Thursday, November 17, 2005

John Kerry decries lack of information that he was too busy to get

Here’s Joan Vennochi in the Boston Globe: “Poll-watching pols now say no on Iraq

In his recent speech at Georgetown University, Kerry said, ''The country and the Congress were misled into war. I regret that we were not given the truth."
Maybe he should have showed up for some briefings of the Senate Intelligence Committee, long before 9/11 and Iraq:

A Bush-Cheney '04 ad released Aug. 13 accuses Kerry of being absent for 76% of the Senate Intelligence Committee's public hearings during the time he served there. The Kerry campaign calls the ad "misleading," so we checked, and Bush is right.
If Senator Splunge had showed up for work maybe he wouldn't have been misled.

10 comments:

Pat Patterson said...

Botox makes it hard to concentrate!

Brian said...

Isn't that same speech where Kerry said at one point we have too much troops in Iraq and didn't have enough there at another point?

Anonymous said...

I have an idea. But it's kind of wild and way out there, so I hope you're sitting down for it. Okay, here goes.

Kerry is a tedious two-faced bum who no one can stand AND Bush intentionally lied to get his oil war.

Crazy concept, huh?

I have this other premise about mountains being tall at the same time that birds have feathers. But I'll hold off on that; I don't want to completely blow anyone's mind here.

Anonymous said...

Bush didn't lie. He said the same things everyone was saying -- British, French, German. Hell, the UN was saying it, too.

That everyone turns out to be mistaken does not mean they were lying.

On the other hand, saying they lied is itself a lie.

Anonymous said...

Get a grip. Bush lied.

"[b]The intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy[/b]": that's the British view, and it's ever so unfortunately on paper.

Your moment of clarity will come. Let it come.

Bic said...

That 'fixed' meme has been torn apart so many times it's kind of sad to see someone bring it up again.

Even discounting the fact that "fixed around" has a different meaning in common British parlance than it does here (or do you also think that half of Britian is gay because of they like to puff a 'fag' every now and then) the other 6 'downing street memos' (which are rarely brought up) clearly show that the British intelligence community had a high level of certainty about Saddam's WMD programs.

'Fixing' the intelligence in the way you mean would have been to easiest job in the world as most of it (including the UN's, France's Germany's, Russia's, etc..) with very few exceptions, pointed to Saddam's willingness to obtain and produce WMDs.

As anyone familiar with making decisions in the real world knows, you have to go with what you know AT THE TIME. Intelligence is never a sure thing, it is always someones 'best guess' as to what they think is happening but when every expert in the known world, both friend and foe, tell you one thing, you can normally assume it is true to some degree of certainty. In this case Saddam WAS trying to reinstitute his WMD programs, he just hadn't reached the levels everyone thought he had.

Anonymous said...

I've observed that those who throw around the online adjective "sad" the most are never actually saddened by what they're discussing, nor do they exhibit a stellar ability in proclaiming what most normal people would consider "sad."

More inconvenient news for the ever-faithful to discredit and dismiss:

Germans Say U.S. Used Bad Data to Justify Iraq Invasion
Sat Nov 19 2005 17:58:49 ET
The German intelligence officials responsible for one of the most important informants on Saddam Hussein's suspected weapons of mass destruction say that the Bush Administration and the CIA repeatedly exaggerated his claims during the run-up to the Iraq war.
The LOS ANGELES TIMES is planning to front the allegation in Sunday editions, newsroom sources tell the DRUDGE REPORT.
Five senior officials from Germany's Federal Intelligence Service, or BND, said in interviews with the LOS ANGELES TIMES that they warned U.S. intelligence authorities that the source, an Iraqi defector codenamed Curveball, never claimed to produce germ weapons and never saw anyone else do so.
According to the Germans, President Bush mischaracterized Curveball's information when he warned before the war that Iraq had at least seven mobile factories brewing biological poisons. Then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell also misstated Curveball's claims in his pre-war presentation to the United Nations on Feb. 5, 2003, the Germans said.
Curveball's German handlers for the last six years said his information was often vague, mostly second-hand and impossible to confirm.
``This was not substantial evidence,'' said a senior German intelligence official. ``We made clear we could not verify the things he said.''

Pat said...

Eric, I seem to recall that your coverage of Kerry's missed votes was how you first came to my attention over at Kerry Haters.

As for Mr Curveball, here's a snippet that Anonymous left out:

"At the Central Intelligence Agency, officials embraced Curveball's account even though they could not confirm it or interview him until a year after the invasion. They ignored multiple warnings about his reliability before the war, punished in-house critics who provided proof that he had lied and refused to admit error until May 2004, 14 months after the invasion."

Considering that most sane people blame the intelligence community for the Iraq WMD claims, it sounds like this story just confirms it. Who did Joe Wilson's wife work for again?

Anonymous said...

The "bad intelligence ate my homework" excuse convinces only those hungry to be convinced. On the topic of WMDs, here's another snippet that everybody left out:

"Overnight, Bush's ability to scare us has vanished. And his Iraq disaster has destroyed the GOP's dreams of permanent domination."

That's the subhead for "America's Tipping Point," an article on Slate.com. Here's the conclusion:

"Fear is no longer on the Bush administration's side. No wonder they're now afraid -- very, very afraid."

And another snippet, from The Nelson Report:

"The stunning swiftness of the bipartisan Congressional collapse of support for the Administration's conduct of the war in Iraq, and by extension the entire anti-terrorism effort, is such that it has not been fully appreciated by the ‘leadership' of either party. That's the real meaning of a Senate vote which Republicans tried to spin into a victory for the President, because they avoided the Democrat's amendment to set performance-based withdrawal deadlines."

The administration's response to all this isn't more openness, more reflection, more competence. It's to shout "reprehensible, reprehensible" and "cut and run, cut and run." Too bad America isn't one big prescreened Town Hall Meeting.

Gayle Miller said...

The intelligence provided was faulty. The British intelligence services, where it ORIGINATED, have admitted as much. And not only President Bush believed that Saddam Hussein was a grave danger to this country, as far back as 1998 (when the aspirin factory bomber was still in office) it was being alleged that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.

The Democrats clearly lack a backbone - but some Republicans need to relocate their cojones as well!