No, as a matter of fact I haven't, but what I seem to remember, and what a lot of folks are selective about, is that 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudi nationals, OBL is a Saudi national, there was zero connection between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda (the President said this), and the House of Saud is still supporting the hate schools that are indoctrinating young Saudis to kill the infidels (us). In other words, we not only made mistakes in regards to the intelligence, but we even attacked the wrong country.
In other words, we not only made mistakes in regards to the intelligence, but we even attacked the wrong country.
In AMERICA'S SECRET WAR Friedman observes:
The Saudis had developed a very refined method of managing Washington: They stayed away from the Israel question, except in a very formal, perfunctory way; they cultivated key decision-makers in Washington and created webs of financial relationships with a range of people outside the government. Finally, and most important, they allowed the United States to use Saudi territory for military operations. They assumed that if they signaled a military breach, the United States would find a basis of accommodation with the Saudis and cancel plans for an invasion of Iraq. To the Saudis' shock, the U.S. went ahead not only with withdrawing but with plans for invasion. This is where the light assault strategy became important. It didn't need the Saudis' participation. Practical or not, in introduced the idea that war didn't depend on agreement from the Saudis.
...
The decision to invade Iraq was not a good one and very few in the administration thought it was. It was simply the best decision available given the limited menu. It was the best of a bad lot. Taking out Al Qaeda through covert operations was not a practical option. Getting Saudi Arabia to incur the political wrath of its radical elements by cutting off financial support was also not going to happen unless the United States forced them to do so. The United States faced the option of hoping for the best or making the best of a mediocre strategy. In a sense, Iraq reminds us of Guadalcanal. no one wanted to be there and no one really cared about it. It was, under the circumstances, the best available option.
Actually he's not, strictly speaking. He was stripped of his citizenship by the Saudis some years ago. Wanna say '96 or '98, but I forget exactly when.
there was zero connection between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda (the President said this)
Have you been smoking crack the last several years? The President and the administration repeatedly affirmed (and still does) that there were indeed connections between Hussein's regime and al-Qaeda, as there were in fact. It is not in dispute that there were multiple high-level contacts over a period of nearly a decade. The only proviso is that there is no unambiguous and public evidence of "operational coordination" between Iraq and al-Qaeda. (And even that's not entirely true, as there is good evidence they did jointly operate Ansar al-Islam.)
And, btw, since you're bitching about faulty intelligence, how could or why should the president affirm a negative: "there was zero connection"? Obviously the most he could say is that was no evidence of a connection, which he did say wrt Saddam and 911, but did not say wrt to Saddam and al Qaeda, where connections have been verified (even if we don't know exactly how much cooperation those connections engendered).
And why were you complaining about the reference to tens of thousands of body bags? Have you forgotten how Bush and Rumsfeld were hammered by the press (not even just the hard left) over the fact that "only" ten thousand body bags were sent to Iraq? This is what the freeper you bizarrely bitched at was quite sensibly referring to as a previous predictive failure: that the MSM and 'Rats of Sid's ilk were saying that ten thousand bags would not be nearly enough, even for the initial phases of the war.