Team Bush and "Best Info Available @ the Time"

Great Debates
1

It has been “contended” that Team Bush “acted according to the best information available” at the time.
This contention must be made w/o regard to the organizations created to gather supporting evidence that varied widely in quality to tie a threat of terrorism against the US to, “sweep it all up, things related and not,” as Rumsfeld put it. These organizations, (specifically the OSP, Office of Special Plans, and the PCTEG, Policy Counter Terrorism Evaluation Group), are sure to have lent credence in the eyes of some, to the view of Mohammed Atta, and undoubtedly other members of al Qaida, that “Saddam Hussein was an American stooge set up to give Washington an excuse to intervene in the Middle East”[sup][alt link][/sup]
So we have the creation of these extra groups that function outside of the normal operations of the US intelligence system to find the raw materials necessary for Team Bush to cruft a sales pitch for the idea of a threat from Iraq to the US to the American electorate.

Despite the litany of reasons cited for going to war with Iraq, according to one senior official, the threat to the US was recognized within Team Bush as the only one that could justify putting “American kids’ lives at risk…on the scale we did…” So this idea of an Iraqi threat was absolutely necessary for the war effort to prevail.

Team Bush’s threat spiel was dependent on three main elements: Hussein’s non-conventional weapons; Hussein’s “operational relationship” with terrorists who would attack the US, (al Qaida being the most well branded candidate); and the idea that Hussein was undeterrable and thus a madman. Without any of these three, the case for a threat to the US from Iraq would be weakened significantly. And thuis the case for invading Iraq would likewise be crippled.

The second most important of these three items were the strong, meaningful and significant ties to a terrorist group likely to attack the US, specifically al Qaida. To further this end, iffy and/or previously debunked reports were stripped of contexts, professional analysis and descriptions of their relative accuracy and presented to the electorate as reliable information. Even classified national security intel was leaked to Bush friendly press outlets to further this idea. Team Bush purposefully used information that was not “the best available” to sell this idea.
As merely a single example, Cheney took up the Atta/Iraq connection as a cause celebre (occasionally to darkly comedic effect): [SIZE=1]CHENEY: CLEAR LINKS BETWEEN SADDAM, AL-QAEDA; CALLS NY TIMES ARTICLE ‘OUTRAGEOUS’
Thu Jun 17 2004 19:00:33 ET
“…responding to a report from the 9-11 Commission saying it had found no evidence of ‘collaboration’ between Iraq and Al Qaeda” “Vice President Dick Cheney… called the New York Times coverage of the story ‘outrageous’.”
Vice Pres. CHENEY: I disagree with the way their findings have been portrayed.
<snip>
There’s clearly been a relationship.
There’s a separate question. The separate question is: Was Iraq involved with al-Qaida in the attack on 9/11?
<snip>
What The New York Times did today was outrageous. … The press wants to run out and say there’s a fundamental split here now between what the president said and what the commission said. Jim Thompson is a member of the commission who’s since been on the air. I saw him with my own eyes. And there’s no conflict. What they were addressing was whether or not they were involved in 9/11. And there they found no evidence to support that proposition. They did not address the broader question of a relationship between Iraq and al-Qaida in other areas, in other ways.
Vice Pres. CHENEY: But that is a separate question from what the press has gotten all in a dither about, The New York Times especially, on this other question [of whether or not there was a general relationship between UbL and Hussein]. What they’ve done is, I think, distorted what the commission actually reported, certainly according to Governor Thompson, who’s a member of the commission.
BORGER: But you say you disagree with the commission…
Vice Pres. CHENEY: On this question of whether or not there was a general relationship.
BORGER: Yes.
Vice Pres. CHENEY: Yeah.
BORGER: And they say that there was not one forged and you were saying yes, that there was. Do you know things that the commission does not know?
Vice Pres. CHENEY: Probably.
BORGER: And do you think the commission needs to know them?
Vice Pres. CHENEY: I don’t have any–I don’t know what they know. I do know they didn’t talk with any original sources on this subject that say that in their report.
BORGER: They did talk with people who had interrogated sources.
Vice Pres. CHENEY: Right.
BORGER: So they do have good sources.
Vice Pres. CHENEY: Gloria, the notion that there is no relationship between Iraq and al-Qaida just simply is not true.
[INDENT][Since there actually is a disagreement between “what the president said and what the commission said,” and if it is outrageous that the NYT would say that ‘there’s a fundamental split here now between what the president said and what the commission said,’ this means that the VPotUSA is just outraged that the NYT would say it?]
BORGER: Well, let’s get to Mohammad Atta for a minute, because you mentioned him as well. You have said in the past that it was, quote, "pretty well confirmed."
Vice Pres. CHENEY: No, I never said that.
BORGER: OK.
Vice Pres. CHENEY: **Never said that. **
BORGER: I think that is…
Vice Pres. CHENEY: Absolutely not. What I said was the Czech intelligence service reported after 9/11 that Atta had been in Prague on April 9th of 2001, where he allegedly met with an Iraqi intelligence official. We have never been able to confirm that nor have we been able to knock it down.

**The Vice President Appears on NBC’s Meet the Press **
December 9, 2001
RUSSERT: Do you still believe there is no evidence that Iraq was involved in September 11?
CHENEY: Well, what we now have that’s developed since you and I last talked, Tim, of course, was that report that’s been pretty well confirmed, that he did go to Prague and he did meet with a senior official of the Iraqi intelligence service in Czechoslovakia last April, several months before the attack.[/size][/INDENT]Cheney continued to cite the supposed meeting without regard to the dearth of reliable evidence that it had occurred and despite the US intel community analysis that the story was most likely hokum. Obviously, this is an instance where Team Bush was insufficiently concerned with what was the best information available.
The most essential element that was necessary was the suspension of disbelief in the undeterrability of Hussein, that he was a ‘madman’. Despite the analysis of Dr. Rice (“national obliteration”) and the historical incidences (James Baker- “resounding silence” in the Iraqi desert) in which Hussein had been shown to be well deterred from attacking the US w/ non-conventional weapons, and despite the best information available at the time from the US intelligence community, ( the probability of Hussein initiating an attack in the foreseeable future is low ), Team Bush repeatedly sold the idea that an attack from Hussein was something that would happen sooner than later. They said that we could not wait lest there be a mushroom cloud over major metropolitan area (despite the fact that the best information available said that Hussein did not have this capacity ). According to Team Bush Hussein was mongongo monkey nuts with hatred for the US and was willing to sacrifice his own life, livelihood and nation to initiate an attack in the immediate future.
None of this was supported by the best information available at the time.

Without even having to address the issues of Hussein’s biological and chemical weapons, it can be seen the idea that Hussein represented a threat to the US were not supported by the best information available at the time.
Without a threat to the US, there was not reason enough to risk American lives on the scale that we have. According to one senior official, Hussein’s “criminal treatment of the Iraqi people” was not enough to warrant the major invasion of Iraq.

These are just few examples of how the case for the invasion of Iraq depended on malinfo as opposed to the “best information available at the time.”

[sub]
Then there’s the whole issue of how could so many people in the world who had only Google to go by come up with more accurate answers than Team Bush?[/sub]

2

Freedom. Gawd. Amurrica. Chevy and baseball and apple pie. Stay the course. Freedom haters. Amurrica haters.

So Mr. Prez, where are all the weapons? Still waiting. Where is Osama? Still waiting. This latest flurry is just a case of “As the people in charge, we fucked up. So now let’s shift the blame for our bad decisions down to someone else.” No accountability. At least they haven’t blamed the war on “activist judges” (yet).

3

:rolleyes:

4

Not that I disagree with the OP or anything, but what’s the debate? Other than taking bets on when the resident Bush apologists will come and spin this whole mess as no big deal, the Iraqis now have elections, freedom is on the march, yadda yadda.

5

Very good question. I’m so glad that you asked.

First, it’s relevant to the CICUSRWMD report that has recently been issued. Secondly, and more specifically, in response to Mr Moto’s (and soon to be other’s) contention, “that Bush acted according to the best information available to him at the time.”

6

We need to move on…there are more important issues at hand. Don’t you realize that people are throwing shoes and pouring salad dressing on innocent people?

7

Cite for the shoes being thrown at an innocent person please.

8

Honestly, who throws a shoe?

9

But what’s the debate? Are you arguing that the USA PATRIOT Act is unconstitutional and should be struck down by the courts? Or just that it’s a fucking bad idea and Congress should repeal it? Or what?

Also, why is the Act relevant to the question of whether Bush had any good reason to believe Saddam had WMD’s prior to the war? I don’t see the connection, except insofar as they’re both instances of Republican Really Bad Shit.

10

I assume you’ve confused your threads.
There hasn’t been any discussion of the USA PATRIOT ACT in this thread.

The debate is whether or not Team Bush were merely the victims of bad intel or if they purposely (or at least negligently) made questionable (or poor) use of the intel that was available to promote war.

11

Yes, you’re right, I thought I was in the “Screw the Fourth Amendment!” thread – http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=310470.

12

But still, as rjung said – what’s the debate, exactly, in this thread?

13

As per post #10

The debate is whether or not Team Bush were merely the victims of bad intel or if they purposely (or at least negligently) made questionable (or poor) use of the intel that was available to promote war.

14

Dude, I hope the other cites you gave were represented more fairly.

I only looked into this one. It says nothing of the kind. It is, in fact, a rather heated debunking of the very thing you seem to think it proves.

The article concludes:
Tanenhaus has taken a straightforward and conventional observation about strategic arrangements in a post-Saddam Middle East and juiced it up into a vaguely sinister “admission” about America’s motives for going to war in the first place.

It includes this from the misquoted interview:

The truth is that for reasons that have a lot to do with the U.S. government bureaucracy we settled on the one issue that everyone could agree on which was weapons of mass destruction as the core reason, but . . . there have always been three fundamental concerns. One is weapons of mass destruction, the second is support for terrorism, the third is the criminal treatment of the Iraqi people. Actually I guess you could say there’s a fourth overriding one which is the connection between the first two. . . . The third one by itself, as I think I said earlier, is a reason to help the Iraqis but it’s not a reason to put American kids’ lives at risk, certainly not on the scale we did it. That second issue about links to terrorism is the one about which there’s the most disagreement within the bureaucracy, even though I think everyone agrees that we killed 100 or so of an al Qaeda group in northern Iraq in this recent go-around, that we’ve arrested that al Qaeda guy in Baghdad who was connected to this guy Zarqawi whom Powell spoke about in his U.N. presentation.

So, what he said was that helping the Iraqi people was not in and of itself enough of a motive to put Americans at risk. Except that he did not even say that. He added the proviso that it was not enough to justify the scale we used in the Iraqi invastion. But he most certainly did not say anything like “No WMD means no cause for war”.

15

I have to disagree with your logic that any of these could be removed and the whole case would crumble.

I agree that Iraqi WMD was a major part of the case for war.

I also agree that the relationship with Al Qaida was a large part of it. However, I do not think that this piece is exclusive. That is, just because we decide that Iraqis never met with Al Qaida operatives does not mean that a)other terrorists were unavailable to Hussein nor that b) Hussein himself could not have used those tactics.

Finally, I don’t think anyone ever suggested that if there were any slight trace of humanity (or deterability) in Hussein that this would mean there was no need for a war. I think this part you have backwards. If I recall the rhetoric, the point was that Hussein was a madman and thus not deterable enough for comfort. I’d especially like a cite to the monkey nuts line you used. :wink:

I’m partially willing to debate wether the Bush administration screwed up or intentionally mislead the world with regard to intelligence on Iraq. But it is unnecessary to portray the motives in such a one sided way.

16

Dude, I did NOT, repeat did NOT say, "WMD was recognized within Team Bush as the only one that could justify putting “American kids’ lives at risk…on the scale we did…”
Dude, check it what I did write, a’right: "…the threat to the US was recognized within Team Bush as the only one that could justify putting “American kids’ lives at risk…on the scale we did…” "

Wolfowitz mentions four reasons. I’m making the case that three of them are subsets of “threat to the US”

  1. weapons of mass destruction
  2. support for terrorism
  3. the connection between the first two

When he discusses the other reason, the “criminal treatment of the Iraqi people,” he makes the point that “it’s not a reason to put American kids’ lives at risk, certainly not on the scale we did it.”
Since we did have reason to put American kids’ lives at risk on the scale we did, this means that (at least one if not more of) the other reasons he provided (items 1,2 &3 above), which are subsets of “threat to the US,” were reasons for putting American kids’ lives at risk on the scale we did it. These three items are subsets of the threat to the US from Hussein’s Iraq.
Hence, the threat to the US (as distinguished from WMD) from Hussein’s Iraq was the reason that justified putting “American kids’ lives at risk…on the scale we did…”

Dude, I’m unsure as to why you thought I was ignoring or downplaying the proviso. I made an explicit point to note the part about scale by including the words, “…on the scale we did…” I’m not sure how to make that much clearer.

I hope I’ve been able to clarify what I wrote. I apologize for the lack of limpidity.

17

I said “weakened significantly” and “crippled,” not destroyed.

I said, “Hussein’s “operational relationship” with terrorists who would attack the US, (al Qaida being the most well branded candidate).” What I mean was that the al Qaeda was the best branded, most widely known of potential terrorist groups available to fill the bill of “terrorists who would attack the US.”

I said, “suspension of disbelief in the undeterrability of Hussein.” This means that one had to suspend one’s disbelief in the undeterrability of Hussein. This suspension of disbelief allowed Hussein’s undeterrability to be believed. Which amounts to roughly same as “Hussein was a madman and thus not deterable enough for comfort.”

18

We seem to agree much more than you’re giving us credit for.

19

Apparently, “mongongo monkey nuts” is a Simon W. Moon Original.

20

One can only hope.