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Haha! You know what? That would be pretty damning if John Kerry were the President.

The fact is, George W. Bush was President. George W. Bush made the decision to go to war. Kerry’s, and many other Democrat’s, vote to give Bush the support he needed to “pursue vigorously the war on terrorism through the provision of authorities and funding requested by the President to take the necessary actions against international terrorists and terrorist organizations, including those nations, organizations, or persons who planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001,” was an expression of trust that Bush would do the right thing.

He didn’t, and Democrats haven’t given him that measure of trust since.

Posted by: American Pundit at July 15, 2004 10:44 AM

Mr. Hogan, could you do me a favor and tell me whether Kerry ever got the document to read in the first place? If you read carefully it says that they aren’t even able to get the summary of that NIE.

How can you be blamed for not reading an intelligence estimate you never got your hands on, if that’s the case? I await your answer.

Posted by: Stephen Daugherty at July 15, 2004 11:27 AM

Stephen —

EVERYONE should have been reading and looking at facts more, and/or demanding them (like the NIE) before pushing, agreeing to war or empowering another to do so. (A quietly bipartisanly critical comment.)

Posted by: matthew hogan at July 15, 2004 11:43 AM

I’ve altered the above in response to Stephen D’s valid comments; the basic critique still stands — if Bush has made errors in the lead up to the war, what have the Democrats running for office done to show they would have avoided those errors? What amazing fact-sifting contribution at a critical time did Bush’s challengers (Kerry or Edwards) make that shows they can be better in office than he has been?

Posted by: matthew hogan at July 15, 2004 11:54 AM

You got that right Matthew.

The difference is that democrats have no problem switching reality when it is necessary politically.

Kerry, Edwards, and Jay Rockeffeller all ‘lied’ because they made the same statements, took the same positions, made the same speeches regarding Saddam Hussein, and in the end voted for war.

Posted by: Eric Simonson at July 15, 2004 01:55 PM

The Bush administration has kept tight reins on what information congress can gain from it. That included the NIE, and even the presidential summary. They have consistently attack Congress’s authority to demand information for oversight purposes, effectively taking the teeth out of the watchdog, and paving the way for the return of the imperial presidency.

Can the Democrats be blamed for following the lead of a person who withheld information from them that might have discouraged them from doing so? Can they be blamed for not reading documents they never recieved? Can they be blamed for trusting the CIA and intelligence establishment to do its job?

I can’t figure out the sense of your attack on Kerry and the others. If he had not followed the president’s lead then, you, based on the false information everybody was given, would have have roundly condemned them. Now, knowing the falsity of the information, Kerry and the others criticize the Bush administration, and withdraw their former support. That doesn’t sound like flip-flopping, that sounds like keeping up with current developments. If anybody’s flip flopped, it’s your people.

Your people still maintain that Saddam was a threat, this despite so much evidence to the contrary. You’ve changed justifications, but not charges, going from being pre-emptive interceptors of a threat, to being simply the preventers of one. There’s a difference, and an important one: International law allows for pre-emptive strikes. It does not allow you to invade another country to prevent them from becoming a threat years from then.

So, the question is, are you for or against unprovoked, aggressive warfare? Kerry is clear on this. He’s against it. But Bush? Bush seems to be trying to justify this war on the premise that Saddam would someday, years from now, develop weapons. That not only contradicts his past statements, but also makes things much hairier, much more extreme in terms of the implications of what we just did. If we had launched airplanes and bombed the decks of the japanese aircraft carriers on December 7, 1941, that would have been a pre-emptive strike. But the Japanese Bombing our battleships to stem a possible threat to their fleet (or something like that) does not excuse Pearl Harbor.

Your people use Munich all the time as a warning not to indulge aggressors. I somehow missed the part where learning the lesson of Munich means becoming the aggressors ourselves.

Posted by: Stephen Daugherty at July 15, 2004 03:00 PM

Kerry, Edwards, and Jay Rockeffeller all ‘lied’ because they made the same statements, took the same positions, made the same speeches regarding Saddam Hussein, and in the end voted for war.

It’s amazing how many time you’ve repeated this fallacy, despite our repeated success at “proving you incorrect” on this.

You can’t claim an equality of responsibility for the people who produced flawed intelligence (the Executive Branch run by Bush) and the people who received flawed intelligence and did not have access to alternate sources of American intelligence to make their decisions (the legislative branch, including Kerry and Edwards).

Posted by: LawnBoy at July 15, 2004 03:09 PM

> It’s amazing how many time you’ve repeated
> this fallacy

Actually, there are two fallacies that Eric keeps repeating: First, that Senator Kerry et. al. had the same information the President had (obviously they did not, not by a long shot), and second that they “voted for war” (the Oct 2002 resolution was a vote to permit the President to start a war as a last resort).

I would like to add that not only do I not fault Kerry for not reading the intelligence reports, but I don’t even fault Bush either for not reading the intelligence reports (assuming either report is true). I don’t expect executives at their levels to read every word of that kind of stuff.

Matthew’s underlying point, however, is still very valid, and it speaks to the real problem behind this whole Iraq war: Never again should we allow the Executive branch to start a war on its own. Congress should be forced to go through the trouble of carefully crafting and solemnly voting for a formal “Declaration of War”. Such a grave and historically significant action (last used in 1941) would probably cause a large number of Congress members - on both sides of the aisle - to take such a vote a little more seriously. If the vote were for a “Declaration of War”, perhaps Congress wouldn’t have been so gullible and scared (Democrats) or reckless and flippant (Republicans) as they were when they passed the Oct 2002 resolution.

When faced with such a weighty measure as a “Declaration of War”, maybe members of Congress would insist on first doing all of the things the Bush Administration totally neglected to do: State a clear purpose, build strong and loyal alliances, collect good intelligence and analyze it well, and construct an effective military strategy with lots of contingency plans including several exit strategies.

-Cf

Posted by: Christopher Fahey at July 15, 2004 05:51 PM

Stephen:

During the leadup to the war in Iraq, I heard several good arguments for going to war. The liberals in America have done a great job diverting our attention from two of them, and claiming utter failure on the third.

Argument #1: Saddam has weapons of mass destruction.

While I will concede that no megaton nuclear missiles have been found, there have been weapons of mass destruction found. Chemical weapons are weapons of mass destruction. The liberal standard on WMDs seems to be that we find mass weapons of mass destruction. It doesn’t take a whole lot of chemical (or biological, or nuclear) weapon to wreak havoc. In Iraq, artillery shells have been found that contained chemical agent.

Argument #2: Saddam is a brutal dictator, a violator of human rights.

There can be no argument on this, and so we don’t hear stories of the men who lost limbs, the girls who were raped, or the thousands who were found buried in mass graves. The liberals know that their battle would be lost if Americans heard of these things regularly. Ergo, we don’t hear of it. The current media view of Saddam is just a step down from their love of “Uncle Joe” Stalin.

Argument #3: Saddam Hussein aided terrorists.

After 9/11, President Bush announced publicly that we would find the people who murdered over 3000 of us, and we would bring them to justice. He also warned that any country found to have aided terrorists or to be currently harboring terrorists would face retribution. Guess what. Iraq aided the terrorists. There was found a plane fuselage reportedly used to practice hijacking. Even more damning (since the fuselage could have been used by any one of many terrorist organizations) is the 9/11 Commission reports, which do acknowledge a link between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda.

In short, Mr. Daugherty, criticize Bush for not getting Osama before starting on Saddam; criticize Bush for not letting the French run our military; criticize Bush for his tendency towards secrecy; you can even criticize him for the liberal-like way he’s running a deficit; but don’t tell me that the war in Iraq was unjust.

George W. Bush has done a great job as our President. Our unemployment rate is half what Germany is facing. Our military is being rebuilt, after almost a decade of Clinton tearing it apart. Most importantly, terrorists around the world know that if they come at us while we have a Republican in the White House, our military will not bow to the (white) flag-waving French, nor will we bow to United Nations. We are a soveriegn nation, and we will destroy those who seek to destroy us.

Posted by: Dale Thompson at July 15, 2004 06:08 PM

It’s amazing how many time you’ve repeated this fallacy, despite our repeated success at “proving you incorrect” on this.

You can’t claim an equality of responsibility for the people who produced flawed intelligence (the Executive Branch run by Bush) and the people who received flawed intelligence and did not have access to alternate sources of American intelligence to make their decisions (the legislative branch, including Kerry and Edwards).

Fallacy? You can’t claim equality of responsibility? Joseph Wilson appears to have had full access to alternate American intelligence. The burden of proof for your own arguments is laughable. Assertions, which do not match the truth or even previous democratic statements, are not proof. But then liberalism is mainly an excercise in alternate realities.

Congress has constitutional oversight of the executive branch. All of these guys saw the same intelligence, with the same caveats from the CIA and they still went out and made the same speeches. It is the Intelligence Committee’s responsibility (as well as the Executive branch) to make sure that the intelligence is current and proper.

Are you saying that Bush omitted all of the contradicting intelligence?

Kerry didn’t even read the intelligence given to him. What does that say about his vote for the war?

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democratic candidate John Kerry, whose campaign demanded to know on Wednesday whether President Bush read a key Iraq intelligence assessment, did not read the document himself before voting to give Bush the authority to go to war, aides acknowledged. [reuters.com]

What made Jay Rockefeller, the vice-charmain on the Intelligence Committee, believe ‘produced’ and flawed intelligence? Could it possibly be that much of this flawed intelligence is older than the Bush administration itself.

But it is equally clear that doing nothing and preserving the status quo also pose serious risks. Those risks are less visible, and their time frame is less certain. But after a great deal of consultation and soul-searching, I have come to the conclusion that the risks of doing nothing — for our citizens and for our nation — are too great to bear.

There is unmistakable evidence that Saddam Hussein is working aggressively to develop nuclear weapons and will likely have nuclear weapons within the next five years …. We also should remember we have always underestimated the progress Saddam has made in development of weapons of mass destruction.

…When Saddam Hussein obtains nuclear capabilities, the constraints he feels will diminish dramatically, and the risk to America’s homeland, as well as to America’s allies, will increase even more dramatically. Our existing policies to contain or counter Saddam will become irrelevant.

…But this isn’t just a future threat. Saddam’s existing biological and chemical weapons capabilities pose a very real threat to America, now. Saddam has used chemical weapons before, both against Iraq’s enemies and against his own people. He is working to develop delivery systems like missiles and unmanned aerial vehicles that could bring these deadly weapons against U.S. forces and U.S. facilities in the Middle East.
And he could make those weapons available to many terrorist groups which have contact with his government, and those groups could bring those weapons into the U.S. and unleash a devastating attack against our citizens. I fear that greatly. [Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV), Oct 10, 2002]

Why would Jay Rockefeller swallow these Bush’s lies so readily?

If Bush made this up, why would your brilliant representatives believe the smirking chimp?

Bush did not embellish the intelligence. He used the intelligence that was there, that congress had, that every country in the free world had.

Posted by: Eric Simonson at July 15, 2004 06:17 PM

But then liberalism is mainly an excercise in alternate realities.

Why are you here if you believe this? Why bother with watchblog, where alternate viewpoints are expressed if you dismiss any disagreement? There are Republican echo chambers aplenty on the web where you don’t have to be challenged in your beliefs, and people will agree with this ludicrous statement. Why bother with us?

You can’t claim equality of responsibility?

Assuming for this argument that the mistakes were lies and not honest mistakes, Bush produced the lies, and Kerry believed the lies. If you really believe that the victim of a lie is as guilty as the lie’s producer, then you are in an alternate reality.

I told you that I use LawnBoy because of Phish. What if that were a lie, and you told someone else about this crazy liberal who likes Phish too much? Would you be as guilty as me because you inadvertantly spread my lie? Of course not!

How hard is this basic concept for you? Why do you distract with Wilson? Why do you insist on blaming the victim of a lie?

Congress has constitutional oversight of the executive branch. All of these guys saw the same intelligence, with the same caveats from the CIA and they still went out and made the same speeches. It is the Intelligence Committee’s responsibility (as well as the Executive branch) to make sure that the intelligence is current and proper.

And if, as has been repeatedly stated, the Congress was prevented from fulfilling its constitutional duty because the Executive branch didn’t give it access to proper information, are you going to blame Congress again?

Why would Jay Rockefeller swallow these Bush’s lies so readily? If Bush made this up, why would your brilliant representatives believe the smirking chimp?

Because they made the mistake of trusting Bush and the professionals under him.

Bush did not embellish the intelligence. He used the intelligence that was there, that congress had, that every country in the free world had.

This statement is contrary to facts that have been discussed repeatedly here and elsewhere.

Posted by: LawnBoy at July 15, 2004 07:53 PM

…there have been weapons of mass destruction found. Chemical weapons are weapons of mass destruction.

Do you have information to back this claim? This claim has been made many times over the last year, but the evidence I’ve seen hasn’t stood up to logical analysis (i.e. the finds were just useless leftovers from the 80s, the finds didn’t actually have chemical weapons, despite early reports, etc.).

Guess what. Iraq aided the terrorists. There was found a plane fuselage reportedly used to practice hijacking.

Yep. That fuselage was in a region of the country out of Saddam’s control because of the no-fly zone and Coalition containment. Do you have anything else?

Posted by: LawnBoy at July 15, 2004 11:00 PM

Um, Lawnboy, that fuselage for terrorist training was about a twenty five minute drive from downtown Baghdad. Do YOU have anything else?

Details here.

I agree in general that it’s important to play nice (or “well with others” as they say in Kindergarten), and my cheerful disposition and therapist-certified well-adjustedness permits nothing else. However, I’m increasingly alarmed by the number of very basic things that you witty, smart and good-looking people on the left believe that are simply not true. Things on the level of the notion that OJ is out there right now rain or shine looking for the “real killers,” and which seem to be neccessary for not giving Bush at any time the benefit of even a modicum of doubt.

I’m not talking now about differing ideologies now—those are debatable and worth debating.

I have personally drifted left on a number of issues as a result of give and take debates with smart and well informed leftists. I find this healthy AND recreational. It’s good to be swayed here and there and not calcify into a blinkered partisan fanatic with head firmly insterted… (rated G version here) into the sand.

What I’m talking and worrrying about are facts on the level of 2+2 equaling 4. I understand Eric’s frustration and relate to his worry over an alternate reality.

Pop Quiz.

1. Do you believe that the terrorist training camp which featured a Boeing 707 fuselage was in a no-fly zone outside of Hussein’s control?

2. Do you believe that the United States supplied WMD to Saddam during the Iran-Iraq war?

3. Do you believe that the CIA trained and/or funded Osama bin Laden?

4. Do you believe that Joe Wilson was not sent to Niger because of the influence of his wife, and that he was aware of no attempts by Iraq to buy nuclear material?

5. Do you believe that Dick Cheney, George Bush, and/or members of their families have profited monetarily from the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan?

6. Do you believe that George Bush knew about the 9-11 attacks before they occured and allowed them to happen?

7. Do you believe that a Zionist lobby controls the White House?

8. Do you wonder what the meaning of “is” is?

I could go on. Don’t be angry—this is fun. But even one yes answer results in a failing grade. Even one no answer means you ought to register as a Republican and join the hip, stylish and life-embracing counter-revolution.

Posted by: Martin at July 16, 2004 12:45 AM

Dale-
If anybody’s diverted attention, it’s not us. It seems like the Bush Administration counts on people’s short memories.

1)Saddam and WMDS-
I can’t and won’t B.S. you on the shells. What I will tell you is that they were from before the Gulf war, old, and likely forgotten. To my knowledge, no more shells of this kind have been found.

Besides, this is tangent to what we really were going to war in order to face- what Bush really did claim at the beginning of the war. We were talking stockpiles, we were talking rebuilt infrastructure, we were talking a reconstituted nuclear program. I mean, what else were your people refering to when they said the next smoking gun might be a mushroom cloud? They were implying that Iraq had weapons, and willingness to give them to terrorists.

Is their any evidence now that they had those weapons? No. Well let say the willingness to give them weapons was enough- still no luck. The 9/11 commission knows as much as Cheney does, and has concluded there was no collaboration between Al Quaeda and Iraq when we invade. Which bring us to your next point.

2)Unca Hussein-
There is no argument: he was a a brutal psychopathic dictator. But so are the guys who run the Sudan, and North Korea. hell, let’s throw in Syria and Iran for that matter. We don’t invade countries simply because they are not democracies, or because they have bad men in power. We invade them because they are a threat to us, and we only invade them pre-emptively if the threat is real and can’t wait. There is no evidence to indicate Iraq would be a substantial threat to us, for next decade.

3)Saddam Hussein was in a gay marriage with Osama-

Those 9/11 commission reports deny any active collaboration. There was no underground terrorist base found at Salman Pak, and the source couldn’t even keep the kind of plane involved straight. I mean, if you can’t tell the difference between a Tupelov and a Boeing 707, maybe you’re not a reliable source.

A little background: Salman Pak was set up with the help of the british to teach Saddam’s special forces counterterrorism tactics. That most likely included storming a plane that had been hijacked. There has been no evidence to contradict this besides the word of defectors coached by the INC. Our sources from Chalabi were crap, and guess who we got this report from?

I do criticize Bush for not going after Osama with due diligence. I criticize Bush for not getting the French in beside us so we wouldn’t suffer the vast majority of casualties. I criticize Bush for not being forthright or forthcoming with information we needed to make an informed decision. I criticize Bush for being a hypocrite about his spending, not so much a liberal.

But do I think the war in Iraq is unjust? ask me in five years. Right now though, I can give you an answer on something else: was this war necessary? No. And being a pre-emptive war, being unnecessary makes the current situation all the more tragic. Right now, a substantial number of our forces are pinned down working in that country, forces that could have been used elsewhere to confront more immediate threats. That’s the major sin of this war- We have spent hundreds of billions of dollars, and the lives of over a thousand men to fight a war which has guaranteed no American more safety from the real threat we know is out there.

You end with a bunch of tought talk, not unlike the talk the Bush has used all this time. All this talk, and not much results. We’re in the wrong country to be fighting a war on the actual terrorist threat, and on top of that, we’re still looking for Osama, years after Bush said we’d smoke him out, dead or alive. Talk about how valiantly Bush has stood up to our own allies- geez, thanks, I always considered the French the big threat to our sovereignty, not those Bastards in Afganistan or Bin Laden. After all, it was Dominique De Villepin who killed almost two thousand New Yorkers by ordering them to slam the planes into the building, not those terrorist we let get away.

One last note. You are aware, aren’t you, that Cheney was involved wholeheartedly in the base closings and staff reductions of the the early nineties? Just thought you’d like to know.

Posted by: Stephen Daugherty at July 16, 2004 01:14 AM

OK, it seems I was wrong. I had heard that the fuselage was in the no-fly zone, but that’s not what I’ve seen from a quick google search. Maybe I was thinking of a different fuselage, but probably I was just wrong. Anyone other lefties have a link to verify what I thought I was talking about?

I’m hard on you when you say things that aren’t cited, so I deserved that rebuke.

1. I used to.
2. I consider it a possibility. I don’t know the veracity of this site, but it says so.
3. MSNBC thinks so. Can you say they’re wrong?
4. I don’t know.
5. Possibly - the “members of their families” part makes it impossible to say either way. How big are their families? Does the Bush cousin who works for Fox count because their ratings have been good?
6. Of course not. He had vague warnings, but nothing to act on.
7. What’s this doing here? No way.
8. As hobbyist linguist, I sometimes do, but not in the way you’re asking about. :)

Posted by: LawnBoy at July 16, 2004 01:18 AM

Why are you here if you believe this? Why bother with watchblog, where alternate viewpoints are expressed if you dismiss any disagreement? There are Republican echo chambers aplenty on the web where you don’t have to be challenged in your beliefs, and people will agree with this ludicrous statement. Why bother with us?

You’d rather that Watchblog were a liberal echo chamber? To tell you the truth I am here at watchblog because I am challenged in my beliefs. I wouldn’t have it any other way. I’m even thinking (wishing) about trying to start a local debate club (like watchblog but in person) that might meet at a bookstore or something. Physical altercations would be prohibited of course. I can take care of myself in that regard but it wouldn’t be good for membership.

I told you that I use LawnBoy because of Phish. What if that were a lie, and you told someone else about this crazy liberal who likes Phish too much? Would you be as guilty as me because you inadvertantly spread my lie? Of course not!

How hard is this basic concept for you? Why do you distract with Wilson? Why do you insist on blaming the victim of a lie?

Then you’d be a liar. Now to make this a correct analogy we’d have to add one more player. Let’s say the watchblog editors gave you your screen name and said it was from phish and you believed it, then you told me, then we all found out it was a lie. How hard is that basic concept? Bush didn’t invent the intelligence. The intelligence was collected and produced by civil servants like Richard Clark who are there through Republican and Democratic administrations. Not only that but the intelligence came from other countries intelligence agencies as well.

I think that some of the left is living in an echo chamber and just hearing the parts of the news that they want to hear. Of course everyone has their own worldview filters, I do to.

And if, as has been repeatedly stated, the Congress was prevented from fulfilling its constitutional duty because the Executive branch didn’t give it access to proper information, are you going to blame Congress again?

I believe oversight gives congress subpoena power. There is a ‘separation of powers’ but there are also ‘checks and balances’. Most of Congresses oversight power has to do with getting information.

One of the most important nonlegislative functions of the Congress is the power to investigate. This power is usually delegated to committees — either the standing committees, special committees set up for a specific purpose, or joint committees composed of members of both houses. Investigations are conducted to gather information on the need for future legislation, to test the effectiveness of laws already passed, to inquire into the qualifications and performance of members and officials of the other branches, and on rare occasions, to lay the groundwork for impeachment proceedings. Frequently, committees call on outside experts to assist in conducting investigative hearings and to make detailed studies of issues.

There are important corollaries to the investigative power. One is the power to publicize investigations and their results. Most committee hearings are open to the public and are widely reported in the mass media. Congressional investigations thus represent one important tool available to lawmakers to inform the citizenry and arouse public interest in national issues. Congressional committees also have the power to compel testimony from unwilling witnesses, and to cite for contempt of Congress witnesses who refuse to testify and for perjury those who give false testimony. [usinfo.state.gov]

If there was reason to believe the intelligence was incorrect then Congress had a duty to ask. The fact that there were plenty of people at the time asking those questions does not give you much cover to say they had no idea. Joseph Wilson is not a dodge, he plainly spoke up about precisely that. He accused Bush of misleading about the case for war. I think a more telling indication of why all these democrats voted for the war is the public opinion polls at the time. Kerry certainly didn’t think at the time that going against 70% approval ratings on this issue was a good idea. Only when Dean began to skyrocket in democratic polls during the democratic primaries did Kerry begin his process of turning on this issue.

Bush did not embellish the intelligence. He used the intelligence that was there, that congress had, that every country in the free world had.

This statement is contrary to facts that have been discussed repeatedly here and elsewhere.

Again, just because my statement contradicts so-called ‘facts’ discussed is not a valid argument proving it false. If Bush lied then perhaps he should be impeached. Joseph Wilson said that Bush lied, and something about seeing Karl Rove frogmarched in handcuffs. He had to back off that claim too.

AMY GOODMAN: Would you call President Bush a liar?

AMBASSADOR WILSON: Well, what I would say is that what I have always said it’s time and time again the President has proven far more loyal to his senior staff than they have proven to him. Somebody in his staff inserted it. The fact checkers up the chain of command did not get it out. The President uttered it, and later took responsibility for it. [democracynow.org]

Posted by: Eric 'the Straw Man' Simonson at July 16, 2004 01:29 AM

Thanks for your answers, Lawnboy (and I’m glad you picked “Lawnboy” as your Phish-inspired tag instead of “Junta”, which would have frightened me).

I think if we could all begin by agreeing that our opponents aren’t motivated by dark sinister motives rather than a genuine desire to live in a safer, fairer and nobler America (and world), then we’ll have accomplished something.

For my part, I don’t think that the left “lacks patriotism” and wants to sell out to the Islamicists and make us all kneel and pray towards Mecca every day. Similarly, I wish that for one moment they’d stop accusing us and Bush (like Moore, Gore and Dean do) of wanting to usher in the Fourth Reich and kill everybody on the planet. That is instead of seeing that we on the right honestly want to protect America and its values according to how we see the world after 9-11. This goes beyond the November election, which no matter how it comes out, isn’t going to settle these issues once and for all.

In the end, it’s probably more important than anything else how we build understanding between ourselves and frame our debates than how we relate to the Osamas and Husseins. Once we accomplish that, we’ll be able to stand up to anybody.

Posted by: Martin at July 16, 2004 02:02 AM

The unconditional acceptance of intelligence, no matter how questionable is no better than the willful ignorance of it. What makes intelligence good or not is its coherence with reality. If the information does not have that coherence, then whatever actions are taken on the basis of it will be in error, or faced with unexpected responses.

The Bush Administration believed in the rightness of invading Iraq from the get go. Unfortunately, they conflated the moral correctness of deposing Saddam with the tactical and strategic correctness of how they were to do it and why. They conferred too much faith on any information that would let them go on this moral crusade they wanted.

When presented with a case that was supposed to be well founded, but seemed thin, their response was to push forward and dress up the information in a more compellingly scary package, rather than demand a better detailed, more accurate picture. Public Relations to support a war trumped tradecraft intended to see whether it was justified. Since fighting a pre-emptive war puts more of the burden of proof on us in the eyes of the world, this was crucial.

The ends justify the means, they basically say. Okay, that information was wrong, but we removed a dangerous tyrant. Trouble was, we based our notions of how dangerous this tyrant was on the information they gave us. If they knew this stuff was thin before hand, if they had any idea that the information they were telling wasn’t correct, then a serious fraud has been committed, and the result, to make it worse, is the humiliation and loss of reputation of America, precisely when we should be playing the good guy, the straight shooter.

It makes me shake my head to hear Some Republicans call us apologists for tyrants. We’re not. You ask the average liberal whether they support Stalin or Saddam, and you’re not going to hear a lot of yeses. Then things get even more absurd, when they accuse of subconsciously supporting them, though we won’t admit to ourselves or others we do. Basically impugning liberalism as a cryptic subliminal support for tyranny. I mean, wow. The trilateral commission and the illuminati are not that far from entering the conversation at this point. True, there are some Liberals way on the far left that apologize for the soviet dictators out there, but I’d think the average liberal, when he tells somebody he opposes those kinds of people, is telling you the truth.

It is the most useless thing possible to argue with somebody who agrees with you. Instead, you focus on the details that have significant bearing on what is right and wrong. The Republicans could have literally saved this country a great deal of grief had they simply acknowledged the need not only to be convincing in terms of the evidence presented, not only persuasive, but also correct. In the end, If we go to war on faulty information, we have wasted our resources to answer threats that don’t exist, or whose form is different than we were prepared to encounter. Such waste prevent us from using those resources to counter the real threats that are posed against us. We’ve spent probably close to three hundred billion fighting the Iraq war. How much of that money would it have taken to harden our nation’s security trouble spots, to finance new intelligence efforts to seek out our enemies, and to pay for research into better technology to deal with the counterterrorism battlefield?

And what precisely are we going to do, considering how badly stretched out the Iraq war has made our armies, if North Korea or Iran engage in some kind of aggressive behavior? Will we have the reserves or the stamina, or even the money to take on all this at once, with our butts stuck in Iraq? In the end, have we been swatting at gnats, only to get stung by a nest of wasps?

Posted by: Stephen Daugherty at July 16, 2004 08:56 AM

You’d rather that Watchblog were a liberal echo chamber?

Not at all. I’m here precisely because there is interesting and intelligent debate from both sides. I stop by the forums at http://ofrankenfactor.com/ occasionally, and it’s fun, but there’s not meat there because everyone agrees. I learn a lot more here and am challenged a lot more here.

To tell you the truth I am here at watchblog because I am challenged in my beliefs. I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Then I respectfully ask that you refrain from comments like But then liberalism is mainly an excercise in alternate realities. Such comments show a lack of respect for us that makes it hard for me to believe you’re interested in civil debate.

I know I’ve been more of a liberal attack dog the last week or so, and I’ve challenged you and Martin and Jeff a lot. The difference I see between my approach and quotes like the one above is that I try to challenge the individual when I see what I consider a logical fallacy or a bad argument; I don’t ascribe it to a character flaw on all Conservatives. Maybe this distinction doesn’t matter, and maybe it hasn’t come across. I apologize if you think I’ve maligned all conservatives - that wasn’t my intent.

Then you’d be a liar. Now to make this a correct analogy we’d have to add one more player. Let’s say the watchblog editors gave you your screen name and said it was from phish and you believed it, then you told me, then we all found out it was a lie.

Well, I disagree with this analogy. (Of course, I started us on the path of a logical fallacy by even using an analogy, but let’s go with it.) The reason I disagree with this analogy is that I’m not the boss and ultimate supervisor of those who created the lies. With the “buck stops” tradition, Bush is responsible for lies that his people created, especially if the reports are true that people very close to Bush pushed for the erroneous intelligence.

If there was reason to believe the intelligence was incorrect then Congress had a duty to ask.

True, but the duty to provide accurate intelligence in the first place gets higher blame in my book. Plus, the administration has been very adamant about avoiding subpoena on the Cheney Energy task force and other issues. Look how hard congress and the 9/11 families had to fight to get a 9/11 Commission, and how hard they had to fight to get administration co-operation.

I think a more telling indication of why all these democrats voted for the war is the public opinion polls at the time.

Sadly, I think you’re probably right.

If Bush lied then perhaps he should be impeached

Well, with both houses of Congress in Republican hands, you know that’s not going to happen. We can only speculate how the congressional investigations and impeachment process would have proceeded if Clinton had done all this. Posted by: LawnBoy at July 16, 2004 09:27 AM

In the latest Newsweek, they analyse part of the Senate Intelligence report like this:

After reading Powell’s speech, the analyst decided he had to speak up, according to a devastating report from the Senate intelligence committee, released last week, on intelligence failures leading up to the Iraq war. He wrote an urgent e-mail to a top CIA official warning that there were even questions about whether Curve Ball “was who he said he was.” Could Powell really rely on such an informant as the “backbone” for the U.S. government’s claims that Iraq had a continuing biological-weapons program? The CIA official quickly responded: “Let’s keep in mind the fact that this war’s going to happen regardless of what Curve Ball said or didn’t say,” he wrote. “The Powers That Be probably aren’t terribly interested in whether Curve Ball knows what he’s talking about.”

If this is true, it shows that the Bush administration put a higher priority on getting the preordained conclusions than getting the facts right. Whoever the CIA official was, he believed that he had to come up with the conclusions that supported the war, whatever the facts. Even if Bush didn’t intentionally lie, I believe that he is ultimately responsible for what the members of the intelligence community says because they work for him. Someone needs to be held responsible for these mistakes. If Bush was misled by the intelligence community instead of leading the charge himself, then he should be cleaning house and holding the intelligence community to scrutiny, but he’s not. Even when Tenet resigned, it was spun as a need for family time, not a consequence of failure.

In startling detail, the bipartisan report concludes that the CIA and other agencies consistently “overstated” the evidence that Iraq possessed chemical and biological weapons, and was actively reconstituting its nuclear-weapons program.

If Bush was a victim here, too, then why hasn’t he tried to fix this? Either Bush was complicit in the inaccuracies, or he was incompetent in “unquestioningly embrac(ing) the flawed conclusions” and he’s incompetent in not trying to fix the problems. Either way, this is a good reason not to support Bush in November.

Posted by: LawnBoy at July 16, 2004 09:47 AM

LawnBoy,

You really should get a copy of the Senate Intelligence Commitee’s report on this flawed intelligence.

Senate Intelligence Committee’s report

Sure it’s 500 some odd pages but sections are more than worth reading. On balance it vindicates the Bush Administration’s use of the intelligence.

Posted by: Eric Simonson at July 16, 2004 01:54 PM

How much of the report have you read? Where did you get the analysis that it vindicates the Bush Administration?

OVERALL CONCLUSIONS - WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION

(U) Conclusion 1. Most of the major key judgments in the Intelligence Community’s October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), Iraq’s Continuing Programs for Weapons of Mass Destruction, either overstated, or were not supported by, the underlying intelligence reporting. A series of failures, particularly in analytic trade craft, led to the mischaracterization of the intelligence.

(U) Conclusion 27. After reviewing all of the intelligence provided by the Intelligence Community and additional information requested by the Committee, the Committee believes that the judgment in the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), that Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear program, was not supported by the intelligence. The Committee agrees with the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) alternative view that the available intelligence “does not add up to a compelling case for reconstitution.”

(U) Conclusion 48. The assessment in the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate that, “[W]e judge that all key aspects — research & development, production, and weaponization - of Iraq’s offensive biological weapons program are active and that most elements are larger and more advanced than they were before the Gulf War” is not supported by the intelligence provided to the Committee.

(U) Conclusion 58. The statement in the key judgments of the October 2002 Iraq Weapons of Mass Destruction National Intelligence Estimate that “Baghdad has … chemical weapons” overstated both what was known about Iraq’s chemical weapons holdings and what intelligence analysts judged about Iraq’s chemical weapons holdings.

There are a lot more conclusions, and MSNBC did a nice job of consolidating the 117 conclusions on a single page. Some of them vindicate the administration on specific issues like Niger and applying pressure to the intelligence community, but most say that the intelligence agencies got it wrong (I’ll admit that I was wrong on pressure and Niger if you admit that you were wrong on WMD). How do you say this vindicates the administration’s use of the information?

In fact, this report explicitly does not deal with the administration’s use of the information. Democrats on the committee had “wanted the White House’s use of the intelligence reports to be part of the study’s formal mandate,” but were shot down by conservatives. As a result, “the second part of the Senate study, exploring the White House’s actions, will likely be released after the November presidential election.” [www.cbc.ca] The report fails to discuss the politicization of intelligence; the role of administration officials outside the CIA; the Pentagons’ Office of Special Plans with direct links to Vice President Cheney; or the use of favored but non-credible Iraqi exiles like Ahmed Chalabi.

There’s a lot of information here, and I do need to read it over more, but I don’t see how you arrived at your conclusion independent of daily RNC talking points.

Interestingly, the message is mixed on the Iraq to Terrorism link:

(U) Conclusion 91. The Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) assessment that Iraq had maintained ties to several secular Palestinian terrorist groups and with the Mujahidin e-Khalq was supported by the intelligence. The CIA was also reasonable in judging that Iraq appeared to have been reaching out to more effective terrorist groups, such as Hizballah and Hamas, and might have intended to employ such surrogates in the event of war.

(U) Conclusion 93. The Central Intelligence Agency reasonably assessed that there were likely several instances of contacts between Iraq and al-Qaida throughout the 1990s, but that these contacts did not add up to an established formal relationship.

(U) Conclusion 96. The Central Intelligence Agency’s assessment that to date there was no evidence proving Iraqi complicity or assistance in an al-Qaida attack was reasonable and objective. No additional information has emerged to suggest otherwise.

(U) Conclusion 99. Despite four decades of intelligence reporting on Iraq, there was little useful intelligence collected that helped analysts determine the Iraqi regime’s possible links to al-Qaida.

Posted by: LawnBoy at July 16, 2004 02:56 PM

Martin,

With your pop quiz, I’m curious if you’ve looked at my post on 10 Partisan Myths. Among the myths the experienced and respected economics opposes is the idea that supply-side work - I know you disagree with him.

So, if you were to rephrase his 5 myths Republicans hold as a Pop Quiz, how would you do?

Posted by: LawnBoy at July 16, 2004 03:46 PM

Well, Junta (aka Lawnboy), since you played along with me, I’ll return the courtesy.

1. I think Americans DO want tax cuts from an individual point of view, even if they’re willing to pay them up to a point to support goverment programs and services (even supplier-siders want the military, the highways, and certain social programs funded). The “over” in “overtaxed” is highly subjective. To the extent that high taxes limit growth, cost people jobs, and contribute to runaway spending, then I’d say that taxes are too high. That’s why I think Bush’s tax cuts should be permanent (or at least be locked in for ten years).

2. Tax cuts are not neccessarily only a short-term solution, so I don’t agree with the premise that lower taxes now mean higher taxes later. The economy can outgrow deficits—it’s happened before on many occasions. Again, this doesn’t mean that NO taxes is preferable, that deficits can be totally ignored—but a reasonable balance can and should be sought.

3. I’ve never thought about this question of “efficiency” as a reason for having fewer tax brackets. I dunno. I don’t see why having fewer tax brackets is more “efficient.” This sounds vaguely like something Forbes was proposing at one time—but I see no reason to defend it as though it’s a basic tenet of supply-side theory.

4. I wholeheartedly agree. Targeted tax cuts definitely do encourage saving and investment—that’s what people do with excess capital, after all. Even the middle class and the poor. Who puts their extra dollars in a money bin like Uncle Scrooge, taking it out of circulation to just gloat over it? Even simple savings accounts in a neigborhood bank contain money made available for loans, which equals stimulus capital.

5. Yes, cutting back government is part of what we’re about (in general, though occasional infusions of money into programs like defense find our favor). This is a principle as well as a goal. We acknowledge it as a motivation, so it should hardly be called “a myth,” even if others disagree.

Posted by: Martin at July 17, 2004 01:52 AM

All the proof I need is right there on page 356, LawnBoy. Read it and weep. Conclusion 101.

Posted by: Eric 'the Straw Man' Simonson at July 17, 2004 04:01 AM

At least I know you have a sense of humor, Eric. For those who haven’t read the report, the entire text of Conclusion 101 and the supporting text is blacked out, both in the full version Eric linked and the summary I linked.

I’ll assume that Conclusion 101 was that Michael Moore was 100% accurate in Fahrenheit 9/11, that Bush admitted to the committee that he didn’t really win Florida, and that Dick Cheney admitted he had mother issues. Is that the same assumption you made? :)

Posted by: LawnBoy at July 17, 2004 10:04 AM

We know the premises, but the Conclusion itself is blacked out. What did they conclude? I’d tell you to go with the next one, but the reverse is true there: all the premises are blacked out!

I’m going to look over this, but at the very least you should know it smacks down the Aluminum tubes theory something awful.

Posted by: Stephen Daugherty at July 17, 2004 10:09 AM