Posted on 07/14/2003 8:59:22 PM PDT by Utah Girl
On the ground floor of the White House is the Map Room, so-called because it was here that Franklin Roosevelt used to get his briefings on the progress of World War II. Over the mantel is the last map FDR saw before his death. It shows American, British, and Soviet troops racing toward Berlin. It also shows a frightening concentration of German forces in the Nazis’ last redoubt, the mountains of Bavaria.
We now know of course that this last redoubt did not exist. American intelligence had been deceived. And it’s possible that policymakers also deceived themselves. Roosevelt, for reasons of his own, wanted to let the Russians have the honor – and suffer the losses – of an assault on Berlin. The belief in the last redoubt was a very useful belief: It justified FDR’s wish to avoid joining the battle for Berlin.
Intelligence is a very uncertain business. And there’s no doubt that consumers of intelligence tend to be quicker to accept uncertain information that confirms their prejudices than uncertain information that calls those prejudices into question. Since consumers of intelligence are usually prejudiced in favor of doing little, most of the time they prefer intelligence that errs on the side of minimizing dangers.
9/11 changed the way American officials looked at the world. So when they got reports that Iraq was seeking to buy uranium in Niger, you can understand why they took the information seriously. That information has since turned out to be false – and its falsity has generated a major political controversy, as bitter-end opponents of this president and the war on terror try to exploit the administration’s error.
The controversy turns on the fact that some in the CIA doubted the story from the start. Their warnings were apparently disregarded, that is assuming that they were adequately communicated in the first place. Why? One reason may be that the CIA’s warnings on Iraq matters had lost some of their credibility in the 1990s. The agency was regarded by many in the Bush administration as reflexively and implacably hostile to any activist policy in Iraq. Those skeptics had come to believe that the agency was slanting its information on Iraq in order to maneuver the administration into supporting the agency’s own soft-line policies.
So when the Bush administration got skeptical news on the Niger uranium matter, it would not be surprising if mid-level policymakers mentally filed it under the heading “more of the same from the CIA,” filed it, and discounted it. The tendency was redoubled by the origin of the Niger-debunking report: Joseph C. Wilson. For more about him, see Clifford May's important post in last week's NRO. The result was the strange formulation in the State of the Union speech, in which the Niger story was cited – but attributed to British intelligence.
The story is an embarrassment for all concerned. But it no more undercuts the case for the Iraq war than FDR’s mistake in 1945 retroactively discredited the case for World War II. The United States did not overthrow Saddam Hussein because he was buying uranium in Niger. It overthrow him because he was a threat to the United States, to his neighbors, to his own people, and to the peace of a crucial region of the globe. All of that is just as true as it was on the day the President delivered his speech containing the errant 16 words – and the war is just as right and justified today as it was then.
That's the thing; they're NOT "suddenly appearing." They've been around all along. It's just that in the entire two-and-a-half-year history of the Bush Administration thus far, this is the FIRST ginned-up pseudoscandal to come along that both: a) has had legs, and b) is complex enough to allow the leftists and haters to play semantic games and argue basically anything they want from any direction. It's Tenet's fault! No, it's Blair's fault! No, it's Bush's fault! They're throwing dozens of different, mutually exclusive attacks out there at the same time, hoping to God that one of them sticks.
These people have been praying for something like this to come along since January 2001. Now they've got it. And I hope they're enjoying themselves, because the news media is already starting to hit brick walls with the story, which means it's not going to be around much longer. Example: On Sunday, AP radio news at the top of the hour had this as their top story, and was devoting two entire minutes to it; that's a LOT for a six-minute newscast. By Monday afternoon, ABC Radio didn't even have it as their top story, and they ran maybe thirty seconds. I haven't watched or listened to too much news yet today, but what little flipping around I've seen on the cable channels has been mostly about hurricanes and murders and abducted children.
Barring a major new leak from some leftover Clinton kneepadder (which probably wouldn't even be true), this story simply has no place left to go. Bush has explained himself, so has Tenet, so has Blair (and, most importantly, British intelligence). All that's left now is for the RAT presidential candidates to continue getting bolder and bolder in their attacks on the President, which will help them in the next few days ... but for which they will end up paying in millions of lost votes in 2004 once the truth finally shakes out and they're left looking like the opportunistic, soft-on-national-security, Bush-haters with nothing to offer but fear itself, that they are.
That's very kind of you, but The Corner? On NRO? They're taking open submissions now?
I have consistently said that I wrote that you gave the President 100% of the blame. Now, I wrote that because I believed that based on your post. I have never backed away from that.
Then you posted that you didn't say that.
I then said (in more than one post) that I would have said you were correct, but you went into attack mode and that's where we've been since.
What do you want? I'm agreeing with you. It's the fact that you won't see that I'm agreeing with you that is dishonest.
If spending is your issue, then make that the issue. Don't repeat democratic dishonesty, just because you don't like Bush in one policy area.
After all, it's not like he didn't tell us about his drug program before we elected him. Would you rather Bush not be a man of his word? We've all seen where that gets us.
However, the long-time anti-Bush conservatives are not reluctant to use them as proof that "Bush is losing the base."
Which is dishonest. It wasn't like you never got around to correcting it - you continued to repeat it, even though you knew it was incorrect. That's my point. If my not allowing you to spin away your own dishonesty is somehow dishonest to you, so be it.
That's why you are our leader...
Ohh right, I forget what they were calling it. Yeah, I freepmailed Bob J and he said just send in a recent column. Only problem is I don't have anything recent. I consider this uranium crap a nonissue and have little desire to write about it, and I've been busy on other stuff for the last month or two anyway. I do intend to submit as soon as the muse - or the news - strikes me to write again, though.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.