Poll: over 40% of Canadian teens think America is "evil"

Yep, we've been here ... (it's the Foreign Minister, btw - that's Colin Powell's counterpart). Perhaps he did think Saddam "very well could have" WMD. Or "very well could not have" them, for that matter. Thats what "I am not convinced" means ... as in, I don't know. I don't know enough to be sure.

That usually makes for a good reason not to go to war to a country - you know, if you dont even know for sure whether they actually did the thing you're going to war against them for ...


Nope. Most of Iraq's WMD was destroyed during the seven years of weapon inspections you people insist on calling a failure.

Its no great secret - the US government used to brag about it.


You mean like all those Security Council members who made clear they wouldnt support the resolution authorizing war that the US was pushing for? Chile, Mexico, Angola and so on? All involved in the food-for-oil scandal you say?


Well, thank you. I was there too, you know. In fact, you could probably just look up the US, UN and Iraq thread from back then, and find plenty of references to people, with and without authority, expressing serious doubts about whether we really knew that Saddam still had WMD.

The bi-partisan senate intelligence committee found that the US intelligence community failed miserably. They failed to do their home work. The BIG problem now, is which one of our allies will believe us the next time we claim xxx country has WMDs ready to be used against us? Name me one.

And since this thread is still carrying a title involving Canada, I'll once again remind Foxfyre of the Canadian Prime Minister saying that he hadn't been given any proof that Iraq (at the time the U.S. was looking for support for their invasion of Iraq) had WMD. Now, since he was very public in stating that he hadn't been given any proof, you'd have thought someone in the U.S. would have offered some proof at the time. But there was no proof to give. There may be some day, but there was none then and there is none now.

It's funny cuz it's true.

U.S. Spies Accused of Hyping Iraqi Weapons Threat

Fri Jul 9, 6:17 PM ET Add Politics to My Yahoo!


By Tabassum Zakaria

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. intelligence agencies overstated the threat of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, relied on dubious sources and ignored contrary evidence in the run-up to the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq (news - web sites), a Senate committee reported on Friday.


Reuters
Slideshow: Report: CIA Gave False Info on Iraq

Report: CIA Gave False Info on Iraq


In a harshly critical report, the Senate Intelligence Committee took U.S. spy agencies to task for numerous failures in reporting on alleged Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, which President Bush (news - web sites) cited in building a case for war. No such weapons have been found.


But the report found no sign that the White House had pressured analysts to reach pre-set conclusions.


"The committee did not find any evidence that administration officials attempted to coerce, influence or pressure analysts to change their judgments related to Iraq's weapons of mass destruction capabilities," it said.


The second part of the committee's investigation -- examining how the Bush administration used the intelligence -- was unlikely to be finished before the Nov. 2 presidential election.


The bipartisan report, which ran to more than 500 pages and was partly blacked out for security reasons, said that conclusions in an October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate on Iraqi weapons programs "either overstated or were not supported by the underlying intelligence reporting."


It found that U.S. agencies relied too heavily on Iraqi defectors and foreign intelligence services for information and could not check the reliability of such reports.


'IF WE KNEW WHAT WE KNOW NOW'


U.S. Sen. John Rockefeller of West Virginia, the ranking Democrat on the committee, said the Senate would not have voted overwhelmingly in 2002 to approve the war if it had known how deeply flawed the intelligence was.


"The administration at all levels, and to some extent us, used bad information to bolster its case for war," he said. "And we in Congress would not have authorized that war ... if we knew what we know now."


Rockefeller said the Iraq war left the United States less safe and would affect national security for generations.


"Our credibility is diminished. Our standing in the world has never been lower," he said. "We have fostered a deep hatred of Americans in the Muslim world, and that will grow. As a direct consequence, our nation is more vulnerable today than ever before."


Some Democrats said it remained an open question whether subtle pressure was applied by the administration to shape the intelligence, and that needed further scrutiny.


Bush cited intelligence suggesting that Iraq was aggressively pursuing unconventional weapons programs as a key justification for his decision to go to war in 2003.


Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Pat Roberts said spy agencies suffered from a "collective group think" in which the intelligence gathered was viewed with the presumption that Iraq was actively pursuing nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs.


"This 'group think' caused the community to interpret ambiguous evidence, such as the procurement of dual-use technology, as conclusive evidence of the existence of WMD programs," said Roberts, a Kansas Republican.


The report blamed managers from the CIA (news - web sites) director down for failing to adequately question analysts about their assessments and to recognize when analysts had lost their objectivity.


The report said U.S. intelligence "did not have a single" source collecting information about Iraqi weapons programs after 1998, when U.N. weapons inspectors left Iraq.

Almost all of the problems with human spying capabilities stemmed from "a broken corporate culture and poor management," the report said.

CIA Director George Tenet announced his resignation last month citing personal reasons, and will step down on Sunday.

John McLaughlin, who will replace Tenet as acting CIA director, said the Senate panel spent nearly a year essentially dissecting one intelligence report.

"It is wrong to exaggerate the flaws or leap to the judgment that our challenges with prewar Iraq weapons intelligence are evidence of sweeping problems across the broad spectrum of issues with which the intelligence community must deal," he said at a rare news conference at CIA headquarters.

The committee found that agencies focused on reports that Iraq had developed mobile laboratories to produce biological weapons and ignored information that contradicted this view.

Heard Rockefeller on the radio earlier this evening. Kind of a shock to hear him state things so baldly.

Wait, I don't know about that, ah, I will look here or there.

On this Saturday morning I get the idea to send this thread to Canada and let those kids vote again: I'm rather sure, we would get more than 40% then!

Gee, I've had some one time trysts and have never been able to call them relationships. We are getting the same kind of supposedly clever twisted semantics game here by those who fancy themselves press secretaries for Bush and Co.

ehBeth I don't believe the Canadian prime minister had a vote on the UN security council. In fact I don't believe Canada IS a member of the UN security council. I will concede that your prime minister didn't believe Saddam had WMD. He no doubt ignored all the pre-war evidence and opinion used by just about everybody else and based his opinion on the same evidence everybody else did.

Bush himself as well as Colin Powell have expressed regret that the statement about WMD's appeared in the SOTU address. This is an admission that he should not have taken George Tenet's affirmation but asked for further details. Obviously, some smart statesmen in the world did not swallow it hook, line and sinker. No matter how many leaders in the world believe Sadaam had WMD's they have to admit they were played for fools by the intelligence organizations. A fool is a fool is a fool.

Is George Tenet also a fool for resigning? I think so.

BTW, I'd like to get rid of designating most of these fools as statesmen or leaders. They are politicians. Three guesses who is the most foolish of the politicians. (The first two don't count).

Canada has been a Security Council member between January 1999 and December 2000.
Prime Ministers (Presidents, Chancelors etc) don't have a vote there, but countries.

foxfire wrote : "He no doubt ignored all the pre-war evidence and opinion used by just about everybody else and based his opinion on the same evidence everybody else did". i am getting a litle confused here; am i the only one ? i have heard quite a number of u.s. generals(retired), former diplomats, ex-u.s. government personnel(including ex-cia agents) speak up and warn against the "type of war" that is now - unfortunately - still going on. are all these people simply uninformed nutters ? btw. "just about everybody else" - has a count been taken lately ? it reminds me of some company board meetings i attended many years ago as a junior manager (to fill the seats), where the chairman would ask a question and immediately follow with : "the ays have it, mr secretary. resolution passed. " oh, the good old days when company chairmen and presidents didn't have to worry about going to jail for criminal acts. hbg

hbg, This administration doesn't listen to opinions that doesn't agree with theirs. General of the army, E Shinseki told this administration that the postwar military requirement in Iraq would number 200 thousand. Rummie disagreed with this number, and Shinseki has been terminated. Guess what? This administration is now calling up discharged military to fill in their shortage - and they're still too short.

Why did you people make those mistakes last year or years ago? You have the information now that would have allowed you to avoid them. Therefore you are to blame for them now even though you didn't have the information then. You must be severely criticized and/or punished. For sure you must be removed from whatever position of responsibility you hold now because you failed to see far enough into the future.

Or how about you accept the consequences of them and learn from them now and strive to fix what you can and do better?

I've lived a pretty long time, and I believe this is the first time I've ever seen so much ESP and clairvoyance and prophetic ability as is required of this sitting president.

Fox's quote, "I've lived a pretty long time, and I believe this is the first time I've ever seen so much ESP and clairvoyance and prophetic ability as is required of this sitting president." As a matter of fact, this president talks to god all the time. What more can we ask for?

c.i. : i also believe that there are a good many people who refuse to learn from history, and that are not fond of reading well-researched books that do not support their ideas. a closed mind is something to be treasured, because one never has to be concerned about ever having to admit that one might have been wrong. it's always the other party that's wrong. i think there are plenty of examples throughout history. ... "the earth is flat !" ... hbg