Iran - News & Spin Tracker

Discussion in 'World Events' started by StrawDog, Sep 21, 2010.

  1. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    30,994
    Lots of people, all with more credibility than anyone from W&Co's administration has left, many simply watching the news and remembering from one month to the next, were pointing out at the time that W&Co were cooking the books on the WMD intelligence. Flagrantly. Cf Plame, NYT front page bullshit, UN reports, resignation of British intelligence officials, caveats from around the world, obvious inconsistencies and improbabilities, etc.

    That's common knowledge. No one with any credibility denies it. The big discussion among the informed was not whether the WMDs claimed actually existed, but whether W&Co would plant some or otherwise dig up some kind of garbage they could use to cover their ass afterwards. Another topic of discussion was whether W himself knew what was going on or whether he was being played for a Reagan. That's still an open question, AFAIK.
    In a situation so similar to Iran's, has anyone thought of trying the same tactics? Iran has joined the NPT, after all.
     
    Last edited: Nov 12, 2010
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  3. ElectricFetus Sanity going, going, gone Valued Senior Member

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    Yeah Iran's situation is not "similar".
     
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  5. countezero Registered Senior Member

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    I'm not re-fighting this battle with you.

    All I am saying is that the US had no HUMINT in Iraq prior to the invasion and the SIGINT and GEOINT it had was so poor and so out of date that the WMD teams would go to sites and find them completely different (this is all documented in Woodward's State of Denial). The analysts were always operating with a very incomplete picture, which is precisely like crap like CURVEBALL and the Niger stuff was eaten up -- there was nothing else to go on, really. You can argue people misused and misrepresented things and seem rationale, but don't pretend like we had oodles of stuff on Iraq and the WMDs laying around and ignored that, because that's just not true.
     
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  7. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    30,994
    Aside from the UN inspectors, the various defectors including close relations of Saddam himself, the various insurgent groups supported, and whatall else corroborating the intense satellite, overflight, and other mechanical surveillance.
    Which was not at all what was being presented to the US public - that was, as many observed, flagrant bs and known to be so by the informed.

    The Niger stuff, for example, was discredited - "eating it up" is not excused by any absence of info. Better info was available in the newspaper.

    Absence of info, even genuine, does not justify wholesale invention and circus level ballyhoo. Not knowing what Saddam was or was not doing -

    and pending an investigation into what happened to all the better intelligence coming out of the field and available from dozens of public sources, assertions of helpless ignorance (did the fringe lefties in the US really know that much more about Iraq than the entire Federal intelligence apparatus?) just look like more ass covering by criminals -

    is no excuse for running the bs amplifier at 11, to gin up a full scale war.
     
  8. countezero Registered Senior Member

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    5,590
    You know little about intelligence, and it's showing here again.

    The UN inspectors had not been to Iraq for years, and when they finally returned, they were not shown much of anything of interest. The insurgent groups were all Kurds, with no access to WMD. Same thing with the relatives and defectors. Pretty much every one who has looked at the issue has said the HUMINT stunk in Iraq. Woodward and James Risen deal with this extensively in their books, which you should read if you care about this topic.

    The SIGINT actually led analysts to believe there were WMDs because the commanders chattered about it all the time (they were under orders to do just that by Saddam).

    Like I said, you have an argument here -- it's just not one I want to have with you. You just don't have an argument about the intelligence, though. It sucked, plain and simple.

    Yes, and part of the people who discredited it were CIA. Bush used it over Tenet's objections. We've been through this before.

    They didn't know shit.

    The fact they yelled and moaned about there being no WMD and then were right in no way, shape or form is a comment on their sources of information. They were relying on far less data than the intelligence community had and we're themselves guilty of filtering data to fit their conclusion. It's just that they were right, so now they're all patting themselves on the back for being clever and saying how great the Lefty press is. That's all crap.
     
  9. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    30,994
    They came to accurate conclusions, and had access to whatever they asked for, and were right there on the ground to check out all the stuff Saddam's relatives were saying and the satellites were indicating and the overflights were revealing and so forth.

    So when the four-star rocket-burst claims were made - made for sure, mind you, not guesswork - that the US not only knew about the WMDs but knew how much and where and so forth - the UN inspectors were right there to check things out and make Saddam get rid of them.

    Except the US wouldn't let them, or inform them. And so all the lefties drew the obvious conclusion, which was the correct one - there were no such WMDs. That failure to do the obvious, and inform the inspectors about the latest WMD findings, was another what you call "smoking gun".
    Sure it is. They were also right about the ethnic hostilities, the cost of the war, the consequences of invasion and occupation regarding Iran, and a bunch of other things. They knew the Niger stuff was garbage.

    They got all that info from their sources, little fringe magazines and the foreign press and so forth, that weren't listening to people like curveball, because they had no use for someone so obviously full of shit.

    They had better sources than the President, apparently.
     
    Last edited: Nov 13, 2010
  10. countezero Registered Senior Member

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    5,590
    They did not have access to whatever they asked for. The game Saddam played with the inspectors is well-documented. And again, you're ignoring the lack of knowledge and access his relatives had to the labs, many of which were secret and they had never been inside before.

    In order for your theory -- and aren't you just full of them -- to be correct, the entire US intelligence community had to be in on the act of ignoring definitive intelligence and advancing bogus claims of definitive ones. That's simply not what happened, and I'm done having this conversation with you. Speculate all you like, but you know fuck all about this topic, nor have you endeavored to learn much of anything that doesn't confirm your Lefty viewpoint, as usual.

    You're an idiot if you believe that. And you're an idiot if you think they even had access to CURVEBALL or anything like it (you claim things "obviously" full of shit when you have never talked to the man or read the intel reports?

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

    ). The fact their grossly incomplete picture led them to the right conclusion says nothing at all to me. Sorry.
     
  11. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    30,994
    Not at all. According to my observations and specific, overt recommendations in numerous places on this forum, right in front of you, a full scale criminal investigation is warranted into what happened to the findings and reports of the competent and diligent US intelligence community.

    Because when people who merely read good public sources and remember them from one year to the next, are better informed than the President's envoy to the UN making the public case for full scale military invasion;

    when people who simply read the newspapers have a better apparent grasp of the history and economics of a proposed theater of war than the President's close advisers (the war will pay for itself with oil revenue, six months at the most, Iraq lacks the background of sectarian hostility that would undermine the aftermath of invasion in other places, etc etc etc )

    mere incompetence, ignorance, or foolishness does not fully explain the matter.

    As clues, things like this:
    They say they did, all during the time W&Co were mongering for war (and claiming to be undecided, a flat lie - as was verified later, and as the lefties correctly estimated from day one). They were certainly there, to be used as persuasive evidence etc if Saddam refused them - that might have brought the UN in on the US side. Apparently there was some kind of risk involved, in asking the UN inspectors to check out any of Powell's assertions.
     
    Last edited: Nov 15, 2010
  12. Buffalo Roam Registered Senior Member

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    16,931
    Nice propaganda spiel.
     
  13. quadraphonics Bloodthirsty Barbarian Valued Senior Member

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    If the case for invasion had been made along the lines of "we simply don't know whether he has WMD or not, but can't take the chance that he does," then this would be a lot more pertinent. The executive seems to have (probably correctly) judged that the public would not support an invasion on those grounds, and further that the war should be pursued despite a (presumed) lack of public support for its actual terms. Hence, the manufacture of a sexed-up pretense, claims of surety about weapons development, etc.

    Not that I think many serious people actually believed that stuff. But it gave people who wanted to invade anyway something serious-sounding to hang their hats on, at least until it was too late.

    Point is it was all deception, clearly designed to produce a war that the public would not approve of in honest terms. The usual term for that sort of activity is "subversion of democracy."
     
  14. countezero Registered Senior Member

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    So you think all the intel analysts working in cubicles were intentionally deceptive?
     
  15. quadraphonics Bloodthirsty Barbarian Valued Senior Member

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    It's difficult to tell how far down the in-group of the scam went. But again, the character of the con was to simply discard valid intelligence and insert nonsense anyway, which doesn't really require a lot of cooperation from the entire intelligence apparatus. You just need the top guys to sign off on it - the material itself can just be cooked up by whoever.
     
  16. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    30,994
    The discovery and naming of the people who originated the deception should be in progress now, with subpoenas.

    We know the names of at least two who did not: Valerie Plame and her husband Joe.
     
  17. StrawDog disseminated primatemaia Valued Senior Member

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    3,373
    OT and from the broader perspective of accountability and rule of law - a couple of points where the lack of due process should be noted and challenged.
     
  18. countezero Registered Senior Member

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    5,590
    For what it's worth, and I realize this is completely anecdotal (take it or leave it), but I work with someone who was fairly highly placed during this and he basically confirms what I've been saying, which is why I have been saying it. The intelligence was either ambiguous or suggested weapons (remember, this is what Saddam was intentionally trying to do), but there wasn't a heck of a lot of up to date stuff.

    This is confirmed in Woodward and Risen's books, too.

    People were hungry for valid intelligence, discarding it and pretending like it did not exist would have involved thousands of people from multiple agencies getting on-board for the con. Of course, you can have situations where the pols put stuff like the Niger info in a speech after you tell them not to. That happened.

    We also know Tenet was on-record against using the material you are refering to.
     
    Last edited: Nov 17, 2010
  19. iceaura Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    30,994
    Not at all. Ignoring the valid intelligence that did make it through the filter levels in spite of the consistent discouragement (Cheney a premier bureaucratic thug, a guy who really knew how to do that), asserting and amplifying the stuff from the Curveballs of the world instead (and planting that stuff in the major newspapers, to get the public oriented properly), and in general using one's control of the intelligence apparatus and bureaucracy to deliver to the public a justification for decisions already made,

    requires only a few loyalists at the top.

    The only difference between the Niger stuff and everything else in Powell's speech was that the Niger stuff was easily discreditable in ways Tenet could not control.

    The rest of it was safely buried in the agency files.

    As the decision to skip verifying any of Powell's assertions, using the UN inspectors on the ground and enjoying good access at the time, showed. For people
    , that was kind of strange, no?
     

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