Posted on 02/13/2007 10:28:13 PM PST by RWR8189
Promoters of the "Bush Lied, People Died" line claim that the recent Pentagon inspector general's report concerning my former office's work on Iraq intelligence supports their cause. What the IG actually said is a different story.
The IG, Thomas Gimble, focused on a single Pentagon briefing from 2002 -- a critique of the CIA's work on the Iraq-al-Qaeda relationship. His report concluded that the work my office generated was entirely lawful and authorized, and that Sen. Carl Levin was wrong to allege that we misled Congress
Gimble made Levin happy, however, by calling the Pentagon briefing "inappropriate," a word the senator has whipped into a political lather. At issue is a simple but critical question: whether policy officials should be free to raise questions about CIA work. In Gimble's opinion, apparently, the answer is no. I disagree.
The CIA has a hard job. Some of its work has been good; some has been famously and disastrously bad, as everyone familiar with the Iraqi weapons of mass destruction fiasco knows. Intelligence is inherently sketchy and speculative -- and historically often wrong. It is improved when policy officials freely probe and challenge it.
In evaluating our policy toward Iraq after Sept. 11, 2001, my office realized that CIA analysts were suppressing some of their information. They excluded reports conflicting with their favored theory: that the secular Iraqi Baathist regime would not cooperate with al-Qaeda jihadists. (We now face a strategic alliance of jihadists and former Baathists in Iraq.) Pentagon officials did not buy that theory, and in 2002 they gave a briefing that reflected their skepticism. Their aim was not to enthrone a different theory, but to urge the CIA not to exclude any relevant information from what it provided to policymakers. Only four top-level government officials received the briefing: Donald Rumsfeld,
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Wow. Hard hitting. I like it.
We need more people to lay it out like this
Good report, but what's the possibility of it getting feet?
Slim and none. The rat media is ignoring it, and the pussy Republicans are assuming the fetal position.
Aside from the fact that the whole 'neo-con' thing is actually a liberal anti-semitism directed as Republican Jews (who are just as bad as Democrat Jews to the anti-Capitalism, anti-American activists), they are doing exactly what they claim Feith and other did.
They are cherry picking sentences out of thousands of reports to fit their own view of the intelligence. They are having to bend so far over backwards to find the angle at which their story needs to be viewed in order to make sense that they probably have a slipped disc by now. And its stunning how little the MSM knows about intelligence reports or intelligence gathering considering how many stories they write about it (or leak about it). They understand intelligence agencies less than they understand economics. And that is saying something.
Excellent post.
Recall too that the Wash Post had to write a correction for wrongly attributing words to the IG report when in fact they were from the self serving Dem political hack Carl Levin!
If Valerie were a conservative, she would be mocked and ridiculed for the inexcusable failures in our WMD intelligence gathering and analysis in the last 20 years. But since she is a 'victim', we never have to ask any of those niggling questions about which of the nuclear programs which sprung up during the Clinton administration were missed by her and her fellow lefties at the CIA.
Yes, Valerie Plame and her cohorts botched everything about the rise of nuke programs across Pakistan, Iran, North Korea, etc. They missed the AQ Khan network until a great deal of info and capabilities had been spread among several dangerous nations. Not to mention those pompous CIA blowhards had no idea that in 1990-91 Iraq was within only 12 - 18 months of being able to make its first nuclear weapon, with no clue in the CIA. Rather than take any heat for the gross incompetence and shortcomings of all our "WMD analysts" like Valerie Plame, they have been able to go on the offensive and consume the MSM with this idiotic Plamegate.
You better get this newsflash to Irving Kristol, who applied the term neocon to the political movement he helped create.
Just like when Obama is called 'clean', its not about hygiene. Its about him being 'white' enough to pass. Libs are the real racists and the vast majority of anti-semitism is on their side of the aisle. They are far more open about their disdain and/or hatred of Jews and/or Israelis.
Nice try at a save. But since the Godfather of Neoconservatism self-applied the term to describe his political persuasion your explanation is essentially ridiculous.
I still see absolutely nothing clear about the term neo-con other than its use as a perjorative against GOP Jews and those who supposedly enable them. Irving Kristol can coin the phrase but how long has it been since he used it? I'm thinking whatever it meant to him no longer has meaning to the current environment or players in the game.
I'm not really interested in an argument as much as I'd like to see a real clear definition of it so we can finally kill it off. I think we can both be right about our assertions here unless you are in disagreement that the term is being used not to describe us but to malign us.
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