What Was That About Access to Intel?

Posted by on . 39 comments.

So the talking point du jour is that Congress had access to all the intel that the White House did. Anyone care to stop parroting that crap before they show the rest of their ass?

White House Press Briefing by Ari Fleischer10/09/01:

Q Ari, can I go back to the other topic? The congressional leaders who are allowed to be briefed, are they being instructed not to share information with their colleagues on the Hill?

MR. FLEISCHER: They’ve been clearly told about the importance of keeping information that is sensitive, treating it in a manner so it is not released.

Q So that he’s not sharing it with other members of Congress? Are they specifically being told that? Is it being limited to –

MR. FLEISCHER: Keith, I haven’t heard every conversation that’s been had with every leader, so I can’t answer that fully.
Q So, Ari, what is the response from some members of Congress who feel that they’re not being fully consulted, that they’re being left out of the loop by this?

MR. FLEISCHER: Well, as the memo makes very plain, it still is important to share information with the Congress, to discuss matters with the Congress, and that still will be done. The question is, discussion of any information that is of such a classified nature or is classified, that it would not be germane to members who are not listed as the Speaker, the Minority Leader, the Majority Leader or the chair of the ranking members of the Intelligence Committee.

Q So this memo does have the effect of dramatically limiting the number of eyes, if you will, on Capitol Hill that can see this information?

MR. FLEISCHER: That’s correct.

Q What I was getting at really is that you’re not — just to follow on that, you’re really not briefing Congress, you’re basically just briefing about five or six select members of Congress.

MR. FLEISCHER: It’s quite clear, it’s briefing the leaders of Congress.

Q Ari, there are other members of Congress, certainly, who are cleared to receive classified information: the Chairman of the Foreign Relations and International Affairs Committee —

MR. FLEISCHER: It’s not a question of cleared to receive information, this is a question about how the administration is going to work with Congress in the dissemination of information that’s classified.

Q Why wouldn’t, for example, the leader — the Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, ranking member — Armed Services ranking member — why wouldn’t they be able to receive this information? Is there some –

MR. FLEISCHER: Because the President has made the determination that at a time of war like this, he wants to make certain that every step is taken so that there cannot be a loss of life as a result of an inadvertent release of information. And therefore, the President has decided that he wants to make certain that the agencies that report to him provide information in a fashion that is a smaller circle to members of Congress.
[...]
Q But Armed Services and Foreign Relations are directly responsible for oversight of armed services and foreign relations. How can they be of help if they don’t have the information?

MR. FLEISCHER: Because not every aspect of their job deals with having immediate information that of classified nature about what may be happening on a military operation on an operational sense.

Q But Ari, connect the dots. A larger circle was being briefed initially. And now you’ve restricted it to the four leaders plus the chairmen and ranking members of the Intelligence Committee.

MR. FLEISCHER: Correct. Exactly right.
[...]
MR. FLEISCHER: It’s a question of the determination made by the President that in a time of war, the usual rules do not apply, and that the President is going to err on the side of protecting lives, so that inadvertent information — inadvertent release of information cannot occur.

Q I understand that point completely, but they were being briefed at the beginning.

MR. FLEISCHER: And that requires necessarily a tightening of the circle about who has access to all this information that I described. It does not mean that members of Congress will not continue to receive information; they will continue to receive information. And the President makes that perfectly plain in his memo to the agencies when he said that we will continue to inform the leadership in our critical military intelligence law enforcement operations.

But I remind you, even in peacetime, not every member of Congress had access to every bit of classified information.
[...]
Q And the upshot of it is that the conduct of the war policy and its oversight is now being done by the Executive Branch and six members of Congress?

MR. FLEISCHER: The information-sharing on the matters that are described in this memo will be available to six members of Congress — actually, it’s eight.
[...]
Q Isn’t it a huge shift of power to the Executive Branch?

MR. FLEISCHER: That’s correct — that’s what the President has decided.

Shut. The. Fuck. Up.

Briefing link via illmethinks_politiq.

Comments

  1. Nick in Beantown says:
    November 17, 2005 at 11:19 am

    Can I get an Amen?!

  2. JimC says:
    November 17, 2005 at 12:02 pm

    Well no you can’t…

    Although this brief snapshot in time seems significant and if you read the full context of the briefing (it was in response to members of congress leaking classified info, hmmm leaks, always a leak), I found references to this policy being back away from by the Bush administration later. So before getting allow high and mighty, we might want to dig some more to find out if this policy was in fact enacted during the run up before the war. IF this was the case, you would think the Dems would have made a golden calf out of this transcript and mailed it to each American on the planet, along with each French citizen as well…

    If this is real news, this will be vetted…send it to CBS news, they pretty good at handling stories like this…

  3. Torm says:
    November 17, 2005 at 12:06 pm

    Don’t be a fool. They weren’t even talking about Iraq! They were talking about Afghanistan. Are you now going to say that our senators needed more information about Afghanistan. Perhaps the president lied to them about that war as well? This conversation is completely irrelevant even though you’re going to say “it shows that the president keeps things from congress dirrrr” Wrong. It shows the president chose to keep things from congress 2 years before Iraq was invaded. Also it stated that the classified information was shared with the members of the intelligence committee. Last time I checked there were several democrats on that committee… o and do you know who is the vice chair of the intelligence committee? John D. Rockefellar. The same man who said this about the Iraq war

    “There is unmistakable evidence that Saddam Hussein is working aggressively to develop nuclear weapons and will likely have nuclear weapons within the next five years. And that may happen sooner if he can obtain access to enriched uranium from foreign sources — something that is not that difficult in the current world. We also should remember we have always underestimated the progress Saddam has made in development of weapons of mass destruction. ”

    Read it for yourself: http://www.senate.gov/~rockefeller/news/2002/flrstmt0102002.html

    Now how about you shut the fuck up.

  4. g says:
    November 17, 2005 at 12:09 pm

    thanks for the link peeps…keep up the good sh**

    g

    http://www.illmethinks.com

  5. matt says:
    November 17, 2005 at 12:10 pm

    there was never any proof of members of congress leaking, and a Republican (Richard Shelby) http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-5413008,00.html was just “cleared” by the Senate Ethics Committee.

    but proof isn’t your stock in trade, now is it?

    >I found references to this policy being back away from by the Bush administration later.

    Link? nah…easier to just go by faith.

  6. Nick in Beantown says:
    November 17, 2005 at 12:19 pm

    Jim-Jimmay! You’ve missed the point, again. The Democrats ARE making a stink about this. That is why they are questioning the lead-up to the war. And as far the leaks are concerned, we see a White House willing to blow the cover of a CIA agent working to prevent the proliferation of WMD for the sole purpose of revenge. High and mighty, indeed.

    If there are references to the Bush Administration backing away from this policy, I would love to see something that backs it up. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were “backing away” to be seen. Let’s see if they backed it up before or after we had boots on the ground…

  7. matt says:
    November 17, 2005 at 12:21 pm

    9/11 Commissioner Bob Kerrey:
    KERREY: That isn’t true. The president has much more access to intelligence than members of Congress does. Ask any member of Congress. Ask a Republican member of Congress, do you get the same access to intelligence that the president does? Look at these aluminum tube stories that came out the president delivered to the Congress — we believe these would be used for centrifuges, didn’t deliver to Congress the full range of objections from the Department of Energy experts, nuclear weapons experts, that said it’s unlikely they were for centrifuges, more likely that they were for rockets, which was a pre-existing use. The president has much more access to intelligence than any member of Congress.

    Iraq war hawk Kenneth Pollack:
    ‘Only the Administration has access to all the information available to various agencies of the US government

  8. Matthew Tobey says:
    November 17, 2005 at 12:28 pm

    The French? CBS? You’re adorable, Jim. Anything else you want to arbitrarily throw in there? Isn’t Michael Moore fat?

    Where are those “references” to the Bush Administration sharing all of their intelligence with Congress before the vote? Some links would rule the fucking school, buckaroo.

  9. JimC says:
    November 17, 2005 at 1:21 pm

    >Matthew Tobey

    I said I found a reference that said the Bush admin was backign away from it but I also said that we need to find any evidence that the policy was enacted or abandoned. One cannot assume that this press conference, like the previous psoter said, was related to Iraq war intel.

    Furthermore, I find it hard to beleive any senator worth anything would have signed off on Bush’s plan for military action if they had been kept in the dark…if they did, then they should resign…but you’re not calling for their resignations now are you…

    However, I too would like to know more about this policy, whether or not it was enacted by the admin, how long, what did it cover, etc. Right now there’s no evidence so assume that from a 2001 press briefing, all intel was limited to congress, especially since I would think people like Kerry would really throw a fit…

  10. tom says:
    November 17, 2005 at 1:32 pm

    when you have top level administration heads getting together with top intelligence heads to see what kind of “intelligence” to churn out, i dont see why it matters if everyone had access to that tainted info? thats a completely meaningless point, to be honest. what is meaningful is that the administration worked to be able to justify saying what it wanted to say by manipulating the wording and meaning of specific intelligence. fact.

  11. matt says:
    November 17, 2005 at 1:42 pm

    >I said I found a reference that said the Bush admin was backign away from it

    which is still unseen

    >One cannot assume that this press conference, like the previous psoter said, was related to Iraq war intel.

    it wasn’t, but it was more than a press conference, it was a presidential memo that fundamentally changed the rules. Is there any insatnce in 5 years that the White House has given up any powers? Not just this, but anything? The answer is quite obviously no.

    I’m not calling for any resignations. democrats put their electoral goals first in 2002 EXACTLY as the administration planned. vote no = “weak on terror” vote yes = political cover for Bush. That’s just the fact. But the President was the one who pushed for the war, and to cling to the political cover democrats gave him is simply cowardly. It’s politics, but still a cowardly move by the supposed anti-coward.

    the evidence is as plain at the type on the page. the president signed a memo drastically reducing access to congress. you can hope that at some point is was rescinded, but hope ain’t proof.

  12. matt says:
    November 17, 2005 at 1:53 pm

    Ouch. Want to keep playing?

    http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/13185357.htm

    ASSERTION: In his speech, Bush noted that “more than a hundred Democrats in the House and the Senate – who had access to the same intelligence – voted to support removing Saddam Hussein from power.”

    CONTEXT: This isn’t true.

    The Congress didn’t have access to the President’s Daily Brief, a top-secret compendium of intelligence on the most pressing national security issues that was sent to the president every morning by former CIA Director George Tenet.

    As for prewar intelligence on Iraq, senior administration officials had access to other information and sources that weren’t available to lawmakers.

    Cheney and his aides visited the CIA and other intelligence agencies to view raw intelligence reports, received briefings and engaged in highly unusual give-and-take sessions with analysts.

    Moreover, officials in the White House and the Pentagon received information directly from the Iraqi National Congress (INC), an exile group, circumventing U.S. intelligence agencies, which greatly distrusted the organization.

    The INC’s information came from Iraqi defectors who claimed that Iraq was hiding chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs, had mobile biological-warfare facilities and was training Islamic radicals in assassinations, bombings and hijackings.

    The White House emphasized these claims in making its case for war, even though the defectors had shown fabrication or deception in lie-detector tests or had been rejected as unreliable by U.S. intelligence professionals.

    All of the exiles’ claims turned out to be bogus or remain unproven.

    War hawks at the Pentagon also created a special unit that produced a prewar report – one not shared with Congress – that alleged that Iraq was in league with al-Qaida. A version of the report, briefed to Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld and top White House officials, disparaged the CIA for finding there was no cooperation between Iraq and the terrorist group, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence disclosed.

    After the report was leaked in November 2003 to a conservative magazine, the Pentagon disowned it.

    In fact, a series of secret U.S. intelligence assessments discounted the administration’s assertion that Saddam could give banned weapons to al-Qaida.

    In other cases, Bush and his top lieutenants relied on partial or uncorroborated intelligence.

    For example, Cheney contended in an August 2002 speech that Iraq would develop a nuclear weapon “fairly soon,” even though U.S. intelligence agencies and the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency had no evidence to support such a claim.

    The following month, Bush, Cheney and then-national security adviser Condoleezza Rice asserted that Iraq had sought aluminum tubes for a nuclear-weapons program. At the time, however, U.S. intelligence agencies were deeply divided over the question. The IAEA later determined that the tubes were for ground-to-ground rockets.

    A recently declassified Defense Intelligence Agency report from February 2002 said that an al-Qaida detainee was probably lying to U.S. interrogators when he claimed that Iraq had been teaching members of the terrorist network to use chemical and biological weapons.

    Yet eight months after the report was published, Bush told the nation that “we’ve learned that Iraq has trained al-Qaida members in bomb-making and poisons and gases.”

    Meanwhile, lawmakers didn’t have access to intelligence products that may have been more temperate than what they got, even after they investigated the prewar intelligence assessment. For instance, the Director of Central Intelligence refused to give the Senate committee a copy of a paper drafted by the CIA’s Near East and Southeast Asia Office examining Iraq’s links to terrorism.

    Lawmakers didn’t see the main document concerning Iraq and WMD – the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate – until three days before their vote authorizing war. The White House ordered the NIE compiled only after lawmakers, including the then-chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Sen. Bob Graham, D-Fla., demanded it.

    The resolution that authorized use of force against Iraq didn’t specifically address removing Saddam. It gave Bush the power to “defend the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq” and to “enforce all relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions regarding Iraq.”

  13. ice weasel says:
    November 17, 2005 at 8:44 pm

    The willful ignorance and feigned naivete is sickening. Only someone deeply deluded could wonder if this administration “backed away” from their stated policy, especially when it comes to keeping secrets. Hell, it’s been shrub’s “keep them in there until the job is done” that killed him on social security just as it has damaged this country in this war in Iraq.

    Please. There’s no debating with children who would assume this posture. It’s ceding too much before the discussion even begins.

    And by the way, thanks matt.

  14. JimC says:
    November 18, 2005 at 7:08 am

    I think it is pretty pathetic that the best attack the dems have is that they didn’t do their job. I also find it incredible that the only attack they have is based upon an abstract unprovable idea that Bush lied/mislead them. Your whole argument stands solely on whether or not the dems did or di not see the whole intelligence about Iraq’s WMD’s and if there was some intel withheld, that intel contradicted or at least cast doubt on the case for war. However, there have been investigations already to determine if the administration coerced inteligence analysts, which they found it di not. So, unless someone can produce hard copies of some unknown document that shows Bush had other intel, this whole debate is moot. Not to mention that on the admins side is the whole intelligence community of every other country in the world backed up what intel Bush used! Not to mention that just a few years earlier Clinton was making the same statements about Iraq.

    Dick Morris last night on O’Reilly, said that while in service with Mr Clinton, there was no doubt that Bill Clinton and his administration took as defacto standard that Iraq had WMD’s and was seeking nuclear capability. It is extremely wreckless for the dems and especially Bill Clinton to falsely claim before the world that our President misled us into war, only to score political points, while our troops are still fighting that war. Only those who lack forsight thinks we should pull troops out immediately (cut and run) so what good does it do to make such statements without proof?

    If you have proof, put it up or shut up…

  15. matt says:
    November 18, 2005 at 7:47 am

    You can focus on the dems “not doing their job” all day and all night, our purpose isn’t to enshrine them in the political hall of fame. You can attempt to blindly follow your republican talking points, (which is all you and your buddy have done here) the argument about access to intelligence is a distraction. You have refused to acknowledge the objective facts posted here in favor of your faith that the President wouldn’t lie about sharing all his secrets with the party he wakes up every day to destroy as if they were al queda themselves. (yeah, i know you think they are, so predictable)

    You can also trumpet an incomplete partisan investigation in the Senate that so far has only focused on whether or not the White House forced the CIA to say anything. It has not looked into how the administration used their data, especially from known liars and criminals like Ahmed Chalabi (go ahead and defend him as a great patriot, i beg of you) and others including some who failed lie detector tests.

    Just stop with Clinton and Dick Morris. You can’t try to destroy a President by claiming he is dishonest and a moral degenerate and then try to cherry pick the one thing you think he did he did that backs up a war entered under different circumstances. And Dick Morris? Hardly a good source of information. Or don’t you care about him having his toe sucked by a hooker while he was giving clinton advice?

    I’ve posted plenty of proof. you have consistently ignored it in favor of some kind of faith-based belief that your President is infallible.

    >If you have proof, put it up or shut up…

    guess how many more times i’ll allow that…

  16. Mark says:
    November 18, 2005 at 8:01 am

    I fairly confident that Hooked on Phonics did NOT work for Jim.

    Jim–The evidence is pretty clear that the Prez has consistently sought to consolidate power in the Executive Branch — and has yet to backtrack. And it’s a FACT that Congress did not have the full story:

    “Meanwhile, lawmakers didn’t have access to intelligence products that may have been more temperate than what they got, even after they investigated the prewar intelligence assessment. For instance, the Director of Central Intelligence refused to give the Senate committee a copy of a paper drafted by the CIA’s Near East and Southeast Asia Office examining Iraq’s links to terrorism.”

    Or would that be easier to understand if it were on a Big Chief tablet?

  17. screwtape says:
    November 18, 2005 at 8:19 am

    That’s Mr “I-am-a-software-engineer-therefore-more-logical-than-you” for you. After repeatedly being asked to post links to back up his “assertions” and not doing it, he then has the gall to say “put it up or shut up”. Ah, the irony…

    You know, Jim, it would not turn you into a democrat to admit your guy in the Whitehouse was wrong, at least in this case. In fact, it would be considered by many to be a sign of character.

  18. JimC says:
    November 18, 2005 at 8:41 am

    If the dems have proof then impeach Bush otherwise, they should go away, it is time they act on the suppsoed “proof” you people think you have and take it to Congress. I’m betting the response will be “won’t happen because W is supressing the truth”. Well, I guess we’ll jsut argue about it until W servese out his term and John McCain is sworn in as the next President…

  19. JimC says:
    November 18, 2005 at 8:46 am

    “screwtape Says:”

    The assertions I’ve made are in public record, the claims you make are in your collective fantasies…

    It is the your(left wingers) to prove that Bush lied. This has not happened. The only thing you’ve done is set up a “environment” and make assumptions and accusations that “could support” the theory that Bush lied….hardly hold up in a court of law.

    I have yet to see anyone in the senate explain how they know that the inetl they looked at was different than the one Bush had which was of any relevance and if the senators who did dig deeper did not spread the word, then that is their problem, however, I find it highly unlikely that a dem would sit on that kind of info…

  20. JimC says:
    November 18, 2005 at 8:48 am

    “>If you have proof, put it up or shut up…

    guess how many more times i’ll allow that… ”

    Is that a threat? look at the final line in your blog post and tell me what it says? If anything I used a little more class than you…

  21. JimC says:
    November 18, 2005 at 8:52 am

    http://www.factcheck.org/article222.html

  22. JimC says:
    November 18, 2005 at 8:53 am

    http://www.factcheck.org/UploadedFiles/US%20Report.pdf

  23. matt says:
    November 18, 2005 at 8:53 am

    >If the dems have proof then impeach Bush

    so in addition to everything else, you need remedial a remedial civics lesson as well. pathetic. who controls the house? who controls the senate? bush sycophants like some other people we now know.

    >the theory that Bush lied….hardly hold up in a court of law.

    in case you hadn’t noticed, no one’s going to court.

    >Is that a threat? look at the final line in your blog post and tell me what it says? If anything I used a little more class than you…

    my site. i’ll say and allow anything i damn please.

  24. matt says:
    November 18, 2005 at 8:57 am

    http://www.factcheck.org/article222.html

    “He May Have Been Wrong But He Wasn’t Lying”

    that is probably the best epitaph you can hope for out of this administration

  25. Nick in Beantown says:
    November 18, 2005 at 9:13 am

    JimC a software engineer? No shit! How’s that QBasic workin’ out for ya, there, Jimbo?

  26. JimC says:
    November 18, 2005 at 9:25 am

    “Nick in Beantown Says:

    November 18th, 2005 at 9:13 am
    JimC a software engineer? No shit! How’s that QBasic workin’ out for ya, there, Jimbo?
    ”

    Don’t know, never used it…

    I’ve been working with Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 for the past few months beta testing it but is was released last week so we will be going to the final version shortly. C# is great for an old C++ programmer like myself…

  27. screwtape says:
    November 18, 2005 at 9:43 am

    JimC Says:

    November 18th, 2005 at 8:52 am
    http://www.factcheck.org/article222.html

    Holy Macaroni! Is that an admission that Bush is not perfect? I can’t believe you caved. I thought you were a man of principle. I thought you had conviction.

    I have lost all respect for you.

  28. JimC says:
    November 18, 2005 at 11:34 am

    “Holy Macaroni! Is that an admission that Bush is not perfect? I can’t believe you caved. I thought you were a man of principle. I thought you had conviction.”

    I’ve never said Bush was perfect, far from it. I disagree on him with a number of things, however, I don’t beleive Saddam was an innocent victim of Bush’s evil plan to take over the world. I believe there is no concrete evidence that Saddam gave up his WMD program. The only concrete fact we know is that we haven’t found any. Just because we haven’t found them doesn’t mean he didn’t have them. Like I’ve posted before, there are questions about suspicious convoys of trucks that moved a lot of material from Iraq to Syria before the war. There were illegal Iraqi missile systems showing up in other countries apparently smuggled out via scrap metal shipments. We have found buried MiG fighters in the desert. In the land of possibilities that liberals usually dwell in, I can’t see how the possibility that Saddam did in fact have WMD’s but was successful in hiding/moving them before war is so easily dismissed by the left. Oh wait I know why, to admit that there was a possibility would undercut the fun going on right now…

  29. matt says:
    November 18, 2005 at 11:43 am

    >Oh wait I know why, to admit that there was a possibility would undercut the fun going on right now…

    we’ve been saying it for years, including when there was still a possibility that any of it would come true? weapons to syria? they must be a threat-what aren’t we invading?

    you are cherry-picking the same small examples as the administration uses to justify their actions. MiGs weren’t banned, Iraq was allowed to have them, though not in the no fly zones, but would a few cold war era MiGs, engines clogged with sand, have delivered a nuke to our shores? really, i’m asking?

  30. JimC says:
    November 18, 2005 at 11:46 am

    http://edition.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/09/08/weapons.report/

    http://www.cc.jyu.fi/~aphamala/pe/2004/syria.htm

  31. JimC says:
    November 18, 2005 at 11:49 am

    “MiGs weren’t banned, Iraq was allowed to have them, though not in the no fly zones, but would a few cold war era MiGs, engines clogged with sand, have delivered a nuke to our shores? really, i’m asking?
    ”

    These were not old MiG’s. These were newly purchased from Russia after it was illegal for them to purchase new fighters…

    They had buried them sealed and protected from the sand…

  32. matt says:
    November 18, 2005 at 11:56 am

    i’ll deduce that your failure to answer my direct question to you is an admission that you have no answer. absolutely pathetic.

    the mig 25 dates to the 60s and the su 25 dates to the 70s but they just bought them recently? proof?

  33. Mark says:
    November 18, 2005 at 12:34 pm

    Wow … so Jim’s “facts” include the fac that President was wrong and that Iraq had no drones capable of going past the 93-mile limit. The stuff sold to Jordan was already tagged by the inspectors (who admit they never found WMDs). And “Intelligence gathering, including defector testimony, …”? Would these be the same defectors that gave false information before?

    Yeah … you got an airtight case there, Jim.

    ROFL

    Face it — the Bush admin. was hell-bent for war in Iraq, so much so that the ones actually responsible for 9/11 still run free, while 150,000+ of our men and women are stuck in a desert fighting for no good reason.

    It’d be comical if it weren’t so utterly pathetic.

  34. JimC says:
    November 18, 2005 at 12:57 pm

    Maybe they weren’t new as in newly manufactured but newly purchased. I had read that somewhere and I am still trying to find it so yeah you got me….but the fact remains, Saddam clearly tried to hide weapons in the desert, this shows a willingness to go to extreme measures to hide his weapons, so one could conlude that it would be possible that he hid any WMD’s in the same manner, correct?

  35. matt says:
    November 18, 2005 at 1:03 pm

    >Maybe they weren’t new as in newly manufactured but newly purchased. I had read that somewhere and I am still trying to find it so yeah you got me

    it’s a pattern, no?

    >Saddam clearly tried to hide weapons in the desert, this shows a willingness to go to extreme measures to hide his weapons, so one could conlude that it would be possible that he hid any WMD’s in the same manner, correct?

    entirely possible.

    So why did bush rush to kick out the inspectors when we had total air superiority and multiple satellites fixed over Iraq? No one here, despite what it’s convenient for you to believe, supported Saddam nor vouched for his honesty or integrity.

    and you still have not answered my direct question. i’ll repeat it one more time: would a few cold war era MiGs, engines clogged with sand, have delivered a nuke to our shores? really, i’m asking?

  36. JimC says:
    November 18, 2005 at 1:03 pm

    Let me ask this, do you think Saddam was wrongfully removed from power? Was he a threat or was he a peaceful leader? IS it better that he’s gone now and cannot return to power? Is it better his sons are dead and cannot torture Iraqis? Is it better that Iraqis are trying to become a democratic country now?

    Aren’t all these thigns good? And if so, can I conclude that your sole objection is that even though good things have come out of the war, that it was not worth it because the original case was not met and because there were no WMD’s found, Bush must have lied about it?

  37. JimC says:
    November 18, 2005 at 1:09 pm

    “i’ll repeat it one more time: would a few cold war era MiGs, engines clogged with sand, have delivered a nuke to our shores? really, i’m asking?”

    First of all I had read that they were sealed, again, yes yes, link…need to get it…

    Secondly, we have assests and interests and military and civilian and allied targets well within range.

    Thrid, a nuke does not need to be launched to hit our shores….I have stated this before, a small nuclear device can be easily carried in a backpack or a larger one can be hidden in cargo and would only need to be close enough to the dock to cause massive destruction. The delivery of choice for these people if you haven’t kept up with the news, is human suicidebombers….

  38. matt says:
    November 18, 2005 at 1:25 pm

    >Let me ask this, do you think Saddam was wrongfully removed from power?

    Wrongfully? Technically probably not. But I maintain that the inspections should have been allowed to continue and he could have been removed later.

    >Was he a threat or was he a peaceful leader?

    he was a threat, no doubt. will you grant that he was the same level of threat as the leaders of probably 20 other nations are to us?

    >IS it better that he’s gone now and cannot return to power?

    I don’t think that we are any better off with the prospect of sharia law in iraq which will probably happen before too long.

    >Is it better his sons are dead and cannot torture Iraqis?

    I’d have rather seen them on trial. They have been replaced with other people who torture. Do you not share your buddy’s dismissal of torture as reprehensible behavior? can’t have it both ways now…

    >Is it better that Iraqis are trying to become a democratic country now?

    of course, but at what cost? would any American have traded 2000 dead and 15000 wounded so that iraq could be a democracy who will eventually align against us? no chance.

    >can I conclude that your sole objection is that even though good things have come out of the war, that it was not worth it because the original case was not met and because there were no WMD’s found, Bush must have lied about it?

    more bad than good has resulted from this war. if you can’t see that, i don’t even know where to start. we were promised many things, war on the cheap, that we would be greeted with flowers as liberators, that we would win, etc. none of those things have happened.

    whether bush lied to get us into that war is, as i have argued, beside the main point. he was wrong, and because it was his idea and he played politics with it, he has to eat that.

  39. matt says:
    November 18, 2005 at 1:29 pm

    >First of all I had read that they were sealed, again, yes yes, link…need to get it…

    they weren’t sealed. world nut daily had the pics when they were released. sand all up in their business.

    >Secondly, we have assests and interests and military and civilian and allied targets well within range.

    and radar and pilots of our own with a 100% track record of dealing with iraqi planes

    >Thrid, a nuke does not need to be launched to hit our shores….I have stated this before, a small nuclear device can be easily carried in a backpack or a larger one can be hidden in cargo and would only need to be close enough to the dock to cause massive destruction. The delivery of choice for these people if you haven’t kept up with the news, is human suicidebombers….

    then why on earth is the president not doing ANYTHING to stop the largest source of portable nukes? russia?

    tom kean (republican):
    “In short, we still do not have a maximum effort against the most urgent threat … to the American people,” he told a news conference, noting that half the nuclear materials in Russia still have no security upgrade.