troung

My short rely is normally a word that starts with "F" and then oen that starts with a "Y"... you beat me to the punch...

Amled

Sniper, he said:
You said:
I think you proved your point!

__________________
When we blindly adopt a religion, a political system, a literary dogma, we become automatons. We cease to grow. - Anais Nin

Shek

I kept the reply shorter so it won’t take you a few days to read it and respond. However, in keeping with your plea, I wasn’t able to respond as in-depth as I have in the past. Since I didn’t cover any new ground, I didn’t quote any sources, which is similar to your posts, except that you don’t quote sources while claiming new facts.

1. I never found the Thielman interview. I found some comments of his; however, I find the report prepared by Senate’s Select Committee on Intelligence more informative and analytic, even with much of the information redacted. As far as your excerpt, I waded through all 68 pages twice and did an Adobe search of the word “supported.” Your alleged statement didn’t appear. I also did a search of "overstated," and the Adobe search turned it up zero, I say again, zero times. If you would kindly provide me with what page and section, then I’ll gladly comment on it, if it does exist in the report.

2. You claimed that Tenet was bribed with the Presidential Medal of Freedom and yet didn’t provide any evidence nor have you since except a theory of Tenet being a fall guy. That is what you are avoiding. If you don’t have proof, then drop your unsubstantiated allegations. As to your question, I provided several potential reasons. I’ll spell some of them out for you again. First, as the Presidential Medal of Freedom, it is the President’s medal to give. Second, as a Medal of Freedom, the liberation of Iraq and Afghanistan and the resulting freedom given to the Afghanis and Iraqis provides over 50 million reasons for a Medal of Freedom to be given to a man whose organization was vital in both operations. Third, while there was an intelligence failure, I see the policies of the previous Administration and Congresses as being responsible for disallowing recruitment methods and practices that would have allowed us to conduct HUMINT operations capable of getting the intelligence we needed. The DCI cannot overcome restrictions placed on him by our elected leadership.

3. If you can post sources that show that AQ was formed prior, then post them instead of talking about them. Right now, I’ve posted an authoritative source and all you’ve got is a rectal extraction. Next, we all know that OBL was in the region prior to the formation of AQ. However, you can’t claim that AQ was formed until it was formed. Using you logic, why not claim AQ was born when OBL got his plane ticket to Pakistan? Or his dad decided to make him different and not send him to school in the west like his other siblings?

4. As far as the legality of the Iraq war, maybe Kofi Annan didn’t want the gravy train for his son to end? He’s not a partial player in this matter. Besides, there have been several international military interventions that have been considered legal despite the lack of an UNSCR, such as Korea and peacekeeping/enforcement operations in Liberia and Sierra Leone in addition to the litany of prior UNSCRs against Saddam.

5. The Taliban conducted their first operations in Kandahar in October 1994 by every account I have seen. If you can provide me a link or a date of the Leprechaun Press, I’ll check out your source. However, do I have to wait for a rainbow to find it and will I also get a pot of gold?

Shek

I came across the full report today - I had only an excerpt before. So, with the full report, I can now see that you are referring to Conclusion 1 found on page 14 of the report (page 24 in Adobe Acrobat - http://intelligence.senate.gov/iraqreport2.pdf). Here it is in its entirety:

"Most of the major key judgements 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 the analytic trade craft, led to the mischaracterization of the intelligence."

Having now seen the full conclusion and not your carefully edited version, and being a consumer of the English language, I'd say that the Senate Intel Committee was referring to the Intelligence Community and not to the Bush Administration. Nice try, but no cigar.

Bluesman

That one's gonna leave a mark.

__________________
"The quickest way of ending a war is to lose it, and if one finds the prospect of a long war intolerable, it is natural to disbelieve in the possibility of victory."
- George Orwell