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.
Too funny for words.
Nobody suggested you banned anybody... BIG-girl.
That said, why is it so hard to realize that human beings change their minds/positions? I may myself...I'm looking at the Consitution Party.
If you go back to the beggining of the thread you would notice it was the "one who knows" who started the ad hominems.
But what the hey were at reply #630 and change and that is all in your short attention span past.
I'm suggesting that you do what you've always done.
You attempt to bait people into launching into tirades against you, or against others, and then you run off and tattle.
And that you do so with intent.
It's pretty obvious.
Sometimes they get angrier and angrier, reorting to namecalling. Sometimes they use profanity. This usually results in someone reporting the poster and sometimes that person gets suspended and occasionally banned.
Because the abuse report is a private one, no one knows who reported the abuse. Yes it could have been one of us, although I personally have not done so. It also could be one of hundreds of people who read threads without posting.
Look at your posts right now. You cannot stand to be disagreed with, you are becoming more and more agitated, you have resorted to ugly name-calling and profanity. I am not reporting you, but I am offering you some advice.
To the impartial observer, I am pretty sure you and a couple others on this thread look to be a bit disturbed. Perhaps you might think about that before you post your next response.
BWAAAHAHAHAHahhahah!!
You and the rest of the coffee clatch sit around and pour salt into wounds at every opportunity.
You can't help yourself.
You think you're important.
self-important perhaps.
OWK is a proud atheist. I wouldn't give him the time it takes to read his posts because he is disqualified before he ever begins to type.
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