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.
Yeah.... they were... Uhhh... great and stuff
You are still getting them aren't you.
BTW, I guess you haven't heard but it looks like that bill is dying due to democratic objections, but the people who pay taxes are still getting their tax cuts, that already has been signed by the President.
Huh, you would think that one who prides himself as "one who knows", would know that.
Be careful when you demand that posters here toe the GOP party line or go elsewhere. You might just get what you ask for.
Ohhh... well as long as I get one... that makes tax cuts for people who didn't pay taxes a GREAT idea.
What was I thinking?
Hardly. The problem that the Dems had with the prescription drug plan is that it didn't spend enough. And a handful of fiscal conservatives tried to block the bill.
Try again.
And I don't have any kids, but I want that child tax credit as well. Logic and reason be damned, if you can't fight 'em, join 'em.
Liberty, rights, and the future security of my children is my goal.
Inasmuch as republicans act to secure and foster those goals, I consider them important/necessary.
If they don't, what good are they to me?
Let's just vote ourselves rich and get all this silly foreplay over with.
You Queen of Denial, you.
Oh don't worry. I and a lot of others have tried to explain the folly of the one step forward, two steps backwards in the modern American political climate, approach of the perfect world purist conservatives.
Do me a favor dirt when you reach that destination called the "perfect world", how about sending me a postcard.
For some reason I think that I will be waiting by the mailbox for a long time.
I'm in.
I'd be happy if you were just moving in the right direction.
And more conservative ANYTHING will not happen so long as republicans act like democrats, to the cheers of their political base.
I never realized you could get mail in an asylum. You learn something new every day.
Since when, Dane, is it a perfect world to ask the GOP to try and maintain SOME semblence of fiscal sanity?
Well I guess tax cuts are the wrong direction for you then.
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