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While less than thrilled that an insider is publicly apologizing for gross government incompetence, at least I appreciate the spin control effort and your candid admission that you were duped. Perhaps next time you will pay more attention to counter claims.

However, the fact is that you again are claiming a 'consensus' that never existed. Rice and Powell are on record in early 2001 saying Saddam had no WMDs, clearly, they were privy to information that was at least more correct than the nonsense that was vetted.

Karen Kwiatkowski reports here, here and here in the American Conservative certainly lend a first hand report on how the intelligence centers that were set up to bypass traditional means operated and how poorly they preformed. (Why have there been no firings?)

Your tolerance for gross incompetence if not running the gambit all the way to willful incompetence and acts of anti-patriotism that border on treason, without any suggest remedy is downright frightening considering you were one of the dupes.

I do believe the grand jury involved in investigating the forged Niger documents will provide us with a picture of who attempted to dupe the administration even if ultimately, the Grand Jury will fail to get to the bottom of this sad episode.

Your accusations of "gross incompetence, willful incompetence, anti-patriotism, and treason" are empty without proof.

I put my life on the line to fight the Taliban and Al-Qaeda, thanks heaps for the accusation.

As far as the "American Conservative" is concerned, I've seen Buchanan express far more approval of Francisco Franco than he ever has for American institutions. I don't care what Buchanan and his crowd say for the same reason I don't care what David Duke says. It may be a crushing disappointment for Pat but Fascism is dead and buried, and history records that we didn't need it to beat an equally evil system, Communism (by the way, I put my life on the line in that one, too. Pat didn't. How 'bout you? - But I think I know the answer).

As someone who has seen every phase of the intelligence cycle at first hand, I've seen errors throughout. The system catches and corrects them, sooner or later, or it doesn't and we act on them, and sometimes get our heinies kicked. Examples: The Ranger attack at Pointe du Hoc (D-Day; the guns the Rangers got creamed destroying turned out not to be operational); The Bay of Pigs ("The Cubans will rise up..."); Son Tay ("There are 112 US Prisoners here..."); the Mayaguez raid (The Marines uncharacteristically left bodies behind, after attacking what turned out to be the wrong place, for the wrong reasons).

There are other errors less well known to the public. For example, one stick that Kennedy beat Nixon with was the "missile gap" -- the perception that the Russians were ahead in missile technology and production. In fact, while low-level intel looked that way, very-close-hold intel (U2 overflight photos, long since declassified) told Eisenhower and Nixon that there was no gap. But Nixon couldn't defend against the charge without leaking the information -- which he didn't do.

Unfortunately, Pat and his fellows are so determined to lay this particular error at the feet of the Joooooz That Control The World, they don't see it as an error. It is a troubling error because it was a very big one.

The difference between the Powell press statement you link to and the statements of the President pre/Iraq are more a matter of tone than of substance. Powell says that SH has not developed "significant" WMD, yes, but he also says that SH is trying to, and that the US has a major interest in preventing him from so doing; the President stressed the importance of moving "before the threat is imminent" which has become in the verbiage of the appeasenik left and their fellow-travelers on the isolationist/fascist right a claim that the threat was "imminent."

That's the same Powell that sat in front of the UN waving a vial. But you want to take him out of the consensus based on a questionable interpretation of a couple lines at a press availability with Mr Mubarak? Huh. I don't think Mr Powell would agree with you.

If Pat doesn't like the trend of things he could always run for office.... oh yeah, he did. He got 100% of the elderly-Baltic-camp-guard vote but not many others, didn't he?

d.o.l.

Criminal Number 18F