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The fact remains that Cheney and his cohorts armed twisted the CIA into producing evidence that simply was not there.
Also there is another factor showing the distorted nature of your characterization, one that we would do well to keep in mind concerning the current dustup over Benghazi.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Cobra II
[[Paul] Pillar [CIA NIE officer for the Near East at the time] noted that there had been a subtle but significant tendency by analysts to give the White House what it wanted..."For any analyst, favorable attention to policymakers is a benchmark of success. There was a natural bias in favor of intelligence production that supported, rather than undermined, policies already set..."
The CIA said they couldn't verify any WMDs existed in Iraq and Dick Cheney kept firing folks at the CIA telling them they were wrong until one of them got the message and told him what he wanted to hear. It's pretty clear the Bush Administration just wanted to invade Iraq and pushed everyone else to make that possible.
The real answer to the question posed by the OP (a good one) is that neither the CIA nor the WH misled. It was Saddam himself. He pursued a strategy sometimes called 'deterrence by doubt.' He wanted people, especially the Iranians, to think that he still had a stash of WMD. And of course it worked, since he had had and even deployed WMD several times against the Kurds, Iranians, and Shiites. Saddam himself confirmed the 'deterrence by doubt' strategy in interrogations before he was executed.
The CIA said they couldn't verify any WMDs existed in Iraq and Dick Cheney kept firing folks at the CIA telling them they were wrong until one of them got the message and told him what he wanted to hear. It's pretty clear the Bush Administration just wanted to invade Iraq and pushed everyone else to make that possible.
The real problem here was just that our intel was poor.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Cobra II
Despite a budget of some $40 billion a year, U.S. intelligence had little direct knowledge about Saddam's weapons program. In 2001, the CIA had just four sources in Iraq, and none had access to information about Saddam's WMD.
(p144)
Quote:
Originally Posted by Cobra II
The CIA was so sure that American soldiers would be greeted warmly when they pushed into southern Iraq that a CIA operative suggested sneaking hundreds of small American flags into the country for grateful Iraqis to wave....
(p. 157)
Quote:
Originally Posted by Cobra II
The limits of U.S. intelligence soon became apparent....[Maj. Gen]Marks was able to identify 946 sites on the WMSL, the weapons of mass destruction master site list...But there was no prioritization as to which sites needed to be secured first..."The good news is we took the initiative and ran with it and no one stopped us," Marks recalled. "It just seemed like this was something that should have been granularly ripped apart long before we rolled in...."
What Bill Clinton believed or thought he knew matters not a iota with me. I've already mentioned that the biggest factor costing Hillary the Presidency was her vote in favor of the invasion of Iraq.
The fact remains that Cheney and his cohorts armed twisted the CIA into producing evidence that simply was not there. Which by the way is the topic of the thread.
Bush/Cheney took the information they were given by the previous administration and acted on the Clinton Doctrine, "The Iraq Liberation Act". Sandy Berger was tasked with removing documents from the National Archive which showed Clinton's approval of the invasion too. All roads lead back to Bill. He owns it.
I see that none of the libs have come back to defend or retract their erroneous posts. No cojones. What a surprise....not. Yet they will doubtless go on to post the same garbage somewhere, sometime in the future.
Then you must have voted against Pres. Obama in the recent election, since Hillary was his choice for Sec'y of State? Right?
That is so stupid on so many levels.
Quote:
Your characterization of Cheney is a complete distortion, undoubtedly partisan-driven.
(Cobra II, p. 144)
But remember the context of the time--virtually all, even Saddam's own people believed that he still had WMD. The real problem was that our intel was so bad. We had very little in the way of sources inside Iraq after 1998. We were dependent on sat. photos, which proved to be not always reliable. Early on it was thought that Saddam had been killed in his "bunker" outside Baghdad by an F117 attack. Later when ground forces got there, they found just an empty field that had been bombed--no bunker.
I don't know why I even bother, really. The left will just keep bitterly clinging to the partisan-driven distorted narrative for eternity.
What people believed or didn't believe is not the point, it was how that evidence or lack there of was cherry picked, shaped, packaged and sold to the American people by Cheney and crew to start a war that was totally unnecessary and a distraction from the job at hand.
So when you dig up a quote that refutes the following call me.
By now, the story of how neoconservatives hijacked American foreign policy is a familiar one. With Vice President Dick Cheney and Rumsfeld leading the way, neocons working out of the office of the vice president and the Department of Defense orchestrated a spectacular disinformation operation, asserting that Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction posed a grave and immediate threat to the U.S. Veteran analysts who disagreed were circumvented. Dubious information from known fabricators was hyped. Forged documents showing phony yellowcake-uranium sales to Iraq were promoted.
What people believed or didn't believe is not the point, it was how that evidence or lack there of was cherry picked, shaped, packaged and sold to the American people by Cheney and crew to start a war that was totally unnecessary and a distraction from the job at hand.
So when you dig up a quote that refutes the following call me.
By now, the story of how neoconservatives hijacked American foreign policy is a familiar one. With Vice President Dick Cheney and Rumsfeld leading the way, neocons working out of the office of the vice president and the Department of Defense orchestrated a spectacular disinformation operation, asserting that Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction posed a grave and immediate threat to the U.S. Veteran analysts who disagreed were circumvented. Dubious information from known fabricators was hyped. Forged documents showing phony yellowcake-uranium sales to Iraq were promoted.
semi-kudos for responding, even if you don't address any of the quotes I posted. My quotes are from Cobra II by NYT reporter Michael Gordon and Gen Bernard Trainor. And Paul Pillar, and so forth. Your quote is from a guy who 'attended' Harvard and is best known for collaborating with Michael Moore. Readers can decide who has more cred.
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