Originally posted by Ripsnort
I'm a firm believer that the WMD was a front to get a foothold in the middle east, and put a base of operations there to keep an eye on the rest of the mindless radical muslims (Syria, Iran) and to depose of an idiot who not only harbored terrorists but would have used them sincerely in the future if given a chance. So WMD or not, it was a brilliant move by this admininstration and history will prove that it was the right thing to do.
Let's break this down a little
Alot has been made on this board that Saddam harbored terrorists...according to Michael Scheuer who headed the CIA's Bin Laden desk from '95 to '99 that link did not exist...
Tenet, to his credit, had us go back 10 years in the agency's records and look and see what we knew about Iraq and Al Qaeda. I was available at the time, and I led the effort. We went back 10 years. We examined about 20,000 documents, probably something along the line of 75,000 pages of information, and there was no connection between [Al Qaeda] and Saddam.
There were indications that Al Qaeda people had transited Iraq, probably with the Iraqis turning a blind eye to it. There were some hints that there was a contact between the head of the intelligence service of the Iraqis with bin Laden when he was in the Sudan, but nothing you could put together and say, "Here is a relationship that is similar to the relationship between Iran and Lebanese Hezbollah," which was what Doug Feith's organization was claiming. There was simply nothing to support that.
So we did the research, we gave him the documentation, we came up with a conclusion. But then we turned all of that information over to the analysts, and the analysts then did the same thing. They, as far as I know, found no connection that was remotely approaching what DoD was claiming in regard to Saddam and Al Qaeda. So there was a great deal of surprise when we heard Secretary Powell at the U.N. discussing the existence of that kind of a relationship. At least in that aspect of going to war with Iraq, it seems to me that the president was told what he wanted to hear. ...
need to point out that during the period from when we started to chase Osama bin Laden, from 1996 until 9/11, there was not a lack of people looking for a connection between Saddam and Al Qaeda. We looked for it consistently, and we would do [a] periodic review of all of the information we had, and we could never prove a connection. ...
As far as taking the fight to them, his take is an interesting one....
Yeah. And that takes you directly to the point where our bipartisan leadership doesn't understand: These guys don't scare. They don't have palaces to take care of. They don't have electrical grids. They don't have missile sites. This is what they think of your threat and your deterrence. There's no way to scare these folks. So we're stuck in the mind-set of speaking as if we're trying to scare [Cuban President Fidel] Castro, who has things to protect in the country, and boundaries and electrical grids. But Osama bin Laden and his allies, you know, what are we going to do?
This last quote is very interesting...
Truly it's a historical moment. I'm not sure that any great power in the history of man has been in the position if we're attacked again, we have absolutely nothing to respond against. That's an issue which no one seems to be taking very seriously. If Osama bin Laden detonates a small nuclear device in an American city, what do we do? Do we just literally wipe Mecca and Medina off the face of the earth in order to feel better about it? There is no "there" there for this enemy, and until we come to grips with that idea, the idea that we're fighting an effective war is probably a mistake.
^^That's what I hope we wrap our brains around, because I want us to be able to mount an effective campaign (and yes that means military) against terrorists, but if we keep within conventional wisdom, it may later than sooner.
Then there's Syria...
I think we weren't giving them the answers over the years that they wanted to hear. Syria is a perfect example. Syria, in my adult life, has always been tagged as an enemy of the United States and as a threat, but once you get inside the intelligence community, you find out that the Syrians are bankrupt, a police state that's riven with factions and couldn't threaten the United States in 100 years.
But because Rumsfeld and [then-Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas] Feith and Wolfowitz are so pro-Israeli, the answer needs to come back, "Yes, Syria is a threat." Over the course of a decade and longer, even back into the first Bush administration and into Mr. Reagan's administration, the enemies of Mr. Rumsfeld, Mr. Feith, Mr. Wolfowitz were not necessarily the enemies that you could derive from the intelligence material.
And in his view, the invasion of Iraq has hurt our ability to get to the group that is actually responsible for the 9/11 attacks
But by the spring of 2002, it was becoming very apparent that they were thinking about going to war against Iraq. I think it could be said that the people working counterterrorism didn't take it all that seriously. In the judgment of people who were working the issue of Al Qaeda and thinking about Iraq, the threat level was so infinitesimal from Iraq and so dramatic from Al Qaeda that I don't think people really took it seriously. It was kind of talk. You knew that Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld [had] and certainly the president has the reputation of wanting to get Saddam for having tried to kill his dad.
It was a nightmare. I know Tenet was briefed repeatedly by the head of the bin Laden department, that any invasion of Iraq would break the back of our counterterrorism program, and it was just ignored. Maybe the part of the agency that dealt with Iraq was eager to get rid of the problem and tried to do it, but the counterterrorism section of the agency thought it was really shooting your foot with a great big gun, because compared to Al Qaeda and what it represents, Saddam was a zero threat. ...
Those quotes are from the Frontline Program already mentioned...
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/darkside/It was an interesting program, I know not everyone will agree with the statements made, but they are from the folks who were there at the time. And like I stated earlier, George Tenet takes a real beating in this program, and rightfully so, IMO. He went along to get along it seems.
