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.
People said Enron had legs as well. All we heard and read in the liberal media and from Dems was "Bush-Enron, Bush-Enron, Bush-Enron...etc".
That issue even went all the way to hearings.
But it ultimately died because nothing was there.
I say this will die the same death. Of course the real Bush haters will never let go of any of these issues, but that's to be expected.
A partial post from HERE
Thus I am unwilling to allow Free Republic to be used to damage Bush or ANY of the Republicans chances, especially with fabricated leftist propaganda. For this, I am labeled a traitor to the conservative cause. So be it. Come hell or high water I'm sticking to my guns on this one. The Democrats are NOT going to be allowed to retake control of our government any time soon and that's a fact!
471 posted on 07/09/2003 9:19 PM PDT by jimrobinson
To: tpaine
Just wanted to make sure you had the CURRENT....statement by JR...and were not relying entirely on your post from 2002. I don't see his latest post as anything other than a refinement of the 2002 statement he posted.
You think todays little teapot tempest is about Bush or the GOP?
-- Get real. Its about a neo-coven at FR trying to control what they view to be the agenda here.Feel free to correct me, but I hope this is still FR's agenda:
"Free Republic is a place for people to discuss our common goals regarding the restoration of our constitutionally limited republican form of government. If people have other agendas for FR, I really wish they would take them elsewhere."
Thanks, Jim
226 posted on 2/7/02 4:01 PM Pacific by Jim Robinson
You refuse to accept that what I say is what I mean, and continue to insist on misrepresenting me. Once again you chose to run my words through your brain and by the time they came back out again, you have them "more likely" meaning something else.
I hate to break it to you, but you are NOT a person who will have credibility with intellectually honest critical thinkers. And the others don't matter.
I still maintain that this is a coordinated effort, and that while there are those who are sincerely questioning one aspect or another of Bush's policies, there seem to be an awful lot who are determined to move some people into the third party column.
I just don't trust this "I supported Bush, but he moved left and so now I am going to a third party, even though it means electing a democrat."
I still say that there are a fair number of democrats here spouting that stuff, especially the newer registrants who don't have a posting record to draw upon.
If we had a dollar for every single time they used that quote, we could use it to bribe Jim to let us run this web site!
BTW, did you notice how he thought he trapped me into getting him to post that? pathetic
I've been gone this afternoon(Calif) and just caught up on the thread. You have got this right LOL
Ask Jim Robinson, if you have the nerve, how many people I, or for that matter MY FRIENDS, have had banned. That's a story you people LOVE to tell youselves because you can't face the truth -- that you make yourselves unwelcome in civil company.
You have major issues with women and/or people who don't agree with you, so you must destroy them in order to exist.
And since you seem to have a COMPREHENSION PROBLEM, i.e., this remark:
Your record of you and your guild jumping threads that end up getting people banned says otherwise.
I haven't posted on the Guild thread in two and a half years. So much for YOUR knowledge.
You all have given me/us WAY more power (or whatever the hell you think it is that I have) than I actually have; and in doing so, you insult the owner of this forum. If you believe that Jim Robinson can be bought off for $364 a year, you'd dumber than you look and you insult HIS integrity. But, of course, isn't that what you live to do?
And just so you'll know, I've been here a LOT longer than you have.
And the archieves don't lie.
Standing ovation.
You're the bait and snitch queen.
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