Terminate CIA operations

[Technosoul]

Republicans claim that GWB was acting on the best information he had from the CIA and made his choice based on the information.

For a moment imagine that is true.

This means we must prompty disscontinue the CIA, we cannot have a intelligence gathering group that is so stupid and so unable to interpret data that they could influence a President to go into an all out war - that was dangerous and continues to be dangerious based on the Republican say so.

Now if the President acted on false information from the CIA then they must go - we cannot have Presidents depending upon such an untrustworthy organization again.

Changing the leadership or uniting them with the FBI and your local police department is not the answer, because you still got all the lower level people collecting flase information for the main man to act on.

We got no choice, ether the CIA lied or Bush lied, one or the other must be removed from the decission making processes.

Whatcha think?

[Dieval]

Originally posted by Technosoul,+--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='0' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (Technosoul,)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>Republicans claim that GWB was acting on the best information he had from the CIA and made his choice based on the information. For a moment imagine that is true.[/b]

Why do we have to "imagine" that's true?
Do you have some kind of evidence suggesting it's not true?(something other than a conspiracy theory)
<!--QuoteBegin-Technosoul,

This means we must prompty disscontinue the CIA,[/quote]
How about instead of completely removing our intelligence agency, we do something more constructive, like - fix the current problems that exist and make it a better working agency.

[Sonart]

Technosoul -- Republicans claim that GWB was acting on the best information he had from the CIA and made his choice based on the information. For a moment imagine that is true.

Dieval -- Why do we have to "imagine" that's true? Do you have some kind of evidence suggesting it's not true?(something other than a conspiracy theory)

As a matter of fact, yes.

In fact it's rather common knowledge that the Bush Whitehouse got a lot of it's intellegence from our favorite Iranian spy and his parade of defectors. Things like the infamous bio-weapons labs, the aluminum tubes, the phantom nuclear program and the 'vast' stockpiles came from these sources. The problem was, both the CIA and State Department Intellegence were, to say the least, highly suspicious of Chalabi's reliability. Donald Rumsfeld, already frustrated with the CIA's 'over cautious ways' in declaring fact vs. speculation or ambiguous data, began funneling intellegence he was interesting in through the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans and from there straight to the Whitehouse.


The Stovepipe, Seymour Hersh, New Yorker Magazine, Oct. 27, 2003

--"Part of the answer lies in decisions made early in the Bush Administration, before the events of September 11, 2001. In interviews with present and former intelligence officials, I was told that some senior Administration people, soon after coming to power, had bypassed the government’s customary procedures for vetting intelligence."--

--"Chalabi’s defector reports were now flowing from the Pentagon directly to the Vice-President’s office, and then on to the President, with little prior evaluation by intelligence professionals. When INR analysts did get a look at the reports, they were troubled by what they found. “They’d pick apart a report and find out that the source had been wrong before, or had no access to the information provided,” Greg Thielmann told me. “There was considerable skepticism throughout the intelligence community about the reliability of Chalabi’s sources, but the defector reports were coming all the time. Knock one down and another comes along. Meanwhile, the garbage was being shoved straight to the President.”"--


Weapons of Mass Disappearance, Michael Duffy, TIME Magazine, Jun. 01, 2003

--"Unlike his father, who ran the CIA briefly in the mid-'70s and prided himself on revitalizing an embattled spy corps, George W. Bush dotted his foreign-policy team with people who have waged a private war with the CIA for years, men who are disdainful of the way the agency gathers secrets — and what it makes of them. Working mainly out of the Pentagon, the hard-liners have long believed that America's spy agency was a complacent captive of the two parties' internationalist wings, too wary and risk averse, too reliant on gadgets and too slow to see enemies poised to strike."--

--"The hard-liners' staunch beliefs were powerfully bolstered after 9/11; they quickly concluded that the CIA failed to anticipate the attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center. And they were not reassured by the CIA's performance after 9/11 either. By last fall, Rumsfeld had grown so impatient with the CIA's equivocal explanations of the Iraq problem that he set up his own mini-CIA at the Pentagon called the Office of Special Plans. It was hatched and designed, as a former U.S. official puts it, to get "the intelligence he wanted."--


Where are Iraq's WMDs? Evan Thomas, Richard Wolffe and Michael Isikoff, NEWSWEEK June 9, 2003

--"Then came the defectors. Former Iraqi officials fleeing the regime told of underground bunkers and labs hiding vast stores of chemical and biological weapons and nuclear materials. The CIA, at first, was skeptical. Defectors in search of safe haven sometimes stretch or invent the facts. The true believers in the Bush administration, on the other hand, embraced the defectors and credited their stories. Many of the defectors were sent to the Americans by Ahmed Chalabi, the politically ambitious and controversial Iraqi exile. Chalabi’s chief patron is Richard Perle, the former Reagan Defense Department official and charter member of the so-called neocons, the hard-liners who occupy many top jobs in the Bush national-security establishment.

The CIA was especially wary of Chalabi, whom they regarded as a con man (Chalabi has been convicted of bank fraud in Jordan; he denies the charges). But rather than accept the CIA’s doubts, top officials in the Bush Defense Department set up their own team of intelligence analysts, a small but powerful shop now called the Office of Special Plans—and, half-jokingly, by its members, “the Cabal.”?--

i suspect the CIA's involvement in black operations and infiltration into foreign countries. the CIA can operate in total secrecy and only are uncovered if they fail or make mistakes. i suspect these might be linked to secret 'executive orders', of which george bush has made more than any other president.

i suspect America murders and assassinates, sows seeds of war, and trains and uses death squads to do unpleasant and otherwise illegal things. do they need to be done? apparently someone has made that decision without public knowledge or input. that is treating the people like children.

[Technosoul]

One the clues that gave away GWB's knowledge about the created aspects of facts was evident in one of his famous speeches where he claimed Saddam had ordered those matierals from Africa that could be used as part of a nuclear program. Where England had had uncovered a document that the CIA thought had a faked Saddam's signature. So Bush had his speech reworded so he would say "English intelligence has said they believed they had found documented evidence that Saddam.... " etc. That trickly wording was not a lie, they did believe such, but he did not go on to say that the document was a fake according to our people, leaving the impression that it was the document was real evidence for his objective. With that wording he also put any blame for it on English Intelligence. So when Bush pretended not to be aware that the document was faked or "highly questionable" is a sign he did not care for the honest truth.

Also, private news investigators (governmental watchdog groups) had uncovered evidence that Haliburtan had spent money months in advance of even 9-11 to prepare for a war with Iraq. They had ordered lots of materials (which takes months to manufacture and get for reconstructing the oil wells in Iraq and repairing the pipe lines should they be damaged in a war, and they had hired and trained special fire fighters who are skilled at putting out oil well fires, and so Halliburtan had the only "specialized fire fighting unit in the world with that special training". And likewise, they did a study of the impact of spilled oil in the harbor area and in the traffic lanes of oil ships in the gulf area in the event Saddam might be able to missle attack those ships, along with a clean-up plan in such an event.. and those plans were were provided Bush during his working vacation so he would know "they were were ready to go" whem ever he said the word. Some of the plans were acted upon following desert storm as a long-range plan of Halliburtan.

Technosoul.

[Dieval]

Originally posted by Sonart, Dieval -- Why do we have to "imagine" that's true? Do you have some kind of evidence suggesting it's not true?(something other than a conspiracy theory) As a matter of fact, yes. In fact it's rather common knowledge that the Bush Whitehouse got a lot of it's intellegence from our favorite Iranian spy and his parade of defectors. Things like the infamous bio-weapons labs, the aluminum tubes, the phantom nuclear program and the 'vast' stockpiles came from these sources. The problem was, both the CIA and State Department Intellegence were, to say the least, highly suspicious of Chalabi's reliability. Donald Rumsfeld, already frustrated with the CIA's 'over cautious ways' in declaring fact vs. speculation or ambiguous data, began funneling intellegence he was interesting in through the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans and from there straight to the Whitehouse. The Stovepipe, Seymour Hersh, New Yorker Magazine, Oct. 27, 2003 --"Part of the answer lies in decisions made early in the Bush Administration, before the events of September 11, 2001. In interviews with present and former intelligence officials, I was told that some senior Administration people, soon after coming to power, had bypassed the government’s customary procedures for vetting intelligence."-- --"Chalabi’s defector reports were now flowing from the Pentagon directly to the Vice-President’s office, and then on to the President, with little prior evaluation by intelligence professionals. When INR analysts did get a look at the reports, they were troubled by what they found. “They’d pick apart a report and find out that the source had been wrong before, or had no access to the information provided,” Greg Thielmann told me. “There was considerable skepticism throughout the intelligence community about the reliability of Chalabi’s sources, but the defector reports were coming all the time. Knock one down and another comes along. Meanwhile, the garbage was being shoved straight to the President.”"-- Weapons of Mass Disappearance, Michael Duffy, TIME Magazine, Jun. 01, 2003 --"Unlike his father, who ran the CIA briefly in the mid-'70s and prided himself on revitalizing an embattled spy corps, George W. Bush dotted his foreign-policy team with people who have waged a private war with the CIA for years, men who are disdainful of the way the agency gathers secrets — and what it makes of them. Working mainly out of the Pentagon, the hard-liners have long believed that America's spy agency was a complacent captive of the two parties' internationalist wings, too wary and risk averse, too reliant on gadgets and too slow to see enemies poised to strike."-- --"The hard-liners' staunch beliefs were powerfully bolstered after 9/11; they quickly concluded that the CIA failed to anticipate the attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center. And they were not reassured by the CIA's performance after 9/11 either. By last fall, Rumsfeld had grown so impatient with the CIA's equivocal explanations of the Iraq problem that he set up his own mini-CIA at the Pentagon called the Office of Special Plans. It was hatched and designed, as a former U.S. official puts it, to get "the intelligence he wanted."-- Where are Iraq's WMDs? Evan Thomas, Richard Wolffe and Michael Isikoff, NEWSWEEK June 9, 2003 --"Then came the defectors. Former Iraqi officials fleeing the regime told of underground bunkers and labs hiding vast stores of chemical and biological weapons and nuclear materials. The CIA, at first, was skeptical. Defectors in search of safe haven sometimes stretch or invent the facts. The true believers in the Bush administration, on the other hand, embraced the defectors and credited their stories. Many of the defectors were sent to the Americans by Ahmed Chalabi, the politically ambitious and controversial Iraqi exile. Chalabi’s chief patron is Richard Perle, the former Reagan Defense Department official and charter member of the so-called neocons, the hard-liners who occupy many top jobs in the Bush national-security establishment. The CIA was especially wary of Chalabi, whom they regarded as a con man (Chalabi has been convicted of bank fraud in Jordan; he denies the charges). But rather than accept the CIA’s doubts, top officials in the Bush Defense Department set up their own team of intelligence analysts, a small but powerful shop now called the Office of Special Plans—and, half-jokingly, by its members, “the Cabal.”?--

It sounds like mistakes were made....I guess we could have ignored Chalabi's intel, but what if we hadn't listened to him and his information had been accurate?

[Technosoul]

Originally posted by Dieval,+--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='0' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (Dieval,)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteBegin-Sonart, Dieval -- Why do we have to "imagine" that's true? Do you have some kind of evidence suggesting it's not true?(something other than a conspiracy theory) As a matter of fact, yes. In fact it's rather common knowledge that the Bush Whitehouse got a lot of it's intellegence from our favorite Iranian spy and his parade of defectors. Things like the infamous bio-weapons labs, the aluminum tubes, the phantom nuclear program and the 'vast' stockpiles came from these sources. The problem was, both the CIA and State Department Intellegence were, to say the least, highly suspicious of Chalabi's reliability. Donald Rumsfeld, already frustrated with the CIA's 'over cautious ways' in declaring fact vs. speculation or ambiguous data, began funneling intellegence he was interesting in through the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans and from there straight to the Whitehouse. The Stovepipe, Seymour Hersh, New Yorker Magazine, Oct. 27, 2003 --"Part of the answer lies in decisions made early in the Bush Administration, before the events of September 11, 2001. In interviews with present and former intelligence officials, I was told that some senior Administration people, soon after coming to power, had bypassed the government’s customary procedures for vetting intelligence."-- --"Chalabi’s defector reports were now flowing from the Pentagon directly to the Vice-President’s office, and then on to the President, with little prior evaluation by intelligence professionals. When INR analysts did get a look at the reports, they were troubled by what they found. “They’d pick apart a report and find out that the source had been wrong before, or had no access to the information provided,” Greg Thielmann told me. “There was considerable skepticism throughout the intelligence community about the reliability of Chalabi’s sources, but the defector reports were coming all the time. Knock one down and another comes along. Meanwhile, the garbage was being shoved straight to the President.”"-- Weapons of Mass Disappearance, Michael Duffy, TIME Magazine, Jun. 01, 2003 --"Unlike his father, who ran the CIA briefly in the mid-'70s and prided himself on revitalizing an embattled spy corps, George W. Bush dotted his foreign-policy team with people who have waged a private war with the CIA for years, men who are disdainful of the way the agency gathers secrets — and what it makes of them. Working mainly out of the Pentagon, the hard-liners have long believed that America's spy agency was a complacent captive of the two parties' internationalist wings, too wary and risk averse, too reliant on gadgets and too slow to see enemies poised to strike."-- --"The hard-liners' staunch beliefs were powerfully bolstered after 9/11; they quickly concluded that the CIA failed to anticipate the attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center. And they were not reassured by the CIA's performance after 9/11 either. By last fall, Rumsfeld had grown so impatient with the CIA's equivocal explanations of the Iraq problem that he set up his own mini-CIA at the Pentagon called the Office of Special Plans. It was hatched and designed, as a former U.S. official puts it, to get "the intelligence he wanted."-- Where are Iraq's WMDs? Evan Thomas, Richard Wolffe and Michael Isikoff, NEWSWEEK June 9, 2003 --"Then came the defectors. Former Iraqi officials fleeing the regime told of underground bunkers and labs hiding vast stores of chemical and biological weapons and nuclear materials. The CIA, at first, was skeptical. Defectors in search of safe haven sometimes stretch or invent the facts. The true believers in the Bush administration, on the other hand, embraced the defectors and credited their stories. Many of the defectors were sent to the Americans by Ahmed Chalabi, the politically ambitious and controversial Iraqi exile. Chalabi’s chief patron is Richard Perle, the former Reagan Defense Department official and charter member of the so-called neocons, the hard-liners who occupy many top jobs in the Bush national-security establishment. The CIA was especially wary of Chalabi, whom they regarded as a con man (Chalabi has been convicted of bank fraud in Jordan; he denies the charges). But rather than accept the CIA’s doubts, top officials in the Bush Defense Department set up their own team of intelligence analysts, a small but powerful shop now called the Office of Special Plans—and, half-jokingly, by its members, “the Cabal.”?--

It sounds like mistakes were made....I guess we could have ignored Chalabi's intel, but what if we hadn't listened to him and his information had been accurate?[/b][/quote]

I would like to answer those questions, although they were not directed to me.

You said "mistakes were made". I do not think we can classify them as "mistakes" anymore, calling them mistakes is just part of the cover-up or damage control "speaking" used by Repubilcans now-a-days. We must stop pretending Bush was innocent of not knowing what he was doing because he was "acting on information" given him, Bush knew the difference between the war on Iraq and the war on terrorism (Bin Laden) from the get-go. And all that should be absolutly exposed and made known to the public.

"What if" his sources were correct and Bush had not acted? First off he had no sound information based on any solid knowledge provided by the CIA, but if you wish to pretend he did then here is what would have happened, the UN inspectors would have continued their search, along with all the other outside reporters from around the globe who Saddam was willing to open doors for, and they would have found some kind of "real evidence" in Iraq that would have generated an internatinal need to join us in the enforcement of crubing those violations. We would not have to had to "go it on our own" and thusly we would have not lost any many of our won troops during the conflict.

Technosoul.

[ericsp23]

Originally posted by Technosoul, We got no choice, ether the CIA lied or Bush lied, one or the other must be removed from the decission making processes.

I found this article a few weeks ago that documents what Bush and his senior advisors knew and when they knew it regarding Iraqi intelligence.

http://www.inthesetimes.com/site/main/arti...they_knew_0802/

I realize this is a politically biased web page, but most of the claims they make are taken directly from government documents or from the mainstream media.
Bush and his senior advisors either knew that the intelligence supporting their case for war was weak and intentionally made it look stronger than it actually was, or they are woefully incompetent. Or more likely, both.

[Sonart]

It sounds like mistakes were made....I guess we could have ignored Chalabi's intel, but what if we hadn't listened to him and his information had been accurate?

What if pigs could fly? You think 'mistakes were made'??? We launched the unprovoked invasion and occupation of a harmless country BY MISTAKE based on the all-too-eager-to-accept word of an Iranian spy, with the result that a year and half later our troops are dying day in and day out in an expanding quagmire that we can't win and can't get out of, the Taliban slowly retaking Afghanistan, international terrorism expanding, the mideast becoming more unstable and oil prices rising because of it, other truly dangerous regimes thumbing their noses at us and Osama bin Laden laughing at us, our once undisputed world leadership destroyed and former allies who wouldn't trust us as far as they could throw us.

Gawd knows there were enough serious questions within our own intellignece community regarding what Saddam did or did not have. You don't think it might have been just a *teensy* bit wiser to have humored the world community and given the inspectors a few more months before throwing ourselves headfirst into a fiasco that our senior military warned us not to get into in the first place?

Face it. George Bush has misled us by pandering to America's thirst for tough talk and revenge, to make someone pay. He either misled us intentionally in order to engage in a geo-political adventure they'd been desiring all along, or he misled us unintentionally, which amounts to sheer incompentence. Either way it borders on criminal negligence.

How can the import of this not make you as angry as I am. We destroyed a country BY MISTAKE! Oops, my bad. Sorry about all the dead people?

It's like a cop staring down at the skinny little unarmed kid he just shot. "Dang, sorry about that. We thought for sure you had some bullets in your pocket and that you were thinking of buying a gun one of these days". Well don't look now, but that skinny little kid's family has you surrounded and is kicking the sh!t out of us.

[PatrickHenry]

To the larger issue of the CIA(I am so tired of the Bush/intel debate on Iraq...):

A nation like the US needs intel. A case can be made that the US also needs a "black ops" agency. But the Company has assumed many other roles over its nearly sixty year existence. It has infiltrated the Media and become a de facto propaganda ministry. It has done extensive inhuman experimentation on mind-control. It is the world's premier drug runner. And it is the greatest agency of state-sponsored terror in history(a possible deuce/tie game with the KGB)

For these reasons, a number of people, including former CIA operatives have proposed splitting the Agency into to separate and distinct outfits. One for intel. Another for clandestine ops. The reasoning is that the cross contamination of intel and operations is reduced by so doing. Anybody know: did Phillip Agee propose this?

[rcne]

For these reasons, a number of people, including former CIA operatives have proposed splitting the Agency into to separate and distinct outfits. One for intel. Another for clandestine ops. The reasoning is that the cross contamination of intel and operations is reduced by so doing. Anybody know: did Phillip Agee propose this?

Isn't part of the problem that on the ground human intel was missing. This was a result of the cut back from previous administrations, and the fact that we believed our high tech gizzmos were superior to human intel.

The 9/11 commission recommendations were that we need more not less human intel to gather data - then - an overseer to make sure that gathered data is not held from other agencies.

[Technosoul]

Originally posted by rcne, For these reasons, a number of people, including former CIA operatives have proposed splitting the Agency into to separate and distinct outfits. One for intel. Another for clandestine ops. The reasoning is that the cross contamination of intel and operations is reduced by so doing. Anybody know: did Phillip Agee propose this? Isn't part of the problem that on the ground human intel was missing. This was a result of the cut back from previous administrations, and the fact that we believed our high tech gizzmos were superior to human intel. The 9/11 commission recommendations were that we need more not less human intel to gather data - then - an overseer to make sure that gathered data is not held from other agencies.

I would not put much importance on those 9/11 hearings or their interpretation of what should be done for following reasons.

1. I was incomplete, none of us know what Bush and his Vice Predident said to the panel, and they had to reframe from remarking about the White House and their role until after the elections and so we now stand with knowing only their recomendations for the FBI, CIA but no repremands for Bush and his staff. It is incomplete and thusly lacks giving people a over-all view.

2. The commisssion was staffed by people carefully selected by the White House people who set the rules for what could be made public.

3. The White House and CIA could withhold too much data claiming it was still Top Secret or classified.

4. The TV parts shown contained too many political opinions that were pre-designed and written to sway public opinon and not enough factual evidence being presented. Plus, no interviews of the private person(s) from Iraq who gave Bush information at the his meetings in Texas with them, no interview with Tony Blair or his intelligence people, and no interviews with UN inspectors or members of that organization.

Incomplete, and missleading.

Technosoul.

[Technosoul]

In addition to my above statement, they were just looking at what we may or may not have known about Ben Laden before the WTC incident, and what might have went wrong so that we did not prevent that from happening via our intelligence collecting by by the FBI and the CIA groups. That had nothing to do with how information was collected about Iraq or what helped to influence the war in Iraq.

Sometimes people get confused, the recomendations had to do with the failures to predict what Ben Laden was planning and not about false information blamed for the missguided war on Saddam.

At least that was my impression behind the reasoning for that hearing. However some folks think that the failure of the President to get informed ahead of time about Ben Laden has something to do with the CIA bluddering informaton about Saddam or Saddam's department of defense. That is NOT the case being addressed, however some Republicans have attempted to use the failure of communication concerning Ben Laden as something to blame for Bush's background for attacking Saddam's government, which is deceptive and not related.

Technosoul.

[Dieval]

Originally posted by Sonart,+--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='0' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (Sonart,)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> What if pigs could fly? [/b]

I believe that would be a problem for birds, not us...

Originally posted by Sonart,+--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='0' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (Sonart,)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>You think 'mistakes were made'??? We launched the unprovoked invasion and occupation of a harmless country [/b]

"unprovoked" and "harmless" are 2 words that don't belong in the same sentence when talking about Iraq..They apparently didn't have the large stock piles we were expecting...does that make them harmless? far from it... I'd also go as far to say that shooting out our planes on a daily basis would also qualify as provoking us.

Now was Chalabi's intel correct? It doesn't appear so, but since the complete story isn't in about Saddam's WMD programs and what he actually had(and what he did with them before the start of the war - convoys of trucks going into Syria ring a bell?) it gets harder to say his intel was 100% false when we don't have 100% of the information, wouldn't you say?

Even if you say his intel was 100% wrong, it changes nothing. We did the right thing removing Saddam from power.

O'reilly - the liberal's favorite guy, I'm sure - wrote an interesting article today, linking Iraq with terrorists...basically saying that the war in Iraq had nothing to do with terrorism is quite misleading..

The Terrible Truth About Terror<!--QuoteBegin-Article@
What are we to make of the New York Times describing terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi as a "Jordanian militant?" I mean, this guy is one of the most vicious al Qaeda thugs in the world; right now he's behind much of the violence in Iraq and has been active in the worldwide terror network since at least 1990.

On June 17th of this year, a U.S. intelligence official provided my researcher Nate Fredman with the following information: In early 2000, Zarqawi traveled to Afghanistan to assume a leadership position in an al Qaeda training camp. There he and his associates trained other terrorists how to develop and distribute "toxins."

Zarqawi stayed in the Al Qaeda area until war broke out after 9/11/01. He actively fought against U.S. forces and was wounded. After the collapse of the Taliban, he fled to Iran and then traveled to Iraq where his wounded leg was treated in a hospital run by Uday Hussein.

In the summer of 2002, Zarqawi went to Northern Iraq to train terrorists with the group Ansar al Islam, which is affiliated with al Qaeda. After the U.S. invaded Iraq, Zarqawi went underground to organize resistance. The CIA believes Zarqawi personally beheaded American hostage Nicholas Berg, and there is now a $25 million bounty on his head. [/quote]

<!--QuoteBegin-Sonart,

It's like a cop staring down at the skinny little unarmed kid he just shot.[/quote]You know, I never understood this logic....maybe the cop should have waited until the "skinny little unarmed kid" grew up, armed himself, and could shoot back, before the cop acted...then the cop would probably be dead, along with how many others in the police force that were called in for back up, not to mention how many innocent people the kid could have killed by having a serious shoot out with the cops.
The way I see it - and I'm sure most of you will disagree - is that removing Saddam(the kid) now prevents him from growing up and arming himself. Why wait until it's too late?

[Dieval]

Originally posted by Dieval,+--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='0' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (Dieval,)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> Originally posted by Sonart,+--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='0' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (Sonart,)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> What if pigs could fly? [/b] I believe that would be a problem for birds, not us... Originally posted by Sonart, You think 'mistakes were made'??? We launched the unprovoked invasion and occupation of a harmless country "unprovoked" and "harmless" are 2 words that don't belong in the same sentence when talking about Iraq..They apparently didn't have the large stock piles we were expecting...does that make them harmless? far from it... I'd also go as far to say that shooting out our planes on a daily basis would also qualify as provoking us. Now was Chalabi's intel correct? It doesn't appear so, but since the complete story isn't in about Saddam's WMD programs and what he actually had(and what he did with them before the start of the war - convoys of trucks going into Syria ring a bell?) it gets harder to say his intel was 100% false when we don't have 100% of the information, wouldn't you say? Even if you say his intel was 100% wrong, it changes nothing. We did the right thing removing Saddam from power. O'reilly - the liberal's favorite guy, I'm sure - wrote an interesting article today, linking Iraq with terrorists...basically saying that the war in Iraq had nothing to do with terrorism is quite misleading.. The Terrible Truth About Terror<!--QuoteBegin-Article@ What are we to make of the New York Times describing terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi as a "Jordanian militant?" I mean, this guy is one of the most vicious al Qaeda thugs in the world; right now he's behind much of the violence in Iraq and has been active in the worldwide terror network since at least 1990. On June 17th of this year, a U.S. intelligence official provided my researcher Nate Fredman with the following information: In early 2000, Zarqawi traveled to Afghanistan to assume a leadership position in an al Qaeda training camp. There he and his associates trained other terrorists how to develop and distribute "toxins." Zarqawi stayed in the Al Qaeda area until war broke out after 9/11/01. He actively fought against U.S. forces and was wounded. After the collapse of the Taliban, he fled to Iran and then traveled to Iraq where his wounded leg was treated in a hospital run by Uday Hussein. In the summer of 2002, Zarqawi went to Northern Iraq to train terrorists with the group Ansar al Islam, which is affiliated with al Qaeda. After the U.S. invaded Iraq, Zarqawi went underground to organize resistance. The CIA believes Zarqawi personally beheaded American hostage Nicholas Berg, and there is now a $25 million bounty on his head.

<!--QuoteBegin-Sonart,

It's like a cop staring down at the skinny little unarmed kid he just shot.[/quote]You know, I never understood this logic....maybe the cop should have waited until the "skinny little unarmed kid" grew up, armed himself, and could shoot back, before the cop acted...then the cop would probably be dead, along with how many others in the police force that were called in for back up, not to mention how many innocent people the kid could have killed by having a serious shoot out with the cops.
The way I see it - and I'm sure most of you will disagree - is that removing Saddam(the kid) now prevents him from growing up and arming himself. Why wait until it's too late?[/b][/quote]

Also, don't forget that Chalabi wasn't our only source of intel...quite a few other countries came to the same conclusion we did.

[tusaki]

Because arguably Iraq, post gulfwar 1, wasn't much a threat to anyone but itself. Now where is that article... can't find it now, but it was from a couple of scientists who said that based on the theory of realism, saddam would never be a threat because he is a calculating player. He would never invade anyone, because he knew he would be pounded upon if he did that. He also never posessed the technology to build missiles which could reach Europe, let alone the US. Furthermore, the taliban hated Saddam, and it is unlikely Saddam would attack 'out of hatered' like al qaida did. If you want a threat? look at north korea, they can attack japan with their missiles!

[Gorgo]

This is bullshit. No one believed at all the Iraq was a threat to anyone. After the war with Iran and the Gulf War I and 12 years of brutal sanctions and inspectors and spies and planes all over the place? Who the hell really believes that there were vast quantities of WMD's somewhere about to be launched at the U.S.?

[Technosoul]

Originally posted by tusaki, Because arguably Iraq, post gulfwar 1, wasn't much a threat to anyone but itself. Now where is that article... can't find it now, but it was from a couple of scientists who said that based on the theory of realism, saddam would never be a threat because he is a calculating player. He would never invade anyone, because he knew he would be pounded upon if he did that. He also never posessed the technology to build missiles which could reach Europe, let alone the US. Furthermore, the taliban hated Saddam, and it is unlikely Saddam would attack 'out of hatered' like al qaida did. If you want a threat? look at north korea, they can attack japan with their missiles!

The odd thing is that Afganistan did not have WMDs nor did Ben Laden, in fact the only weapon they are known to have used in the 9-11 attacks were common box cutters (and hi-jacked non-military airliners).

Now you could hardly get Congress to spend more money on a new missle shield to protect us from boxcutters.

When Russia unexpectedly ended the cold war and started to unarm their nukes the whole Star Wars shield projects under Reagan lost all it's wind. That was a big blow to the weapons industry (not to mention G.E. who were getting grants for HARRP). Bush again wanted to spend money on a missle program but Congress still did not have open ears because we no longer were living under the fears of a nuclear doomsday war with the old USSR. So what to do?

Now we have a whole new mind set of fear about nuclear weapons not related to Russia have equal superpowers. The new fear created is that perhaps someday Iran, Iraq, or North Korea could become a superpower like the old USSR. That would in turn encourage Americans to support Congress in funding a missles program to protect us better from such attacks. And the Republicans could return to the old ways of appointing more money to the weapons industry.

North Korea, working as the nuclear threat, is the like the best friend the Ollie type weapons dealers could have, to work through China to keep the threat going but while "talks" seem to discourage us really attacking N.K.
Likewise, the location of N.K. is thus that we could encourage Japan to buy a missle defence system from the U.S.A. weapon's industry (fear that Korea might target them before we can come to the rescue). Lots of money to be made.

Technosoul

Quote by: Technosoul, So Bush had his speech reworded so he would say "English intelligence has said they believed they had found documented evidence that Saddam.... " etc. That trickly wording was not a lie, they did believe such, but he did not go on to say that the document was a fake according to our people, leaving the impression that it was the document was real evidence for his objective. With that wording he also put any blame for it on English Intelligence. So when Bush pretended not to be aware that the document was faked or "highly questionable"

...he perjured the sanctity of the State of the Union, the sanctity of our fighting forces, the bond of trust a nation has for its elected president to be truthful, especially about war and national security.

Also, private news investigators (governmental watchdog groups) had uncovered evidence that Haliburtan had spent money months in advance of even 9-11 to prepare for a war with Iraq. ... and those plans were were provided Bush during his working vacation so he would know "they were were ready to go" whem ever he said the word. Some of the plans were acted upon following desert storm as a long-range plan of Halliburtan.[/quote]

war profiteers. i theorize that weapons and war industries and R&D firm for the pentagon, built up for 60 years, were disappointed and let down after the end of the cold war. that should have been the end of the wars of the 20th century. bush seemed to have lame excuses to go to war. i wonder if his real motivations were concealed.

[macnpat]

Originally posted by Technosoul, Republicans claim that GWB was acting on the best information he had from the CIA and made his choice based on the information. For a moment imagine that is true. This means we must prompty disscontinue the CIA, we cannot have a intelligence gathering group that is so stupid and so unable to interpret data that they could influence a President to go into an all out war - that was dangerous and continues to be dangerious based on the Republican say so.

Whoa!!! The CIA wasn't totally responsible for the intelligence gathering that determined the actions of the President, his Cabinet and Congress. It's only one arm in a network of Dept.of Defense agencies that work in liaison with foreign intelligence agencies also.

We got no choice, ether the CIA lied or Bush lied, one or the other must be removed from the decission making processes. Whatcha think?

No one lied. Saddam was so dishonest with the U.N. he was proven to have violated sanctions of the U.N. Our determination was based on a complex set of circumstances which surrounded the hostilities of the Al Qaida.

I like the idea of a central figure who is in charge of all the Inte