What are your opinions on the matter?

[Trident-za]

http://www.navyseals.com/community/articles/article.cfm?id=1140

How do you guys feel about it? Really curious....

[budanski]

9/11 What did he know and when did he know it? :roll:
Pulease, morons like D-asshole and McAuliffe are borderline commies who set themselves up to only benefit when things go wrong. Welcome to politics.

A message from Governor Schwarzenegger to the democRATS:

http://209.237.0.15/~jkahn/temp/arnold_stfu.jpg

[Seiyuuki]

Interesting to see if the feet switch shoes.

[He219]

http://209.237.0.15/~jkahn/temp/arnold_stfu.jpg
rofl rofl rofl

[Trident-za]

9/11 What did he know and when did he know it? :roll:
Pulease, morons like D-asshole and McAuliffe are borderline commies who set themselves up to only benefit when things go wrong. Welcome to politics.



I am genuinely confused by this response. Did we read the same article? What has 9/11 got to do with the Bush administration admitting that cocked up? I know nothing about either of the 2 people you mentioned, but that seems to me irrelevent.

Perhaps I didn't phrase the question clearly. I'm not interested in your opinion on the political response to this. I want to know what you think about the fact that the administration is admitting it was wrong.

Don't take this post the wrong way, I'm not trying to cause trouble. I'm just confused by your response - you just seem to be avoiding the real issue completely by focusing on the wrong thing.

Seiyuuki said "Interesting to see if the feet switch shoes." This also confuses me - what are you actually trying to say? (I'm slow and need these thigns spelt out :))

[ibstolidude]

I am no huge fan of Bush but,...

I think Sen T. Dashles comments were on the nose
"I think it's premature to come to any conclusions about what this may or may not mean. But I think we can conclude, as Republicans and Democrats have suggested, that this ought to be reviewed very carefully. It ought to be the subject of careful scrutiny, as well as some hearings and some research with regard to what it was we knew, what actions were taken, what statements were correct and which ones were incorrect,"

The Bush administration HAS NOT come forward and claimed that they knowingly misled the public. They have stated that we quoted intelligence and that intelligence has sice been prove inaccurate.

Such is the nature of intelligence... now certainly people intelligence needs to be verified and NO ONE EVER acts on intelligence that isn't 100% (except business, militaries, governments, and civil/political organizations...except for these no-pone ever acts on intel that isn't 100% exhausted- catch the sarcasm??). Hind sight is 20-20. So far there has been no proof that Bush has intentionally misled the public on that particular account (if he had why then bring it up again?).

Just as with most intelligence information - only time will tell the true/accurate nature of events.

[Trident-za]

Thanks Stoli for replying to the question. At no point, by the way, did I say that the Bush administration had admitted to "knowlingly misleading the public". As you say, intelligence is a tricky thing. I am amazed, however, that intelligence that wasn't 100% verified was used in the state of the nation address.

[ibstolidude]

Don't be amazed intel is almost never 100% until after the fact...

Even if based on documents
even if based on interrogation
even if based on any of the typical acros - (humint, blah blah)
And even when the percentage is high it is often not timely used

if it was 100& the world would currently have caught all major criminals, known terrorists and stopped 9/11 from happening.

Thus in the US we have the Central Intelligence Agency not the Central Intuitive Agency....it is a jigsaw puzzle that people try and guess at as it is still being put together.
Usually you can't 100% verify until after the fact or until waiting soo long that the intel is no longer timely and valuable - in this case they lost the gamble it would appear - they played the percentages and came up wrong this time (or so it appears)

[budanski]

9/11 What did he know and when did he know it? :roll:
Pulease, morons like D-asshole and McAuliffe are borderline commies who set themselves up to only benefit when things go wrong. Welcome to politics.



I am genuinely confused by this response. Did we read the same article? What has 9/11 got to do with the Bush administration admitting that cocked up? I know nothing about either of the 2 people you mentioned, but that seems to me irrelevent.

Perhaps I didn't phrase the question clearly. I'm not interested in your opinion on the political response to this. I want to know what you think about the fact that the administration is admitting it was wrong.

Don't take this post the wrong way, I'm not trying to cause trouble. I'm just confused by your response - you just seem to be avoiding the real issue completely by focusing on the wrong thing.

Seiyuuki said "Interesting to see if the feet switch shoes." This also confuses me - what are you actually trying to say? (I'm slow and need these thigns spelt out :))

You have here one of thousands of reports from literally countless sources was a forgery.

What is known is the intelligence community is not perfect but it is provides their best estimates and information for someone to make a reasonable decision. Anyone that has access to intelligence reports or have access to community knows and will acknowledge that the intel community is part guess work, part science and a lot of minute details not availible to the public or media.

Is this to say the intel community screwed the pooch on the entire Iraq dossier? No, it means that the majority of all reports and estimates were accurate, but as with any organization that deals with millions if not billions of pieces of information some faulty bits will slip through. In this case the success rate far exceeds the failure rate.

Homing in on just one aspect of it is just nit picking and not realistic. Then again there is concrete evidence that he was working on illegal weapons. His Al Samoud II missiles were clearly illegal, as were his Scuds. The two mobile labs provides clear evidence of a WMD program. His inability to account for thousands of litres of anthrax, VX, Sarin and Mustard gas that he had previously admitted to, provides significant evidence of deception. Then there are tens of thousands of chemical warfare suits in the combat zones located in schools and mosques.

[Trident-za]

Is this to say the intel community screwed the pooch on the entire Iraq dossier?

No, I don't believe it does and I never claimed it did either. I think, though, that until WMD are actually found a lot of people on the planet will believe that most of the intelligence was faulty and/or wishful thinking on the part of countries who were desperately looking for justification of their war.

Do I think this is the case? No... probably not (although it wouldn't suprise me). The point is that an awful lot of people currently believe this is the case. No matter what anyone on this forum says to try and explain/justify, the fact remains that this is the public perception.

I started this thread not to claim that the whole damn war was started on false pretences, but rather to see how you guys felt about this. I see that for the most part you seem willing to "write it off" as a simple mistake that doesn't matter. Whether the general public is willing to be so forgiving remains to be seen... I don't have access to CNN etc so I've got no idea what spin the US media is putting on this - are they generally positive or negative? (I'd really like to know)

[James]

The White House blew it. This was like letting Homer Simpson or the Three Stooges give you a piece of information that could be important, and then saying, "Gee, thanks. This looks good." Uranium smuggled out of Africa? PLEASE! That is part of the plot of an old W.E.B. Griffin novel.

The president probably didn't know any better, but I bet the people pulling the strings had an idea of how accurate this information was. They probably crossed their fingers and hoped it wouldn't become public knowledge.

[James]

And now...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A40684-2003Jul10.html

The CIA thought this intel might be bogus in September 2002, and Bush uses it in his State of the Union address in JANUARY 2003.

What the hell?

[MEGR]

That Arnold Pic is great rofl rofl rofl .

[Trident-za]

And now...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A40684-2003Jul10.html

The CIA thought this intel might be bogus in September 2002, and Bush uses it in his State of the Union address in JANUARY 2003.

What the hell?

Hmmm...


They probably crossed their fingers and hoped it wouldn't become public knowledge.

I think this is probably the most accurate thing I've heard yet about the whole situation.

[spier]

You have here one of thousands of reports from literally countless sources was a forgery.

What is known is the intelligence community is not perfect but it is provides their best estimates and information for someone to make a reasonable decision. Anyone that has access to intelligence reports or have access to community knows and will acknowledge that the intel community is part guess work, part science and a lot of minute details not availible to the public or media.

Is this to say the intel community screwed the pooch on the entire Iraq dossier? No, it means that the majority of all reports and estimates were accurate, but as with any organization that deals with millions if not billions of pieces of information some faulty bits will slip through. In this case the success rate far exceeds the failure rate.

Homing in on just one aspect of it is just nit picking and not realistic. Then again there is concrete evidence that he was working on illegal weapons. His Al Samoud II missiles were clearly illegal, as were his Scuds. The two mobile labs provides clear evidence of a WMD program. His inability to account for thousands of litres of anthrax, VX, Sarin and Mustard gas that he had previously admitted to, provides significant evidence of deception. Then there are tens of thousands of chemical warfare suits in the combat zones located in schools and mosques.The Al Samoud missile was BORDERLINE illegal according to the UN resolution, and that was when it WAS NOT ARMED WITH A WARHEAD. And what SCUDs? The missiles launched in the beginning of the war were Silkworms.

Seriously, the intelligence brought forward by the "Coalition of the Willing" was ridiculous from the start, first that "intelligence" report from a British student, then this CIA report that was rejected as a fake first by the IAEA, then the MI6. rofl

The claims of any significant amounts of WMD were ridiculous from the start. Saddam had a productive WMD program in the eighties that produced some extremely primitive and ineffective agents, sometimes with a purity of only 40%! And that was nearly 15 years ago! Then consider the fact that chemical and biological weapons sometimes have a shelf life of less than a year and you got yourself something little more effective than a mild fart in terms of destructive capability.

The people that thought this war was about WMD wasn't the sharpest tools in the shed, they took the words of their minders for true and supported them as the little ignorants they were. Now that everything is pretty much in the open for everyone to see, then I think the people that still cling on to the claims of WMD should be taken out in some quiet backyard and put down like the obedient dogs they are.

Note: been awake for roughly 26 hours now, so this may not be representative for the true me. :fork:

[ibstolidude]

I hate to repost things but the UNMOVIC own reports discuss the descrepencies in their findings as reported to the UNSC in JAN to say the wmd (bio & chem anywho) didn't don't exist is foolish - I'm no Bush fan but the facts be the facts:

Un security council 687, 1284 and 1441 are for the oversight of the disarmament and dismantling of the Iraqi regime...

By Hans Blix's on words given in text to the UN on 27 Jan 2003 - (these are excepts quotations taken in full)

"While Iraq claims — with little evidence — that it destroyed all biological weapons unilaterally in 1991, it is certain that UNSCOM destroyed large biological weapons production facilities in 1996. The large nuclear infrastructure was destroyed and the fissionable material was removed from Iraq by the IAEA.
One of three important questions before us today is how much might remain undeclared and intact from before 1991; and, possibly, thereafter; the second question is what, if anything, was illegally produced or procured after 1998, when the inspectors left; and the third question is how it can be prevented that any weapons of mass destruction be produced or procured in the future."

"I shall only give some examples of issues and questions that need to be answered and I turn first to the sector of chemical weapons.

Chemical Weapons

The nerve agent VX is one of the most toxic ever developed.

Iraq has declared that it only produced VX on a pilot scale, just a few [metric] tons and that the quality was poor and the product unstable. Consequently, it was said, that the agent was never weaponized. Iraq said that the small quantity of agent remaining after the Gulf War was unilaterally destroyed in the summer of 1991.

UNMOVIC, however, has information that conflicts with this account. There are indications that Iraq had worked on the problem of purity and stabilization and that more had been achieved than has been declared. Indeed, even one of the documents provided by Iraq indicates that the purity of the agent, at least in laboratory production, was higher than declared.

There are also indications that the agent was weaponizied. In addition, there are questions to be answered concerning the fate of the VX precursor chemicals, which Iraq states were lost during bombing in the Gulf War or were unilaterally destroyed by Iraq."

"I have mentioned the issue of anthrax to the Council on previous occasions and I come back to it as it is an important one.

Iraq has declared that it produced about 8,500 liters of this biological warfare agent, which it states it unilaterally destroyed in the summer of 1991. Iraq has provided little evidence for this production and no convincing evidence for its destruction.

There are strong indications that Iraq produced more anthrax than it declared, and that at least some of this was retained after the declared destruction date. It might still exist. Either it should be found and be destroyed under UNMOVIC supervision or else convincing evidence should be produced to show that it was, indeed, destroyed in 1991.

As I reported to the Council on 19 December last year, Iraq did not declare a significant quantity, some 650 kg, of bacterial growth media, which was acknowledged as imported in Iraq's submission to the Amorim panel in February 1999. As part of its 7 December 2002 declaration, Iraq resubmitted the Amorim panel document, but the table showing this particular import of media was not included. The absence of this table would appear to be deliberate as the pages of the resubmitted document were renumbered.

In the letter of 24 January to the President of the Council, Iraq's Foreign Minister stated that "all imported quantities of growth media were declared". This is not evidence. I note that the quantity of media involved would suffice to produce, for example, about 5,000 liters of concentrated anthrax."

http://www.un.org/Depts/unmovic/Bx27.htm

- I do not think there is a question of the whether or not Chem and Bio weapons exist/existed in Iraq(by their own admissions) - The destruction, documentation and disclosure of such said weapons was the purpose of the UNMOVIC teams. I believe the majority of the questions stem from (as some pointed out above)
- what exists from before 91?
- what if any has been acquired since 98 (inspections halted)?
- what efforts have been made to create new materials?
- what efforts have been made to weaponize?

- The UN has published the documentation that shows such weapons have existed and did exist prior to the ground offensive. They have also shown that discrepancies are apparent between the declared numbers of such materials and their destruction...BUT, the UNMOVIC reports do reflect that such discrepancies DO NOT mean the materials have been weaponized or are in sufficient quantities to do so, nor do they indicate further efforts have been proven that Iraq was seeking to expand their WMD programs.

[ibstolidude]

ofcourse I also think it is foolish to believe our governments chose to invade Iraq based mainly upon WMD development - but the facts remain the facts

[Argyll]

Stoli,
How did you manage to get Tony Blair to pose like that for your avatar?

[ibstolidude]

That is a GWBush think tank....

[Argyll]

rofl rofl rofl rofl rofl

[spier]

I hate to repost things but the UNMOVIC own reports discuss the descrepencies in their findings as reported to the UNSC in JAN to say the wmd (bio & chem anywho) didn't don't exist is foolish - I'm no Bush fan but the facts be the facts:

The claims of any significant amounts of WMD were ridiculous from the start.As in a threat to world peace, an arsenal capable of delivering unacceptable amounts of casualties. Blair said 45 minutes, even at the time most people with basic knowledge about chemical weapons should have been suspicious. Hell, the US probably don't have chemical weapons ready to be launched within 45 minutes. And that is VERY probable.

And that post of mine was..odd. p-)

[RealUltimatePower]

Well since I didn't care if Saddam had WMD in the first palce then this whole argument is pointless to me. I suppourted the war cause the Ba'ath party are a buncha torturing dictatorship bastards who needed to be showed who's the boss in the world.
So this argument over intelligence on WMD is not a high priority in my eyes. What's important now is stabilizing the country. The war already happened so who cares why we did it now.

[martinexsquaddie]

The problem was the Sanctions were coming down france and russia were pushing for them to come down and saddam would have free reign
to restock. NO where ever that piece of **** is he won't be build ing any more WMDs and no will anyone else in the middle east apart from israel
bugger thats that plan scotched then :oops: