Iraqi expatriates who wanted power in the new Iraq we would make for them.

These people are our public servants. Instead of classifying reams of presidential data, Bush ought to be making the entire decision-making process transparent, so we can judge for ourselves the extent to which he was deceived, versus deceived us. Referring to what was known in Clinton's time, 4 years before, is ridiculous: much new evidence had been gathered in that time. Let's hear the details of the British and U.S. conversations where it was openly admitted that the intel was being "fixed up." Colin Powell knew it, and has called his speech to the U.N. a blemish on his career. The fact that Bush chooses to hide as much as he can, and to stonewall inquiries, suggests all too strongly that he has much to hide. The one report found no overt "lying" but plenty of evidence of massaging the truth.

The original neoCons are all gone anyway--Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Feith... and even their main financial backer, Richard Mellon Scaife, has now said they were all wrong. The guy who said "Freedom Fries" is out of Congress, disgraced by the Abramoff scandal, and the guy who said "Shock and Awe" is disgraced by his use of D.C. Madam's services.

In any case, Boehner and Lott aren't just a few scattered Republican traitors: they are the leadership. So when they essentially call for benchmarks, the President's war is over.

Mariner.
 
Well except for the silly little fact that President Bush has already called for benchmarks himself. And the only reason he vetoed the latest bill is because it established known withdrawal dates, which aids and abetts our enemies, telling them all they have to do is kill a few people every now and again and hide out till the date arrives.

Now on to your claim about 'cooked" Intelligence.... Do you understand how our Government works? Are you aware that Congress receives its own Intelligence reports from every Agency? The only way Bush and company could have kept Congress in the dark and used old outdated information, discredited as you claim, is if they could somehow control what information Congress had access to. He would have had to have the power to silence every Intelligence operative and to keep them quiet for 5 years. He would have had to have the power to prevent Congress from requesting additional briefings and he would have had to have the power to dictate who talked to Congress.

If there is fault it is with the Intelligence Agencies, but then one would have to have a working knowledge of how that process works. They work up threat assessments on any and all scenarios they can imagine and then present the ones they feel are most likely to occur. And there are numerous agencies. Off the top of my head, we have CIA, FBI, DIA, NSA, all run by different people and with different agents.

You still haven't even tried to explain why all of Europe believed Saddam had weapons, why the UN Inspectors wanted to continue to Inspect if they knew Saddam Hussein had no weapons, why every general in the old Iraq Army believed they had weapons, etc etc....

Ohh and by the way, you are aware of who appointed Tenant aren't you?

It also wasn't 4 years it was 2 years and NOTHING had happened in the 2 years to have significantly changed what the Intelligence indicated. Clinton and company were still citing the information in the run up to war.

More importantly Saddam Hussein could have derailed the whole war, by simply allowing what he agreed to at the end of the first Gulf War. Even with over 100 thousand troops on his Boarder he was playing a shell game with inspectors. Partly because he had assurances from France, Russia and China that they would derail the Invasion until the weather changed and it became problematic to attack.
 
Lets see, what should a reasoning, intelligent person believe.... Bush lied and got the whole world to back him up? Or the claims he lied are idiotic?

You believe what your gut tells you... Mine told me during the run-up to the invasion that bush was lying, and everything I have learned since has reinforced that initial feeling.

Some people don't mind being lied to time and time again... others prefer to be told the truth EVEN if it hurts...

I am in the latter group.
 
I highly highly doubt this war is over by fall. With Bush still in office, why would he ever admit he was wrong about the invasion and the surge? This war will continue because he will never take responsibility. Im looking more toward fall of 2008, maybe later.
 
You believe what your gut tells you... Mine told me during the run-up to the invasion that bush was lying, and everything I have learned since has reinforced that initial feeling.

Some people don't mind being lied to time and time again... others prefer to be told the truth EVEN if it hurts...

I am in the latter group.


Ya who needs proof or evidence when they can just " feel" it is true.

One big difference between liberal and conservative is "feelings" The left "feels" things and acts with out evidence proof or facts. The right uses intelligence to determine hard facts and works from a bases of reality not "feelings".

As one commentator put it I believe.... " The left bases decisions on their heart, the right uses their brain" or words to that effect.
 
Ya who needs proof or evidence when they can just " feel" it is true.

One big difference between liberal and conservative is "feelings" The left "feels" things and acts with out evidence proof or facts. The right uses intelligence to determine hard facts and works from a bases of reality not "feelings".
Pfffft.......




colbert2-sized.jpg

“That's where the truth lies, right down here in the gut. Do you know you have more nerve endings in your gut than you have in your head? You can look it up. I know some of you are going to say 'I did look it up, and that's not true.' That's 'cause you looked it up in a book. Next time, look it up in your gut. I did. My gut tells me that's how our nervous system works.”
 
Ya who needs proof or evidence when they can just " feel" it is true.

One big difference between liberal and conservative is "feelings" The left "feels" things and acts with out evidence proof or facts. The right uses intelligence to determine hard facts and works from a bases of reality not "feelings".

As one commentator put it I believe.... " The left bases decisions on their heart, the right uses their brain" or words to that effect.

my gut tells me that the (right wing) administrations decisions based on thier "brains" failed them for the past 3 years. Evident in Iraq, and as early as 9-11.
 

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