Comments on: Senate Report Blasts Intelligence Agencies’ Flaws

By: Herb Ely

Herb Ely — Sat, 10 Jul 2004 15:16:22 +0000

Atilla, We did know that Saddam had WMD's. The intelligence communit should have noticed that there was no recent training - hence little military threat. (This did not eliminate the threat of a terririst attack). David Kay has suggested that Saddam had destroyed most of the WMD but continued to decieve the West, his nieghbors and internal enemies into believing that he still had them. Had we know this, we might still have justified the war based on the elimination of an evil regime and the possiblity that terrorists might access any remaining WMD stocks.

By: Gagne84

Gagne84 — Sat, 10 Jul 2004 13:19:54 +0000

Attila -- We err all the time on the side of caution with dictators in a post 9/11 world. Saddam is the only one we've gone after and that's because he had oil, which means profits and control for the Elites like Bush, Cheney, etc. There are perhaps 40 other dictators in the world today and we haven't gone after any of them. I wish there was a sensible and noble logic for invading Iraq, but every day we learn there wasn't, at least not one that justifies almost 900 deaths and 10,000 casualties of U.S. troops. And for all the bluster and display of military might, we're no safer at home and our fellow Americans are at risk abroad -- because we went after the wrong guy and for the wrong reasons.

By: Attila Girl

Attila Girl — Sat, 10 Jul 2004 07:06:24 +0000

But surely we knew that Saddam had WMDs during the Iran-Iraq war, because he had used them. Once they are established to exist, shouldn't the onus have been on Saddam to prove he had gotten rid of them?

I mean, don't we want to err on the side of caution when it comes to dealing with a volatile dictator in a post-9/11 world?

By: Herb Ely

Herb Ely — Fri, 09 Jul 2004 18:51:51 +0000

Having a weapons program is not the same thing as having a military unit equipped and trained to use a weapon. This is a distnction that seems to have escaped the intelligence community. Military units have to be equipped and trained before they are capaable of using WMD (or any weapon for that matter).

This is not to say that the threat from WMD programs was non-existent. The presence of even of small amount of WMD might have consituted a terrorist threat.

By: vdibart

vdibart — Fri, 09 Jul 2004 16:32:42 +0000

"The idea that 'deep hatred of Americans in the Muslim world' was somehow created after 9-11 is, to put it mildly, odd." I think they're addressing the tipping point. There will always be a small contingent of armed militants with the desire and ability to do America harm. There is a larger group that dislikes us but wouldn't die to harm us, another (perhaps larger) group that is ambivalent, and so on. My impression is that they're desribing the shift of people from the "ambivalent" end of the spectrum to the "dislike" end.