HOUSE SHOWDOWN ON IRAQ

Yes, Viet Nam's been floating around since the beginning, (it's in our national psyche afterall) but these comments of late, and I'm speaking of conversations I've had with real people, real believers, have recently started having a air of flop sweat about them. As if they have realized just how deep the doo doo they stepped in is. And how much of a dodo the dodo leading them through the doo doo is.

All this hoodoo about who thought the intelligence was right is pathetic. It's the job of the executive to determine what's true, not what everyone is reporting. Leadership is not stenography. It's asking the questions that may question your core beliefs, it's asking "Who disagrees and why?" We don't have that leader, but that's supposed to be a state secret.

Bush listened only to those who bolstered his own beliefs. We'll see that clearly IF the Senate ever finishes the review and does it honestly. It's a common mistake of bad leaders. I imagine it was the way Bush ran his companies in Texas, he doesn't like deviation from the initial concept. He reportedly gets prickly about anything out of focus.

When you are an oil pumper all that kind of thinking will do is lose you and your stockholders a few million here and there.

Of course, we've fired or retired all those in the intelligence community who failed to provide the true picture of conditions in Iraq.

Sure we have.

Joe(they are still toiling away, trying to figure out what he wants to hear now.)Nation

What I Knew Before the Invasion

By Bob Graham

Sunday, November 20, 2005; Page B07

In the past week President Bush has twice attacked Democrats for being hypocrites on the Iraq war. "[M]ore than 100 Democrats in the House and Senate, who had access to the same intelligence, voted to support removing Saddam Hussein from power," he said.

The president's attacks are outrageous. Yes, more than 100 Democrats voted to authorize him to take the nation to war. Most of them, though, like their Republican colleagues, did so in the legitimate belief that the president and his administration were truthful in their statements that Saddam Hussein was a gathering menace -- that if Hussein was not disarmed, the smoking gun would become a mushroom cloud.

The president has undermined trust. No longer will the members of Congress be entitled to accept his veracity. Caveat emptor has become the word. Every member of Congress is on his or her own to determine the truth.

As chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence during the tragedy of Sept. 11, 2001, and the run-up to the Iraq war, I probably had as much access to the intelligence on which the war was predicated as any other member of Congress.

I, too, presumed the president was being truthful -- until a series of events undercut that confidence.

In February 2002, after a briefing on the status of the war in Afghanistan, the commanding officer, Gen. Tommy Franks, told me the war was being compromised as specialized personnel and equipment were being shifted from Afghanistan to prepare for the war in Iraq -- a war more than a year away. Even at this early date, the White House was signaling that the threat posed by Saddam Hussein was of such urgency that it had priority over the crushing of al Qaeda.

In the early fall of 2002, a joint House-Senate intelligence inquiry committee, which I co-chaired, was in the final stages of its investigation of what happened before Sept. 11. As the unclassified final report of the inquiry documented, several failures of intelligence contributed to the tragedy. But as of October 2002, 13 months later, the administration was resisting initiating any substantial action to understand, much less fix, those problems.

At a meeting of the Senate intelligence committee on Sept. 5, 2002, CIA Director George Tenet was asked what the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) provided as the rationale for a preemptive war in Iraq. An NIE is the product of the entire intelligence community, and its most comprehensive assessment. I was stunned when Tenet said that no NIE had been requested by the White House and none had been prepared. Invoking our rarely used senatorial authority, I directed the completion of an NIE.

Tenet objected, saying that his people were too committed to other assignments to analyze Saddam Hussein's capabilities and will to use chemical, biological and possibly nuclear weapons. We insisted, and three weeks later the community produced a classified NIE.

There were troubling aspects to this 90-page document. While slanted toward the conclusion that Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction stored or produced at 550 sites, it contained vigorous dissents on key parts of the information, especially by the departments of State and Energy. Particular skepticism was raised about aluminum tubes that were offered as evidence Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear program. As to Hussein's will to use whatever weapons he might have, the estimate indicated he would not do so unless he was first attacked.

Under questioning, Tenet added that the information in the NIE had not been independently verified by an operative responsible to the United States. In fact, no such person was inside Iraq. Most of the alleged intelligence came from Iraqi exiles or third countries, all of which had an interest in the United States' removing Hussein, by force if necessary.

The American people needed to know these reservations, and I requested that an unclassified, public version of the NIE be prepared. On Oct. 4, Tenet presented a 25-page document titled "Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction Programs." It represented an unqualified case that Hussein possessed them, avoided a discussion of whether he had the will to use them and omitted the dissenting opinions contained in the classified version. Its conclusions, such as "If Baghdad acquired sufficient weapons-grade fissile material from abroad, it could make a nuclear weapon within a year," underscored the White House's claim that exactly such material was being provided from Africa to Iraq.

From my advantaged position, I had earlier concluded that a war with Iraq would be a distraction from the successful and expeditious completion of our aims in Afghanistan. Now I had come to question whether the White House was telling the truth -- or even had an interest in knowing the truth.

On Oct. 11, I voted no on the resolution to give the president authority to go to war against Iraq. I was able to apply caveat emptor. Most of my colleagues could not.

The writer is a former Democratic senator from Florida. He is currently a fellow at Harvard University's Institute of Politics

When I saw McCain, he had not yet read James Fallows's cover story in the December Atlantic magazine, titled "Why Iraq Has No Army." In an amply documented and deeply disturbing account, Fallows shows how hollow has been the administration claim to "standing up" Iraqi security forces capable of replacing the U.S. troops. Fallows also argues that doing so at this point would require fundamental shifts in Pentagon priorities -- on everything from troop rotation to the allocation of weapons budgets -- that are not likely to come from Rumsfeld or Bush.

Why Iraq Has No Army
(page 1 of 6)

I don't see the point, JW, everytime a military official has said anything was lacking in the war effort, whether it concerned the number of troops needed or the lack of sufficient means to secure vehicles, he or she has been removed or retired. All we would learn from your poll would be who would be retired or removed from command next.

And only the Republicans are using the word immediate. The Congressman said that nothing further could be gained militarily and that the troops should come home. He didn't say by Christmas, although two years ago several White House officials mentioned that day as a possibility of the war's end.

Joe(My, how time flies!)Nation

My plan calls:

To immediately redeploy U.S. troops consistent with the safety of U.S. forces.

To create a quick reaction force in the region.

To create an over- the- horizon presence of Marines.

To diplomatically pursue security and stability in Iraq

what Murtha actually said

Quote:

My plan calls:

To immediately redeploy U.S. troops consistent with the safety of U.S. forces.

To create a quick reaction force in the region.

To create an over- the- horizon presence of Marines.

To diplomatically pursue security and stability in Iraq

Stupid.

This is what I'm paying for.

Awhile back, it was a waste of money, an hour later, it's priceless.

It is apparent that Blatham has not the slightest idea of how the US government works.

Blatham does not know that the House and Senate are the Legislative bodies.

Blatham has either forgotten or not read that the House and Senate HAD to be consulted in order for troops to be sent to Iraq. [..]

I am astounded that he does not know that.

Perhaps the MSM would like to poll all those currently serving in Iraq on whether an immediate pullout is a good idea. Of course, they won't, but it's not difficult to figure out why.