auto-da-fe

My point is that even if one stays "informed" that does not neccassarily mean that he/she actually knows what is going on.

Ron Garrett

I haven't read Rep. Harman's comments, she indeed sits on the the Select Intel Committee and Homeland Security Committee.

Understand what she was presented with, i.e. briefings vetted by the Bush team, and that is the issue.

If you look at a photo taken by a TK14 satellite of a tractor trailer tanker truck, you can interpret what it is a variety of ways. It can be a tanker full of milk, a tanker full of oil, a tanker full of rocket fuel, a tanker full of liquid weaponized antrax, or an empty tanker. The charges being made by intel analysts is the Bush team removed the caveats and qualifiers on their work and forwarded only the pieces and possible interpretations that supported their pre-determined objectives and none which played against them. The charge is they had Iraqis in exile making up stories that no one in DIA and BIR gave any credence to, and Rummy and the boys held it up as solid HUMINT. The charge is that Cheney's own office investigated the information that the Iraqis had tried to buy yellowcake Uranium from Niger and determined it was a fraud seven months before Bush made the charge before the nation in his State of the Union Address.

Now Condy Rice wants you to believe that it was just an oversight that the President didn't know about the results of an investigation of a purported attempt by Iraq to buy Uranium conducted by the Dick Cheney's office and one of his own appointed ambassadors, and that Dick Cheney didn't see the State of the Union Address beforehand, so the misinformation got into the speech as an oversight. Do you really believe that?

When I go to the AFIO meetings I hear the currently active analysts that attend bitching about how this White House mishandles intel to suit its agenda. Rand Beers' comments on the Iraq war after he walked out of the White House are instructive,

"I continue to be puzzled by it," said Beers, who did not oppose the war but thought it should have been fought with a broader coalition. "Why was it such a policy priority?" The official rationale was the search for weapons of mass destruction, he said, "although the evidence was pretty qualified, if you listened carefully."

Beers has had a distinguished 30 year career in intelligence. We started out the same time and he stayed in for the long haul. He's one of the hands-down best, and a hard nosed intel warrior and America-firster. If you can't read between the lines of what he can say publicly without breaking the law, let me interpret him for you: The White House had another agenda that made Iraq a higher priority than terrorism, and it wasn't weapons of mass destruction. What's your explanation? Is it just coincidental that a White House full of oil men chose to conquer one of the most oil rich countries in the world and manipulated the country into thinking there was a clear and present danger by shading the intelligence? I was born at night, but not last night.

The Bush White House is hardly the first to abuse the intel community this way. Nixon treated the CIA like his own personal assasin squad. The Bush boys aren't the first to throw business to their money men either, but when they award contracts to their own companies without a bidding process..well that should be obvious enough for any thinking person.

Follow the money Dave. These millionaire wheeler dealers aren't spending a hundred million plus dollars campaigning for the White House because they want to insure that no Iraqi child is left behind.

Radcliffe Emerson

Not to sound too harsh, but it was HIS country, not ours. Noone has a right to go into someone else's nation and tell them how to run their affairs, unless they attack someone else. Saddam did attack someone else in 91, this time he had invaded noone.
We in the US certainly would not allow a foreign country to invade us to force us to live the way they want us to.
Yes, Hussein was a horrible person, but it was up to Iraq to deal with him, not up to us to force our will on them.
I still say if Iraq had no oil, we wouldn't give a sh*t what Hussein had done there.
Wolfowitz pretty much admitted that to the Guardian a week or so ago, that it was purely about the oil.
And, while I'm at it, all this crap about getting mad that Iran is trying to get a nuke. So what? We invented the damned thingsk, other countries don't have the right to pursue legitimate business deals, even if they are weapons?
To me, this crap is so ridiculous. I easily see why other countries compare our leader to Hitler.
When another nation attacks someone, then yes, we can act. But we have no right at all to invade other nations just because we think they're not conducting themselves the way we believe they should.

auto-da-fe

Ron, first thank you for your well informed posts, as it has provided a different perspective than I have seen before.

However, I have two problems about the whole thing.

1) The WMD debate was not the ONLY reason given for the war. Yes I will agree that it was used as one justification for it, but it was not the only. More specifically, it was said that Iraq refused to cooperate with the UN sanctions and propostions, and that fact was cause for military intervention. It wasn't that he had WMD's (although I am aware that it was portrayed that way by some media outlets) it was that he wouldn't cooperate to prove that he didn't. I am well aware of who said what about it, and that many times intelligence was used to show that he might have them. However, my take on it was more along the lines of he wouldn't cooperate with UN resolutions, and that was cause for military actions. Most of the UN resolutions read more like "We want you to show us what happened to your WMD's" than "We think you have (or are producing) WMD's". It isn't just semantics, since if we don't find any WMD's that doesn't in and of itself mean we weren't still in the right.

2) Ok, say it was for oil. So what? We have a evil despot controlling one of the largest supplies of oil in the world. We have a shaky economy that is exasperated by high oil prices. We have refusal by the SH administration to cooperate with other countries (excluding the fake "Oil for Food" program). Lets say that we did not do anything. Eventually the world as a whole (not just the US) would need access to Iraqi oil in order to stem the tide of rising oil prices. God forbid, but if SH was able to work out some sort of strategic alliance (either forcefully or diplomatically) with Saudia Arabia, then the world could truly be hurting, as these two countries control most of the worlds oil. Granted it did not look like that was going to happen any time soon, but who is to say in 5 or 10 years. It wasn't that long ago that SH was our ally, so that just proves that things can change. Bush would not be the first president of the US (or any leader in other countries) that went to war over resources. This is not an excuse for war alone, but when taken into context with everything else, I don't see what is inherently bad about fighting for resources and in turn, fighting for your own countries economic health.

Oil plays a big part in the world economy, and free access to said oil is a big part as well. We are not governing the oil in Iraq, only allowing it to flow to the rest of the world. It isn't like the US took over the oil refineries in Iraq and said "Only Americans can use this oil". Any gain we get from it would be passed on to the rest of the world as well.

Of course, this is just my take on things.

auto-da-fe

Someone please correct me if I am wrong (which I am sure I am), but was SH massing troops on the Saudia Arabia border for like 3 months before the war started in preperation for another incursion into SA? I have tried to find something on this, and I am sure I heard something about it, but I can't find any news reports about it.

brighid

Yes, but only American Oil Companies with VERY close ties to this administration will be making the profits and controlling the flow of oil to other countries. If SH has such power because he controlled that oil, then in turn the US now has that control over the oil. The Iraqi people aren't profiting from the acquisition of their natural resources under the Americans any more then they profited under SH.

Brighid

auto-da-fe

Who is to say that brighid? To my knowledge no contracts have been awarded yet to see who gets the oil. I can envision Iraq becoming part of OPEC. Are there any existing oil companies in Iraq that could handle the flow of oil out of it? Would any company operating inside Iraq not pay taxes (presumably huge taxes) to the Iraqi government? Would it not creat jobs for the local Iraqis needed to build and maintain the facilities?

brighid

Uhhh ... Halliburton and one of it's subsidiaries if I am not mistaken ... but I could be remembering incorrectly. I can't answer the other questions because I do not have that information, but unless the control and profits of the oil companies are going to the Iraqi people (and not mostly to American controlled companies) I don't see how a few job created actually helps the Iraqi people. I would also say their might be some security risks in allowing local Iraqis to be allowed to build and maintain the facilities. It's not as if they have the equipment needed and let's face it ... that will come from an American company as well.

Brighid

Ron Garrett

Dead men, women and children is the so what. As far as we know we didn't kill the despot, just a lot of his people and more than a handful of our own and more to come.

When I joined the Army, I did so to protect American freedom and lives, and I was perfectly prepared to die for it. But I didn't sign up to be a mercenary being paid in plunder to go out into the world to take what others had for the profit of the big boys back home, and somehow I don't think anyone else has ever signed up with that understanding.

I think shaving ten cents off a gallon of gas isn't enough value to justify a war. In fact my specific problem with this is that our troops are pumped full of nonsense that they are on a mission of human liberation so they'll bravely go fight and die for Dick Cheney's stock options, but of course the very fist military action they took was to seize and secure the oil fields. And the grade school bully that shakes your lunch money out of your pockets is putting it in trust for your future benefit.

auto-da-fe

Well, first I don't buy into the arguement that THE ONLY REASON was for oil. Though I will concede that it was at minimum a contributing factor. And you said "shave 10 cents off a gallon", well first it is probably way more than 10 cents. The gas prices in my area have gone down by more than 30 cents. If you extrapolate that to all persons consuming gas (meaning semi-trucks, airplanes, commuters, etc.) then that can mean a savings of hundreds of millions of dollars. Hardly a drop in the bucket.

Second, yes civilians died. Yes, Iraqi military members died. Yes, american and coalition forces died. But, this is still less bloodshed than any previous conflict of this size by far. I know your moral indignation knows no bounds, but, that is purely a matter of perspective. No I wouldn't want some bomb landing on my house and killing my wife and kids, but, then again, I don't live in Iraq. I would think that there is a certain amount of expectancy among the Iraqi people (or at least, there was) of peril in everyday life. You are going to say "Well how would you feel if you were one of the ones who lost a family memeber, or died yourself", and I say how would you feel if you were set free from prison that SH put you into for basically no reason? There are down sides and upsides to everything, and I personally beleive that the greater good was served for Iraq, even if it was done on false pretenses. It is all a matter of perspective, and it bothers me when people presume I should feel the way they do, or I am somehow a lesser person. That is bullshit flat out. Call me a Bush apologizer (which if you read all my posts you would know I am not) if you must, but I feel I am arguing more for facts than pure conjecture. You, Ron, may have some firsthand knowledge about the intelligence community, but that doesn't mean you are the moral authority figure on how that intelligence is used.

You said you joined the Army to protect American freedom and the american way of life. Well, like it or not, our economy is a big part of our freedom, and oil is a huge part of that economy. I know innocents died, but I don't hear anyone complaining about the 800,000 German civilians killed in WWII, and they were innocent as well. I come from a military family, and I find it paradoxical that you are morally indignant about this. I thought most servicemen agreed that civilian deaths are sometimes unavoidable.

My point is that there are none of us who can say exactly what happened, and although we may each have our own opnions on it, I am not better than you, and you are not better than me, just because of those opinions. Yet, often in these debates, it is portrayed with too much emotion (mostly righteous anger), and the mentality that if you aren't with us then you are against us, and therefore, less than us.