I have raised on example to prove that a port has already been completed. This does not mean that there are not others. This is the first major port to be COMPLETED. This does not mean that work is not going on at other ports. The process takes 2 to 2.5 years but you understand nothing of budgeting and bidding and that does not even prove that cooperation between the US and other countries was NOT occuring. That was what Bush said he wanted “cooperation” prove that was not taking place. It was. So one year for budgeting. Six months to one year for bid and award and six months to a year for implementation. That would be record timing given the complexity. Do you understand that? Prove that in previous “wars” that the work was completed faster. You made that claim. Prove it.
WHERE IS THE LINK? Why are you so afraid to post where you got this information from? How do we know that you did not make it up? I think that perhaps you did.
Regarding the recent Senate report on intelligence.
In fact, for those few people who actually read the report, there’s a pretty big story around page 357, on which we learn that Chairman Roberts got upset at the many anonymous leaks alleging pressure to “cook” the intelligence in the run-up to the war. So he, along with his House counterpart, Porter Goss, “made a public call for officials to come forward and contact the Committee if they had information” about such pressure. Roberts issued that call at least nine different times, but "the Committee was not presented with any evidence that intelligence analysts changed their judgments as a result of political pressure…or that anyone even attempted to coerce, influence or pressure analysts to do so…"
It’s even worse than that, because the report does talk about pressure, but it’s the opposite of what Rockefeller and the Hate Bush crowd was hoping for. [b]It turns out that the CIA pressured some analysts into agreeing with its view of the aluminum tubes
[quote]Bush Lied To Me
by CHRIS ROCK
Bush lied to me, man. He said we got to move on Iraq because they’re the most dangerous regime on earth. If they’re so dangerous, how come it only took two weeks to take over the whole fucking country? You couldn’t take over the Bronx in two weeks. You’d need a month to get the Grand Concourse, man.
[/quote] http://www.conspiracyplanet.com/channel.cfm?channelid=104&contentid=1059
No, my point was intended to head off BF. BF seemed about to hang Tenet’s errors, and by extension Bush’s Iraq fiasco, on Clinton (Clinton hired Tenet, to answer BF’s question).
It was pre-emptive, you might say.
That said, it’s true that Bush is responsible for the CIA’s administration, since the CIA works for the President. Of course, Bush accepted Tenet’s resignation, so this bit has been worked out properly, imo.
As I mentioned before, the Senate will next investigate how the White House influenced the process of gathering intelligence prior to the run up to war in Iraq. The report itself won’t likely be finished until early 2005 or so, but my guess is that Americans will make a decision about it anyway, by November at the latest, despite its formal absence.
That may be, especially since Tenet was hired by a Dem. My point was that, as a new president, he was allowed to ask for and accept Tenet’s resignation (many people were surprised he did not), and it would have been s.o.p. to do so. So Tenet would have been gone in a quite normal way, and another DOI would have been in place for something less than 9 months by 9/11.
No one has blamed Bush for 9/11, not even the Dems, because that’s just not true. What is true, however, is that in his apparent disdain for all things Clintonian, Bush dismantled a portion of the extant US national security administration (specifically, R. Clarke’s function to “shake the tree,” coordinate the result, and force any follow-up actions), one proven to be effective in stopping terrorism on US soil, for no other reason than that it was a Clinton policy and thus wasn’t “strategic” enough.
Of course, people do make shortcuts in thinking. You can hardly blame them when the NSD gets a memo entitled “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in the US,” gives it to Bush in August 2001, within the first week of Bush’s month-long vacation in Texas, discusses it with him and as a result of such discussion they decide no action is warranted, then tries to withhold its apt title, under oath in 2004, months away from the election and while testifying before Congress about security lapses pre-9/11 - then goes on to deny its usefulness because it wasn’t specific enough. Can you?
It does not follow, however, that Bush caused 9/11.
I don’t think so, not by me anyway. The changes in process I mention have a nickname, stovepiping. I’ve been talking about stovepiping for more than a year now.
Did he? I missed that.
[quote=“imyourbiggestfan”]Though some of your points on process may be quite right, its hard to pin that exclusively on Bush.
You can always try of course.[/quote]
Oh, I think the Dems will try, they will definitely try to do precisely that.
I don’t think there is any question that neither John Kerry, nor John Edwards, nor any other Democratic candidate who ran for President (except Lieberman, of course) would have aggressively pushed to take out Saddam Hussein. I also don’t get the impression that any of them would have had the political will or courage to take such a course of action over the objections of their party or certain allies (you know who I’m talking about) even if they felt it was the right thing to do.
Indeed, far more damning than Bush acting on evidence almost everyone in the world believed to be true is to look at a hypothetical in reverse: What if all of the WMD intelligence on Iraq had been spot on and John Kerry were President at the time and chose not to act because of pressure from his party or the objections of allies? I think most Americans would find that prospect deeply disturbing.[/quote]
That last paragraph describes what I have been explaining was part 2 of the analysis Bush conducted re the intel he was presented. Part 1)… is the intel reliable? Part 2)… what are the consequences of acting or not acting on the intel if a) the intel is accurate and b) the intel is inaccurate.
In such an analysis, I maintain that Bush made the only wise decision.
All criticism of that decision at this time is merely partisan hindsight.
But didn’t you earlier say that Bush choose the intel, based on 2 scenarios offered to him?
Thus he choose what was “true” as he later presented it as a fact and final conclusion.
[quote=“Rascal”]But didn’t you earlier say that Bush choose the intel, based on 2 scenarios offered to him?
Thus he choose what was “true” as he later presented it as a fact and final conclusion.[/quote]
No. I said that Bush chose to act on the intel that indicated the greater risk.
The majority of professional intelligence analysts in the U.S. and Britain believed before the invasion of Iraq that the Bush and Blair case was based on political propaganda and not fact – not the other way around.
You could ask [color=blue]Michael Scheuer[/color] at CIA headquarters yourself, for example. He can be reached via the CIA operator at 703 482-1100. He’s the “anonymous” [color=blue]CIA intelligence officer who wrote[/color] the recently published Imperial Hubris in which he says:
[color=blue]The invasion of Iraq was an avaricious, premeditated, unprovoked war against a foe who posed no immediate threat but whose defeat did offer economic advantages. For Osama bin Laden, the American invasion and occupation of Iraq were like a Christmas present you long for but never expected to receive
Funny, that didn’t appear to have been caught by the Bi-Partisan Senate Investigation Committee.
[quote=“spook”]You could ask [color=blue]Michael Scheuer[/color] at CIA headquarters yourself, for example. He can be reached via the CIA operator at 703 482-1100. He’s the “anonymous” [color=blue]CIA intelligence officer who wrote[/color] the recently published Imperial Hubris in which he says:
[color=blue]The invasion of Iraq was an avaricious, premeditated, unprovoked war against a foe who posed no immediate threat but whose defeat did offer economic advantages. For Osama bin Laden, the American invasion and occupation of Iraq were like a Christmas present you long for but never expected to receive — a gift from Washington that will haunt, hurt, and hound Americans for years to come. [/color][/quote]
spook,
That’s his opinion. The fact is, the intel provided to the President and to Congress indicated that Saddam and his regime were a clear threat.
Nobody ever stated that there were not divergent opinions… but the intel acted on, and which everyone else seemed to agree upon, was that which indicated a risk.
Ok, that’s what you said word-by-word but it’s the same thing: by chosing the intel that indicated the greater risk Bush also chose the intel itself.
He did not say that he acts on the greater risk only, instead he clearly said to be stating facts and knowledge when he named examples of the intel to make his case.
[color=blue]A Senior Pentagon policy maker created an unofficial “Iraqi intelligence cell” in the summer of 2002 to circumvent the CIA and secretly brief the White House[/color] on links between Saddam Hussein and al-Qa’eda, [color=blue]according to the Senate intelligence committee.[/color]
The allegations about Douglas Feith, the number three at the Department of Defence, are made in a supplementary annexe of the committee’s review of the intelligence leading to war in Iraq, released on Friday.
According to dramatic testimony contained in the annexe, [color=blue]Mr Feith’s cell undermined the credibility of CIA judgments on Iraq’s alleged al-Qa’eda links within the highest levels of the Bush administration.[/color]
It didn’t escape the Senate intelligence committee’s attention apparently, just the awareness of the American public.
