Posted on 02/05/2004 9:39:46 AM PST by beaureguard
At this point we all realize that there were some serious problems with the intelligence information being supplied to President Bush prior to the liberation of Iraq. Based on that intelligence information Bush thought that Saddam Hussein had stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons that could be pressed into service in short order. Not only did George Bush believe this intelligence information, but so did quite a few other people.
Do you need some reminders? OK .. here goes.
On October 9, 1998 some members of the U.S. Senate sent a letter to Bill Clinton expressing their concerns about Saddam and his weapons program. That letter contained this paragraph:
"We urge you, after consulting with Congress and consistent with the U.S. Constitution and laws, to take necessary actions (including, if appropriate, air and missile strikes on suspect Iraqi sites) to respond effectively to the threat posed by Iraq's refusal to end its weapons of mass destruction program."
That letter was signed by Tom Daschle, Carl Levin and John Kerry .. three Senators, one a probable Democratic nominee for president, who are now slamming George Bush for acting on the very intelligence they relied on for their 1998 letter to their president, Bill Clinton.
Carl Levin is particularly obnoxious. I saw him on some talking head show earlier this week pressing the idea that Bush should have known that the intelligence information he was relying on was faulty. In September of 2002 Levin said "We begin with the common belief that Saddam Hussein is a tyrant and a threat to the peace and stability of the region. He has ignored the mandates of the United Nations and is building weapons of mass destruction and the means of delivering them." Levin, it seems, believed the exact same intelligence information that Bush relied on ... and now he's faulting Bush.
How about some other names of people who believed that Saddam had a weapons program and a stockpile of WMDs? Let's put Nancy Pelosi on that list, and there's Clinton's Secretary of State Madeline Albright. Al Gore said "We know that he has stored secret supplies of biological and chemical weapons throughout his country." Ted Kennedy said "We have known for many years that Saddam Hussein is seeking and developing weapons of mass destruction." How about some more from John Kerry? On October 9th of last year Kerry said "I believe that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a real grave threat to our security." In January of this year Kerry said "So the threat of Saddam Hussein with weapons of mass destruction is real."
Now we are hearing doubts about the quality of that intelligence. Maybe Saddam didn't have the weapons. Maybe he shipped them out to Syria and Iran. Maybe his own scientists were telling him what they thought he wanted to hear.
OK .. let me try to create a little scenario for you. Let's say that NASA scientists together with experts from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California suddenly discover that there is a 15-mile-wide asteroid heading for the earth. If that asteroid strikes the earth millions of people will die. The president of the United States orders a very expensive crash program to develop a response. Billions of dollars are poured into an all-out project to develop and launch a dozen nuclear-tipped rockets toward the asteroid to destroy it before it crashes into the earth. To fund the project billions are taken from various social projects. People suffer. The deficit blossoms. A debt is created that our grandchildren will have to pay.
The project is successful. The missiles score a direct hit on the asteroid and it is blasted into thousands of smaller fragments. Unfortunately some of those fragments are still large enough to cause severe damage and kill hundreds of people when they crash into the earth.
Later, after the danger is past, we discover that the NASA scientists who originally warned of the threat from this asteroid made a little mathematical miscalculation. The asteroid was actually going to pass harmlessly between the moon and the earth. We now know that all of that money was wasted. Not only that, but those people who died when smaller fragments hit the earth would still be alive today if the asteroid had just been left alone.
Who do we blame here? Do we blame the president? He was acting on the information available to him at the time. He had no real choice but to trust that information. To ignore the warnings of the impending strike could be to pass a death sentence on millions. You can't condemn the president for acting on information that he, and the rest of the world, thought to be correct.
Another quicker example. A surgeon finds a lump in your breast. He wants to do a biopsy. A test of the lump shows it to be benign. Do you condemn the doctor because he didn't know that the growth was benign before he went in there with a scalpel?
Now, after Saddam has been deposed and after Iraq has been liberated, we find that some of the intelligence information was faulty. What do we do? Blame Bush for acting on information that was believed to be true at the time action was taken? All of this 20-20 hindsight is wonderful, but when it comes to the defense of our country you can act on what you think might be true in 12 months, you act on what you believe to be true right now.
A bloodthirsty dictator has been removed from power. Rape rooms are no longer in operation in Iraq. The torture chambers have been shut down. Mass graves containing hundreds of thousands have been uncovered. Saddam will never again use chemicals to kill tens of thousands of his enemies.
And this is somehow bad?
Bush isn't the first president to be fooled by duff intelligence. FDR started our own program of a WMD under the insistence of information from German physicists that had fled Nazi Germany before Hitler closed the gate. At the same time, reports of mass extermination camps were heard by FDR and he did nothing.
The "Spook" business has a checkered past. The "Venona" project by the US was very successful in finding communist spies and scaring the pinkos. The famous "Enigma" of the British is still on the "Secret" list. Was Enigma used by the RAF during the Battle of Britain to know ahead of time where to concentrate the RAF fighters? It's still a secret.
A security clearance only gives one access to "Rumors" and the "Ridiculous", not the truth.
It (attack) will work possibly, unless the admonition used many years ago is adhered to . This is, Steer her straight and damn the torpedoes.
Nato gave out that there were 100,000 Albanians (mostly Muslim) in unmarked graves in Kosovo. The press went over board in support for the attack on Serbia. When these figures were disproved, there was nary a protest. There are to date possibly 3000 concealed burials- far too many of course, whoever they where. Now as for the "Butcher of Belgrade", that is another story. No not Milosevic.
Their WMD has a name, it is A Red Herring. .
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