----- Original Message ----- From: "Doug Pensinger" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Killer Bs Discussion" <[email protected]> Sent: Wednesday, November 23, 2005 8:48 PM Subject: Re: They've cloned the president
> Richard Clarke on the Bush reaction to 911: > > "The president dragged me into a room with a couple of other people, shut > the door, and said, 'I want you to find whether Iraq did this.' Now he > never said, 'Make it up.' But the entire conversation left me in > absolutely no doubt that George Bush wanted me to come back with a report > that said Iraq did this. > > "I said, 'Mr. President. We've done this before. We have been looking at > this. We looked at it with an open mind. There's no connection.' > > "He came back at me and said, "Iraq! Saddam! Find out if there's a > connection.' And in a very intimidating way. I mean that we should come > back with that answer. We wrote a report." I did this out of order because I think this exchange fits perfectly well with my hypothesis: GWB "knew" Hussein was behind the attack; just as he "knew" that Hussein's WMD program was well advanced. I am not defending his judgement; I think that his judgement in this case was horrible. If he were pushing Clark to find evidence of links between Hussein and the attacks of AQ before 9-11, then I think that there would be an arguement for a pre-set plan to find enough evidence to stage a war against Hussein. But, if it only happened after 9-11, and Bush's other rhetoric indicated a massive change in attitude, then I think that it is reasonable to accept his statement that 9-11 changed everything. For him, it certainly seemed to. > > Well, what was really known with any certainty before one of the > > Curveball's handlers came public? Second hand stories, that ended up > > being true. But, as Mike Wallace > > Dan Rather, you mean. Right. > > can tell you, there are second hand stories > > that are supported by forged documents and are aired to the great > > embarassment of the news media. > > Dan, he went before the nation and told them that this stuff was true when > all his experts were saying it wasn't. It depends on what you mean by experts. The head of the CIA vetted Bush's conclusions. Specialists and people closer to the working end of intelligence (e.g. Curveball's handlers) had quite a few caveats that Bush ignored/removed. One of the reasons I'm thinking that he was "correcting for the inherent bias towards not making concluisons" is the fact that inteligence has been slow on pulling the trigger when they had information that, in retrospect, pointed to what was happening. Let me give three examples: the fall of the Berlin wall, the nuclear test of India, the nuclear test of Pakistan. The CIA gave the president a heads up on none of these. In every one of these cases, our intelligence community had significant indications before the event, but didn't give them enough weight. Concurrent with the Iraq war, the intelligence community totally missed Libia's advanced nuclear program. They were only a year or so away from an A-bomb when the came in out of the cold. So, Bush is conviced that the "experts" are too timid to make conclusions. There is at least a bit of justification for this. I have a friend who was with the CA just before that time and he said that the lack of a heads-up was more a matter of being timid than not having the signs. But, he did a horrible job of responding to the perceived timid nature of the intellegence apparatus. In his position, I'd ask various people to assign weights to the various possibilities....making it safe to make an honest mistake....not deciding what the answer is beforehand. You can see this in the way he set up post-war Iraq too. There was a general disdane for experts in rebuilding countries...they felt that they were too indoctrinated in left wing nonsense to be useful. Rather, they had a litmus test for those who would go. The result was a failure so spectacular that it would have been little worse if AQ was in charge of planning the reconstruction. I think it would take an unbelievable conspiricy theorist to believe that GWB planned to fail from the beginning. I think he did the best _he_ could in Iraq. I accept Gautam's description of his administration as severly dysfunctional. The other explaination is that GWB is an evil genius. Even if one thinks he is evil; I cannot imagine thinking he's a genius. :-) BTW, I accept that the Senate did not see all the intelligence that Bush did. I'm all but positive that he removed "wishy-washy CYA" statements from what he gave to Congress. He didn't trust Congress enough to let them form their own conclusions. He was right, and just needed to help Congress "see the light." Given this, I see Bush as a truely tragic figure. He has the hubris of the classically tragic figure. There is the tragic irony of his actions having exactly the opposite effect of his intentions. He has destroyed himself, and harmed that which he holds most dear. >He had the responsibility to vet > the information before he uses it to incite a war. It might not be a lie > on a technicality, but it was information that he knew was probably > wrong. Under the circumstances it was equivalent to lying, IMO and it > certianly had greater consequences than Clinton's lie or even Nixon's. He did vet it; in a very poor manner. He did not meet his responsibility as commander-in-chief. I don't argue with that at all. He should have trusted his gut less and experts more; that's a fact. He should have accepted that his vision can be wrong. But, none of that is part of his makeup. One of the reasons I see this distinction as worth arguing for is that I see parallels with him on the left. The war was fought to steal Iraq's oil. All that the US, and all the West, needs is for the oil to be sold at market prices. I found it ironic that the Arabs believe that Bush conspires to hold oil prices down, while many here are sure he conspires to keep them up. Look at Brin's arguments here. He claims that two generations of Bush's are traitors at a level that makes Benedict Arnold look like Nathan Hale. Both Bush Sr. and Bush Jr. were tools of Saudi Arabia, and governed the US's foreign policy according to the orders they were given...the American people be damned. Considering they come from old money New England, it is hard to believe that they were doing it for money. With that kinda money, one's legacy becomes more important than making another few million. And, if you need money, you can always get a Texas sweetheart deal....like a piece of the Texas Rangers in exchange for helping to get a new ballpark paid by the state. I think that, if we are going to have anything close to a dialog in the US on foreign policy, we need to accept as a general rule that people we are differing with are actually arguing for what they think is best for the US and/or the world in general. I see the problem with neocons as being unrealistic concerning the uncertainties in the world. I see those who claim that US isolationism is the answer to every world problem as even more misguided. But, I really think that both groups argue for what they think is best. I guess I see it as sad when both sides are arguing that the other side is not only wrong, but has strong moral failures that are at the root of their positions: We are for the people of the US; they are against them. Dan M. _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
