Man, you don?t know what you?re talking about. Have you read Jacqueline Suzanne? Have you done any research on the intel of retail? Do you know who Foghorn Leghorn is? I?VE researched IT!
Come back when your as smart as me, better yet, go share your thoughts with your mommy Dame Edna. By the way, do you know just how smart I AM? I?ve studied philosophy, tons of it, but I find it boring ? you know, dealing with abstract reasoning and concepts. NOT ME, I comb through minutia and trivialities from arcane ?intel? and call that ?foreign policy? ? thinking hurts too much.
I believe if this administration had any hard evidence of anything in Iraq... It would have been LEAKED already. They declassify info on a whim and we know that they'll uncover operatives for political gain.
You're basing your trust on having a adminstration that actually KNOWS something...
They have been using unvetted intel to make their case... dragging the CIA through the mud... they ignore the cia analysts and believe all sources at face value... regardless what their motivations might be.
According to the White House... the buck stops at the CIA.
Stupid Quote Saturday from the Hamster
""[A]s you know, these are open forums, you're able to come and listen to what I have to say."? Bush Jr, Washington, D.C., Oct. 28, 2003
"It's been a little overwhelming. We're getting phone calls from all over the state, ringing off the hook. Everyone is telling me that I'm the only moderate, electable candidate." Katherine Harris.
"For a $75 donation, the DNC will send you a smear book. That's pretty dignified, isn't it? Why don't they buy Alan Colmes' new book, which doesn't smear anyone but put forth the liberal cause?" Bill O'Reilly referring to the DNC offering Al Franken's book.
Actually, he said:As for the claim that the the admin said the threat was "imminent" in his State of the Union President Bush said:In other words, by saying we should act before the threat became imminent (that's what the whole idea of preemptive action is all about) he clearly wasn't claiming the threat was imminent.
It looks like someone's not up to speed. I guess I'll have to post this again:
So, The TPM results are in. Here are the good parts:
Perle:
Quote:
And the only point I want to make is that as long as Saddam is there, with everything we know about Saddam, as long as he possesses the weapons that we know he possesses, there is a threat, and I believe it's imminent because he could choose at any time to take an action we all very much hope he won't take.
And Bush in the speech I linked to twice in this thread:
Quote:
Iraq could decide on any given day to provide a biological or chemical weapon to a terrorist group or individual terrorists. Alliance with terrorists could allow the Iraqi regime to attack America without leaving any fingerprints.
Ari:
Quote:
Question: Well, we went to war, didn't we, to find these -- because we said that these weapons were a direct and imminent threat to the United States? Isn't that true?
Fleischer: Absolutely. One of the reasons that we went to war was because of their possession of weapons of mass destruction. And nothing has changed on that front at all.
Bush:
Quote:
We are united in our determination to confront this urgent threat to America.
Rummy:
Quote:
But no terrorist state poses a greater or more immediate threat to the security of our people and the stability of the world than the regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq.
As for Bush's much contended paragraph in the State of the Union, Josh points this out:
But what the president is saying here is that in the context of rogue states in alliance with terrorists we?ll never have the sort of advance warning which used to count as the evidence of an imminent threat. And thus what we had in Iraq actually amounted to an imminent threat. In fact, the administration anticipated this line of reasoning in its National Security Strategy document when it said ?We must adapt the concept of imminent threat to the capabilities and objectives of today?s adversaries.?
Naples, the real work in intelligence is in analysis. As Bunge pointed out, 95% of sources are completely open, from studies to government documents to academic research and news reports (everything from very small localized publications to international ones). The real work is to organize it in such a way that it reveals what is really going on. Cooperative Research, for instance, collects every news story on a given subject and organizes it into either and outline or a timeline. By doing it this way, patterns start to emerge.
But this is just one small part of it. The two undercover analysts I grew up around, both are high profile. One was, during the cold war, the senior writer on Russia for one of the major newspapers. He used his job to gain access, and most of what he learned was published at the time. The other one is an academic who works as a sort of analyst on call. He teaches at all of the major universities in a freelance capacity. Both are good examples of how info is a) completely open and b) needs background knowledge to be analyzed.
Now, the wonderful thing about Iraq is that we knew everything and everything was publicly published by last year at this time. The average citizen with access to a major library could find out more about Iraq's weapons programs and government structure than the US military knows about its own weapons program. And this is not at all an exaggeration, as evidenced by the discovery of an undocumented stash of biological agents found at Fort Detrick. Iraq was an totally open book.
I think it was Brzezinski that pointed out recently how appalling it is that the US military couldn't point to individual Iraqi units and brigades and say that they have such and such weapon. During the cold war, we dealt with a much more closed adversary, yet we knew exactly what bombers would take exactly how many minutes to deploy, etc. In fact, it was the Rand folks, a couple of whom are the Godfathers of US defense policy under the Bush admin, that, through long statistical analyses, changed the entire dialogue. We knew everything we needed to about russian capabilities, the real work was done in working out strategies that dealt with it.
Iraq, on the other hand, not only wasn't a threat, but ALL of the info was not just open, but readily available. The only reason there was a belief that we didn't know something was because Wolfowitz wrongly transplanted Wohlstetter's theories (basically, forming all actions around worst case scenarios, good for cold war, not good for a complex, multi-node world) onto Iraq. Other people with more sense knew this wasn't accurate, but had their own motivations for going along. Military heads questioned it and spoke out about it, but Rummy is, well, Rummy, and we all know how that turns out.
Rummy created the Office of Special Plans with the expressed purpose of digging up dirt on Iraq. Where did they get their info? Open sources (almost exclusively the UN with some CIA analyses) and lying defectors. We can actually trace every admin claim back to open sources in fine detail, with the exception of the obvious bullshit (underground cities and such) from the defectors.
With the Information Revolution, public access was increased 1000 fold, in ways you wouldn't normally realize. Information sharing between information organizations has skyrocketed even in the past 5 years. The stats from my work are extraordinary. Hell, we were looking over stats from just the past year and in some sectors they have doubled.
Iraq has been a totally open book for everyone. One person I know well who has gone there frequently for political reasons (before and now during the war) joked how at the hotels everybody is spying on everyone. Cameras are hardly hidden. This is not unusual for these global hot spots.
Anyway, maybe you've learned something here. I've got to go eat some lunch.
And this is also from the speech: Iraq could decide on any given day to provide a biological or chemical weapon to a terrorist group or individual terrorists.
It's pretty farking clear, bud.
Quote:
The president said what he said and he specifically didn't say the threat was imminent.
Actually, it's pretty clear:
Some have said we must not act until the threat is imminent. Since when have terrorists and tyrants announced their intentions, politely putting us on notice before they strike? If this threat is permitted to fully and suddenly emerge, all actions, all words and all recriminations would come too late.
He's saying we won't know until the strike, meaning any day now or a year from now.
But, like chu_bakka said, it doesn't matter if he used the actual word. He did call it urgent, every argument made about it said it was urgent and Perle used the 'imminent.'
Presto! Instant imminent threat in the eyes of the populace.
Look at the quote again:
Quote:
Some have said we must not act until the threat is imminent. Since when have terrorists and tyrants announced their intentions, politely putting us on notice before they strike? If this threat is permitted to fully and suddenly emerge, all actions, all words and all recriminations would come too late.
Look closely at that second sentence, which states pretty clearly that all terrorist threats are imminent ones. More importantly, note that B includes the word "tyrant," with which he had effectively associated SH over several speeches. "Terrorists and tyrants" is more than alliteration. It's a way of associating 9/11 with SH to get the public to draw the conclusion that SH = terrorism, which, like 9/11, is an imminent threat.
Again: that quote does NOT say that Iraq is NOT an imminent threat. It *seems* to say that they are not an imminent threat, but its logic in fact says the opposite: the quote very, very clearly says that the danger to America from terrorists and tyrannical dictators is always imminent. Ergo, Iraq = terrorist = imminent threat.
whether he stated the word IMMINENT is irrelevant.
He wanted to go to war by May. And made many arguments to not wait longer than that. Most of those arguments have proven to be weak if not false.
He's being given flack because he can't defend his reasoning.
I think Iraq was a brilliant move on the part of bush and his advisers. But like any such daring and risky move, it has the potential to turn very sour. I don't think this where we are now, far from it. I really believe, things in Iraq are going as smoothly as can be expected, and as soon as Saddam is found and killed it's going to be game over for the Bathist insurgency. But I have a feeling Saddam is directing things from Syria - another bathist terrorist state.
Iraq has opened a new frontier in the a relationship with Saudia which is the real snake head in the fight against terrorism. But as long as Saudi oil has the world by the balls, there's little prospect for any real progress. And this is where Iraq comes in. Iraq has the 2nd largest world oil reserve next to Saudia, and as soon as the Iraqi oil machine comes online, things will begin to move on the Saudi front. (I.e. the velvet gloves will come off). The tone coming out of the White House is already starting to reflects this. (See my link of Bush's speech). If some here were not so fanatically partisan, and took a moment to reflect on the larger picture, they would appreciate the brilliance of taking on Iraq - AS PART OF THE WAR ON TERRORISM.
That's the difference between you and I. (And I might add between Liberals and Conservatives). You are not only a pessimist but as you and others of your political ilk very much attests to, this negative psychology carries over to your world view. You have no faith in people, and therefore everything you do and say is reflective of this innate pessimism.
As for Bush's much contended paragraph in the State of the Union, Josh points this out:
But what the president is saying here is that in the context of rogue states in alliance with terrorists we?ll never have the sort of advance warning which used to count as the evidence of an imminent threat. And thus what we had in Iraq actually amounted to an imminent threat. In fact, the administration anticipated this line of reasoning in its National Security Strategy document when it said ?We must adapt the concept of imminent threat to the capabilities and objectives of today?s adversaries.?
Giant, I was hoping that we might move it along to more interesting aspects - and now that I just saw your last post, perhaps we are. However, given your nasty comments about "ass biting", I think appropriate to offer a final comment:
Proposition: It has been asserted that Bush justified the war by claiming that Iraq was an ?imminent threat? and that Bush lied about it (this is usually accompanied by the wailing and hair-pulling of the accusers). The importance of this assertion lies NOT as an off-hand comment, or as vague allusions, it as an ASSERTION that the President based his major policy justification for war on the claim of Iraq as an imminent threat.
Analysis: To date, we have been offered 5 disparate quotes, from 5 unspecified events and sources. Luckily, this ?evidence? has been already been analyzed and debunked by a number of sources. In fact, its been dealt with in the FIRST post and its links. For those curious, including Giant, I offer the following definitive analysis:
I would urge you to examine not only the specific linked items, but the related links embedded in the articles. In particular, Andrew Sullivan has several weeks of running commentary both before and after the linked commentary date and spinsanity does an excellent and balanced analysis.
You will find the following:
1)\tThe extensive number of Bush?s justifications for the war in Iraq were contained in administration policy statements and major addresses ? but none of them included the words ?imminent threat?, and very few came even close. As the links demonstrate, the few off-hand statement examples provided by you are either trivial or out-of-context (e.g. Ari?s two one word affirmations of ?yes? to a reporters question, 5 months apart) ? hardly the underpinnings of a major policy platform. For anyone actively debating the issue at the time, including the democratic critics, their was acknowledgement that that while Iraq was a ?growing? and ?unforeseeable? threat, requiring long-deferred urgent resolution, it was not IMMINENT threat - yet
2)\tThe obsessive-compulsive Left sleuthing for Bush?s ?needle in a haystack? comment tell us more about their pathology than it does Bush?s intentions. In fact, this issue has more recently evolved to what the Left thinks Bush ?implied?, rather than what was actually said (which is why the press, e.g. the NYT, is rapidly dropping the ?imminent? adjective).
3)\tThis is a case wherein some of the politicos would rather mischaracterize Bushs justifications, rather than deal with them head-on. Those who pull their hair and wildly claim that they were sold on a justification that Bush did not make, exaggerate their victimization for effect ? even when their own record demonstrates their previous, and contrary, perceptions.
4)\tLast, the Bush administrations case for the war was varied, but any comprehensive reading would include the following as the major elements: Iraq had not complied with the U.N. resolutions and would not do so; logic and intel suggested that they were hiding either WMD R&D or perhaps had an active WMD production program; that Saddam was supporting terrorists, perhaps even al Qaeda; that he had imperial designs on the region, and that the current political climate, he could not be contained; and that he was an inhumane and brutal dictator that ought to be eradicated. In light of all this, and cost and difficulty of mobilizing for war every time Saddam became obstructionist, meant to Bush, that it was time for action.
On the eve of War, Bush made it clear that deferring action to let another round of inspections (four to six months) was unacceptable, and certainly not without agreement from France that action would be taken if inspections were a failure.
Lets debate those issues, not the feigned theatrics.
That's the difference between you and I. (And I might add between Liberals and Conservatives). You are not only a pessimist but as you and others of your political ilk very much attests to, this negative psychology carries over to your world view. You have no faith in people, and therefore everything you do and say is reflective of this innate pessimism.
It's "between you and me." See, you learn something new every day.
Chu, Giant, and others are set in their thinking, duh. Giant obviously feels superior to anyone and doubly if you disagree with him. Now that is ok, I suppose. The thing that I would hope is that anyone reading this thread or any other info on this hot topic would read it and analize it from a nuetral vantage point. I like to ask myself "what makes sense?" or "Is this reasonable?"
As far as intel that is not classified, fine I will concede and really never argued that there is intel out there that enyone can grab. Is there a lot? Yes, do you need to analize it? Yes. Why? Because it is mundane info that on it's face means very little.
For example: some military vehicles leave am Iraqi military fixture and arive somewhere else. Now I am sure that that kind of thing happened on a daily if not hourly basis. Ask any Iraqi in that area. All that info is intel. Thare is tons of intel like that. Intercepted communications and the like will gather other intel. The analists put this all together and determine that in that movement there was possibly something of interest. Thus the 95% figure of open source intel you are talking about would make sense.
You seem to dismiss that 5% that is left. That is where the real meat is. That is the information that people get killed over and wars are started with.
This makes sense to me.
If GWB and company are in a conspiracy than Bill Clinton and company were in it to. He ordered Iraq be bombed for the same reasons years ago.
I would chose to beleive if two presidents from two ends of the political spectrum have taken similar action, I would have to say Iraq was a threat. The same intel was used before, are you complaining about that? No, because you are a partison parroting partison blather.
You seem to dismiss that 5% that is left. That is where the real meat is. That is the information that people get killed over and wars are started with.
This makes sense to me.
I think Giant's point is that open-source intelligence is the way things work now, and that analyzing open sources of information reveals patterns that make old-style forms of intelligence gathering less and less necessary.
It makes sense to you, of course, because you're more comfortable with the old pre-internet way of thinking about intelligence.
I suggest you thicken your skin a little, get over his tone and general demeanor, and take a good, honest look at what he's saying. As I said before, just because you don't like his tone doesn't mean he's wrong. At all.
As far as intel that is not classified, fine I will concede and really never argued that there is intel out there that enyone can grab. Is there a lot? Yes, do you need to analize it? Yes. Why? Because it is mundane info that on it's face means very little.
.....
You seem to dismiss that 5% that is left. That is where the real meat is. That is the information that people get killed over and wars are started with.
This is just classic. "That is where the real meat is." Oh reeeaaaallly? How could you possibly know one way or the other when you can't even name 7 collection disciplines? Oh yeah, inferences based on limited knowledge.
You know, I don't understand people like this. If someone is telling me about spanish politics during the inquisition, I don't argue with them and I don't feel insecure for not knowing about it. We all choose to spend our time learning different things, so why pretend you know about things you don't?
Anyway, I'm going to go see Alien on the big screen. See ya...
I think Giant's point is that open-source intelligence is the way things work now, and that analyzing open sources of information reveals patterns that make old-style forms of intelligence gathering less and less necessary.
It makes sense to you, of course, because you're more comfortable with the old pre-internet way of thinking about intelligence.
I suggest you thicken your skin a little, get over his tone and general demeanor, and take a good, honest look at what he's saying. As I said before, just because you don't like his tone doesn't mean he's wrong. At all.
Cheers
Scott
Thanks, scott. Really, my tone is just a result of these moronic rants against 'liberals.' Hell, an astroid would hit Tokyo and these people would somehow concoct some reason that 'liberals' are to blame. And clearly that argument would be filled with lies and falsehoods, as the rest of them are.
Comments
Originally posted by Giant Ego
Man, you don?t know what you?re talking about. Have you read Jacqueline Suzanne? Have you done any research on the intel of retail? Do you know who Foghorn Leghorn is? I?VE researched IT!
Come back when your as smart as me, better yet, go share your thoughts with your mommy Dame Edna. By the way, do you know just how smart I AM? I?ve studied philosophy, tons of it, but I find it boring ? you know, dealing with abstract reasoning and concepts. NOT ME, I comb through minutia and trivialities from arcane ?intel? and call that ?foreign policy? ? thinking hurts too much.
By the way, did I tell you how smart I am?
.
You're basing your trust on having a adminstration that actually KNOWS something...
They have been using unvetted intel to make their case... dragging the CIA through the mud... they ignore the cia analysts and believe all sources at face value... regardless what their motivations might be.
According to the White House... the buck stops at the CIA.
Stupid Quote Saturday from the Hamster
""[A]s you know, these are open forums, you're able to come and listen to what I have to say."? Bush Jr, Washington, D.C., Oct. 28, 2003
"It's been a little overwhelming. We're getting phone calls from all over the state, ringing off the hook. Everyone is telling me that I'm the only moderate, electable candidate." Katherine Harris.
"For a $75 donation, the DNC will send you a smear book. That's pretty dignified, isn't it? Why don't they buy Alan Colmes' new book, which doesn't smear anyone but put forth the liberal cause?" Bill O'Reilly referring to the DNC offering Al Franken's book.
Originally posted by zaphod_beeblebrox
Actually, he said:As for the claim that the the admin said the threat was "imminent" in his State of the Union President Bush said:In other words, by saying we should act before the threat became imminent (that's what the whole idea of preemptive action is all about) he clearly wasn't claiming the threat was imminent.
It looks like someone's not up to speed. I guess I'll have to post this again:
So, The TPM results are in. Here are the good parts:
Perle:
And the only point I want to make is that as long as Saddam is there, with everything we know about Saddam, as long as he possesses the weapons that we know he possesses, there is a threat, and I believe it's imminent because he could choose at any time to take an action we all very much hope he won't take.
And Bush in the speech I linked to twice in this thread:
Iraq could decide on any given day to provide a biological or chemical weapon to a terrorist group or individual terrorists. Alliance with terrorists could allow the Iraqi regime to attack America without leaving any fingerprints.
Ari:
Question: Well, we went to war, didn't we, to find these -- because we said that these weapons were a direct and imminent threat to the United States? Isn't that true?
Fleischer: Absolutely. One of the reasons that we went to war was because of their possession of weapons of mass destruction. And nothing has changed on that front at all.
Bush:
We are united in our determination to confront this urgent threat to America.
Rummy:
But no terrorist state poses a greater or more immediate threat to the security of our people and the stability of the world than the regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq.
Check it all out here: http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/arc...02.html#002175
As for Bush's much contended paragraph in the State of the Union, Josh points this out:
But what the president is saying here is that in the context of rogue states in alliance with terrorists we?ll never have the sort of advance warning which used to count as the evidence of an imminent threat. And thus what we had in Iraq actually amounted to an imminent threat. In fact, the administration anticipated this line of reasoning in its National Security Strategy document when it said ?We must adapt the concept of imminent threat to the capabilities and objectives of today?s adversaries.?
Originally posted by bunge
Man, NaplesX must be new!
No kidding.
Naples, the real work in intelligence is in analysis. As Bunge pointed out, 95% of sources are completely open, from studies to government documents to academic research and news reports (everything from very small localized publications to international ones). The real work is to organize it in such a way that it reveals what is really going on. Cooperative Research, for instance, collects every news story on a given subject and organizes it into either and outline or a timeline. By doing it this way, patterns start to emerge.
But this is just one small part of it. The two undercover analysts I grew up around, both are high profile. One was, during the cold war, the senior writer on Russia for one of the major newspapers. He used his job to gain access, and most of what he learned was published at the time. The other one is an academic who works as a sort of analyst on call. He teaches at all of the major universities in a freelance capacity. Both are good examples of how info is a) completely open and b) needs background knowledge to be analyzed.
Now, the wonderful thing about Iraq is that we knew everything and everything was publicly published by last year at this time. The average citizen with access to a major library could find out more about Iraq's weapons programs and government structure than the US military knows about its own weapons program. And this is not at all an exaggeration, as evidenced by the discovery of an undocumented stash of biological agents found at Fort Detrick. Iraq was an totally open book.
I think it was Brzezinski that pointed out recently how appalling it is that the US military couldn't point to individual Iraqi units and brigades and say that they have such and such weapon. During the cold war, we dealt with a much more closed adversary, yet we knew exactly what bombers would take exactly how many minutes to deploy, etc. In fact, it was the Rand folks, a couple of whom are the Godfathers of US defense policy under the Bush admin, that, through long statistical analyses, changed the entire dialogue. We knew everything we needed to about russian capabilities, the real work was done in working out strategies that dealt with it.
Iraq, on the other hand, not only wasn't a threat, but ALL of the info was not just open, but readily available. The only reason there was a belief that we didn't know something was because Wolfowitz wrongly transplanted Wohlstetter's theories (basically, forming all actions around worst case scenarios, good for cold war, not good for a complex, multi-node world) onto Iraq. Other people with more sense knew this wasn't accurate, but had their own motivations for going along. Military heads questioned it and spoke out about it, but Rummy is, well, Rummy, and we all know how that turns out.
Rummy created the Office of Special Plans with the expressed purpose of digging up dirt on Iraq. Where did they get their info? Open sources (almost exclusively the UN with some CIA analyses) and lying defectors. We can actually trace every admin claim back to open sources in fine detail, with the exception of the obvious bullshit (underground cities and such) from the defectors.
With the Information Revolution, public access was increased 1000 fold, in ways you wouldn't normally realize. Information sharing between information organizations has skyrocketed even in the past 5 years. The stats from my work are extraordinary. Hell, we were looking over stats from just the past year and in some sectors they have doubled.
Iraq has been a totally open book for everyone. One person I know well who has gone there frequently for political reasons (before and now during the war) joked how at the hotels everybody is spying on everyone. Cameras are hardly hidden. This is not unusual for these global hot spots.
Anyway, maybe you've learned something here. I've got to go eat some lunch.
Originally posted by giant
It looks like someone's not up to speed...
I quoted from the speech you linked.
... As for Bush's much contended paragraph in the State of the Union...
The president said what he said and he specifically didn't say the threat was imminent.
He wanted to go to war by May. And made many arguments to not wait longer than that. Most of those arguments have proven to be weak if not false.
He's being given flack because he can't defend his reasoning.
Originally posted by zaphod_beeblebrox
I quoted from the speech you linked.
And this is also from the speech: Iraq could decide on any given day to provide a biological or chemical weapon to a terrorist group or individual terrorists.
It's pretty farking clear, bud.
The president said what he said and he specifically didn't say the threat was imminent.
Actually, it's pretty clear:
Some have said we must not act until the threat is imminent. Since when have terrorists and tyrants announced their intentions, politely putting us on notice before they strike? If this threat is permitted to fully and suddenly emerge, all actions, all words and all recriminations would come too late.
He's saying we won't know until the strike, meaning any day now or a year from now.
But, like chu_bakka said, it doesn't matter if he used the actual word. He did call it urgent, every argument made about it said it was urgent and Perle used the 'imminent.'
Iraq = Terrorist = Imminent Threat.
Raise the terrah alert; lower the terrah alert.
Raise the terrah alert; lower the terrah alert.
Presto! Instant imminent threat in the eyes of the populace.
Look at the quote again:
Some have said we must not act until the threat is imminent. Since when have terrorists and tyrants announced their intentions, politely putting us on notice before they strike? If this threat is permitted to fully and suddenly emerge, all actions, all words and all recriminations would come too late.
Look closely at that second sentence, which states pretty clearly that all terrorist threats are imminent ones. More importantly, note that B includes the word "tyrant," with which he had effectively associated SH over several speeches. "Terrorists and tyrants" is more than alliteration. It's a way of associating 9/11 with SH to get the public to draw the conclusion that SH = terrorism, which, like 9/11, is an imminent threat.
Again: that quote does NOT say that Iraq is NOT an imminent threat. It *seems* to say that they are not an imminent threat, but its logic in fact says the opposite: the quote very, very clearly says that the danger to America from terrorists and tyrannical dictators is always imminent. Ergo, Iraq = terrorist = imminent threat.
Cheers
Scott
Originally posted by chu_bakka
whether he stated the word IMMINENT is irrelevant.
He wanted to go to war by May. And made many arguments to not wait longer than that. Most of those arguments have proven to be weak if not false.
He's being given flack because he can't defend his reasoning.
I think Iraq was a brilliant move on the part of bush and his advisers. But like any such daring and risky move, it has the potential to turn very sour. I don't think this where we are now, far from it. I really believe, things in Iraq are going as smoothly as can be expected, and as soon as Saddam is found and killed it's going to be game over for the Bathist insurgency. But I have a feeling Saddam is directing things from Syria - another bathist terrorist state.
Iraq has opened a new frontier in the a relationship with Saudia which is the real snake head in the fight against terrorism. But as long as Saudi oil has the world by the balls, there's little prospect for any real progress. And this is where Iraq comes in. Iraq has the 2nd largest world oil reserve next to Saudia, and as soon as the Iraqi oil machine comes online, things will begin to move on the Saudi front. (I.e. the velvet gloves will come off). The tone coming out of the White House is already starting to reflects this. (See my link of Bush's speech). If some here were not so fanatically partisan, and took a moment to reflect on the larger picture, they would appreciate the brilliance of taking on Iraq - AS PART OF THE WAR ON TERRORISM.
I'm sure the families of the dead soldiers think it's brilliant too.
Once again aapl shows faith in the neoconservative roll of the dice.
Hundreds dead. Thousands injured. Billions spent.
Yup. Brilliant. The middle east is really shaking in it's shoes now.
That's the difference between you and I. (And I might add between Liberals and Conservatives). You are not only a pessimist but as you and others of your political ilk very much attests to, this negative psychology carries over to your world view. You have no faith in people, and therefore everything you do and say is reflective of this innate pessimism.
I disagree. Obviously.
You're in denial. We're realistic.
So Bush is sending out a message to the world of hope and love?
Or... if we discipline you enough you'll come to see it our way...?
Or... you're a potential threat you could be next?
Sure the adminstration was optimistic about their plan BEFORE the war.
When was the last time they mentioned Afghanistan and Osama?
Originally posted by giant
It looks like someone's not up to speed. I guess I'll have to post this again:
So, The TPM results are in. Here are the good parts:
Perle:
And Bush in the speech I linked to twice in this thread:
Ari:
Bush:
Rummy:
Check it all out here: http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/arc...02.html#002175
As for Bush's much contended paragraph in the State of the Union, Josh points this out:
But what the president is saying here is that in the context of rogue states in alliance with terrorists we?ll never have the sort of advance warning which used to count as the evidence of an imminent threat. And thus what we had in Iraq actually amounted to an imminent threat. In fact, the administration anticipated this line of reasoning in its National Security Strategy document when it said ?We must adapt the concept of imminent threat to the capabilities and objectives of today?s adversaries.?
Giant, I was hoping that we might move it along to more interesting aspects - and now that I just saw your last post, perhaps we are. However, given your nasty comments about "ass biting", I think appropriate to offer a final comment:
Proposition: It has been asserted that Bush justified the war by claiming that Iraq was an ?imminent threat? and that Bush lied about it (this is usually accompanied by the wailing and hair-pulling of the accusers). The importance of this assertion lies NOT as an off-hand comment, or as vague allusions, it as an ASSERTION that the President based his major policy justification for war on the claim of Iraq as an imminent threat.
Analysis: To date, we have been offered 5 disparate quotes, from 5 unspecified events and sources. Luckily, this ?evidence? has been already been analyzed and debunked by a number of sources. In fact, its been dealt with in the FIRST post and its links. For those curious, including Giant, I offer the following definitive analysis:
http://www.spinsanity.org/columns/20031103.html
http://www.andrewsullivan.com/index....h_archive.html
I would urge you to examine not only the specific linked items, but the related links embedded in the articles. In particular, Andrew Sullivan has several weeks of running commentary both before and after the linked commentary date and spinsanity does an excellent and balanced analysis.
You will find the following:
1)\tThe extensive number of Bush?s justifications for the war in Iraq were contained in administration policy statements and major addresses ? but none of them included the words ?imminent threat?, and very few came even close. As the links demonstrate, the few off-hand statement examples provided by you are either trivial or out-of-context (e.g. Ari?s two one word affirmations of ?yes? to a reporters question, 5 months apart) ? hardly the underpinnings of a major policy platform. For anyone actively debating the issue at the time, including the democratic critics, their was acknowledgement that that while Iraq was a ?growing? and ?unforeseeable? threat, requiring long-deferred urgent resolution, it was not IMMINENT threat - yet
2)\tThe obsessive-compulsive Left sleuthing for Bush?s ?needle in a haystack? comment tell us more about their pathology than it does Bush?s intentions. In fact, this issue has more recently evolved to what the Left thinks Bush ?implied?, rather than what was actually said (which is why the press, e.g. the NYT, is rapidly dropping the ?imminent? adjective).
3)\tThis is a case wherein some of the politicos would rather mischaracterize Bushs justifications, rather than deal with them head-on. Those who pull their hair and wildly claim that they were sold on a justification that Bush did not make, exaggerate their victimization for effect ? even when their own record demonstrates their previous, and contrary, perceptions.
4)\tLast, the Bush administrations case for the war was varied, but any comprehensive reading would include the following as the major elements: Iraq had not complied with the U.N. resolutions and would not do so; logic and intel suggested that they were hiding either WMD R&D or perhaps had an active WMD production program; that Saddam was supporting terrorists, perhaps even al Qaeda; that he had imperial designs on the region, and that the current political climate, he could not be contained; and that he was an inhumane and brutal dictator that ought to be eradicated. In light of all this, and cost and difficulty of mobilizing for war every time Saddam became obstructionist, meant to Bush, that it was time for action.
On the eve of War, Bush made it clear that deferring action to let another round of inspections (four to six months) was unacceptable, and certainly not without agreement from France that action would be taken if inspections were a failure.
Lets debate those issues, not the feigned theatrics.
Originally posted by aapl
chu_bakka,
That's the difference between you and I. (And I might add between Liberals and Conservatives). You are not only a pessimist but as you and others of your political ilk very much attests to, this negative psychology carries over to your world view. You have no faith in people, and therefore everything you do and say is reflective of this innate pessimism.
It's "between you and me." See, you learn something new every day.
Originally posted by chu_bakka
.
.
When was the last time they mentioned Afghanistan and Osama?
Yeah,..
When was the last you heard from Osama and Afghanistan.
Originally posted by ShawnJ
It's "between you and me." See, you learn something new every day.
Shawn, I have little faith - in your grammar skills.
As far as intel that is not classified, fine I will concede and really never argued that there is intel out there that enyone can grab. Is there a lot? Yes, do you need to analize it? Yes. Why? Because it is mundane info that on it's face means very little.
For example: some military vehicles leave am Iraqi military fixture and arive somewhere else. Now I am sure that that kind of thing happened on a daily if not hourly basis. Ask any Iraqi in that area. All that info is intel. Thare is tons of intel like that. Intercepted communications and the like will gather other intel. The analists put this all together and determine that in that movement there was possibly something of interest. Thus the 95% figure of open source intel you are talking about would make sense.
You seem to dismiss that 5% that is left. That is where the real meat is. That is the information that people get killed over and wars are started with.
This makes sense to me.
If GWB and company are in a conspiracy than Bill Clinton and company were in it to. He ordered Iraq be bombed for the same reasons years ago.
I would chose to beleive if two presidents from two ends of the political spectrum have taken similar action, I would have to say Iraq was a threat. The same intel was used before, are you complaining about that? No, because you are a partison parroting partison blather.
Once again this makes sense to me.
Originally posted by NaplesX
You seem to dismiss that 5% that is left. That is where the real meat is. That is the information that people get killed over and wars are started with.
This makes sense to me.
I think Giant's point is that open-source intelligence is the way things work now, and that analyzing open sources of information reveals patterns that make old-style forms of intelligence gathering less and less necessary.
It makes sense to you, of course, because you're more comfortable with the old pre-internet way of thinking about intelligence.
I suggest you thicken your skin a little, get over his tone and general demeanor, and take a good, honest look at what he's saying. As I said before, just because you don't like his tone doesn't mean he's wrong. At all.
Cheers
Scott
Originally posted by NaplesX
As far as intel that is not classified, fine I will concede and really never argued that there is intel out there that enyone can grab. Is there a lot? Yes, do you need to analize it? Yes. Why? Because it is mundane info that on it's face means very little.
.....
You seem to dismiss that 5% that is left. That is where the real meat is. That is the information that people get killed over and wars are started with.
This is just classic. "That is where the real meat is." Oh reeeaaaallly? How could you possibly know one way or the other when you can't even name 7 collection disciplines? Oh yeah, inferences based on limited knowledge.
You know, I don't understand people like this. If someone is telling me about spanish politics during the inquisition, I don't argue with them and I don't feel insecure for not knowing about it. We all choose to spend our time learning different things, so why pretend you know about things you don't?
Anyway, I'm going to go see Alien on the big screen. See ya...
Originally posted by midwinter
I think Giant's point is that open-source intelligence is the way things work now, and that analyzing open sources of information reveals patterns that make old-style forms of intelligence gathering less and less necessary.
It makes sense to you, of course, because you're more comfortable with the old pre-internet way of thinking about intelligence.
I suggest you thicken your skin a little, get over his tone and general demeanor, and take a good, honest look at what he's saying. As I said before, just because you don't like his tone doesn't mean he's wrong. At all.
Cheers
Scott
Thanks, scott. Really, my tone is just a result of these moronic rants against 'liberals.' Hell, an astroid would hit Tokyo and these people would somehow concoct some reason that 'liberals' are to blame. And clearly that argument would be filled with lies and falsehoods, as the rest of them are.