Team Bush and "Best Info Available @ the Time"

[David_Simmons]

@pervert

Saddam could have provided a lot more cooperation than he did to the inspectors.

So is our invasion of Iraq for the purpose of teaching national political leaders not to dissemble in the future?

One more time. There were people from the UN on the ground in Iraq looking for WMD. Although they weren’t getting a lot of cooperation I don’t recall that they were interferred with and they were making steady if slow progress.

It has been determined that their not having found such weapons or facilities for their manufacture up to the date of their departure was a good sample of what would later be found by a more exhaustive search by David Kay.

There were not WMD in Iraq.

[Scott_Plaid]

:smack: I read too fast. Please disregard my last post! I am a :wally .

[I_Love_Me_Vol.I]

@NattoGuy

Honestly, who throws a shoe?

A guy with only one foot.

[Mtgman]

Bad analogy

@pervert

If I borrowed $2000 dollars from you with an agreement to pay it back in installments, then proceded to avoid you for 10 years while you tried to collect, would my payment of $100 be enough to forstall your lawsuit?

Logical fallacy, specifically the fallacy of composition.

@pervert

I know liberals like to say that individuals don’t bear responsibility for situations they find themselves in (despite good evidence that choices they made earlier led to said situations). But this seems to go a bit far.

Generalize something about “liberals” and then apply it, sans the characteristics of this particular situation, to an opponent to show them in a negative light.

Supposition. Raw, naked supposition with no facts to back it up at all.

@pervert

But from the other side, we would only have to hypothosize Saddam becoming convinced for a few months. Long enough to plan and execute such an attack. It was the risk to America I was trying to get at.

Talking past other debaters.

Pretty much anything between pervert and elucidator would fall into this category. I don’t find it all that heinous in this instance because elucidator can be extremely annoying to speak to directly.

Irrelelvant hypotheticals

@pervert

Assume for a moment that Bush lied entirely. Every single accusation was made up. Even so, the job of starting a war was made much easier because the target was Saddam Husein. No?

All of which avoids the whole premise of the OP. Were the summations of the evidence used by the Bush administration to justify the war accurate and fair? Or was the subset of intelligence reports and evidence they used specifically “sexed-up” or “cherry-picked” for presentation to the public to bolster the case for war for some yet undisclosed reason?

Enjoy,
Steven

[elucidator]

@Mtgman

… because elucidator can be extremely annoying to speak to directly…

I’ll have you know that I am known amongst my friends as the very soul of sweet reason and gentle persuasion. Of course, they’re both Texans, so it might be a matter of lowered expectations, but still…

[pervert]

@Mtgman

If bad analogies, logical fallacies, suppositions, talking past your fellow debaters, and irrelevant hypotheticals count, then yeah, I guess you are.

Quite. Just as Squink did not suggest that Saddams missiles could have been argued legal well, I made a joke about your assessment of my arguments. I did include the smily.

Bad analogy

Of course it was a bad anology. All anologies are bad if you look too deep into them. Specifically, I was trying to point out that a very late admission indeed does not somehow clear up a decade of untrustworthyness. I was trying to make a very specific point about why some people might not trust Saddam Hussien far enough to allow sanctions to work. I was not trying to draw any analogies between loaned money and WMD.

Logical fallacy, specifically the fallacy of composition.

Thank you for the link. I really mean that. I don’t see how this one applies. I’m not saying that it doesn’t, just that I don’t understand your point. I was addressing a specific statement made by elucidator in which he suggested that Saddam had no responsibility for the war.

Supposition. Raw, naked supposition with no facts to back it up at all.

Granted, I did not give a cite, but I still remember the intelligence testimony we have been refering to regarding Saddam’s likelyhood of attacking the US being based on the presumption that he knows he will be retaliated against overwhelmingly. I was only suggesting that such knowledge on his part would only have to waver for a short time for the results to be catostrophic. I was not saying that he had done such a thing. Nor that he would do such a thing.

Talking past other debaters.

I would consider it a personal favor if you would point out an instance of this. I was talking to elucidator sort of in his own idiom. It ammuses me and I can’t seem to pass up the opportunity. But I did not mean any offence by any of it.

All of which avoids the whole premise of the OP.

Now, this I will agree with. I did sort of let the examination of very minor points lead me away from the OP.

Were the summations of the evidence used by the Bush administration to justify the war accurate and fair? Or was the subset of intelligence reports and evidence they used specifically “sexed-up” or “cherry-picked” for presentation to the public to bolster the case for war for some yet undisclosed reason?

I have said before, and I’ll say it again. A very good case can be made that not every proviso nor every doubt about every piece of intelligence was made public. There could bery easily be something fishy about that. However, a careful examination of the sorts of quotes (thanks to PatriotX for most of them) seem to me to be exclamations of belief. That is the administration would say things like “We believe Saddam has WMD”. They would sometimes say them in more emphatic terms like “We know Saddam has WMD”. Specifically, they were publisizing the conclusion of those intelligence reports. And, unless I am very much mistaken, the great majority of those reports concluded that Saddam did, in fact, have WMD. They included caveats, they included doubts about the evidence. But they concluded that Saddam had WMD. If you could point me to an intelligence report from before the war which says in its conclusion that Saddam does not have WMD I would appreciate it.

Now, the argument could be made that the President should read past the conclusions and look more closely at the evidence. Especially when the subject is war. Allow me to turn this argument around and suggest that a President might look past the conclusion more closely at the evidence when the conclusion is that a beligerant leader is unlikely to attack.

[pervert]

@David Simmons

So is our invasion of Iraq for the purpose of teaching national political leaders not to dissemble in the future?

Well, no, of course not. It is one lesson which could be drawn. At least about the subject of WMD.

One more time. There were people from the UN on the ground in Iraq looking for WMD. Although they weren’t getting a lot of cooperation I don’t recall that they were interferred with and they were making steady if slow progress.

Well, this was true at the end. But there was a lot of interference early on, and it was only through extremely tough rhetoric that the interference was lifted. And the question of whether or not the progress was steady enough or too slow is in itself a value judgement.

It has been determined that their not having found such weapons or facilities for their manufacture up to the date of their departure was a good sample of what would later be found by a more exhaustive search by David Kay.

As well as some other stuff (not caches of WMD) that they had not found.

There were not WMD in Iraq.

As it turns out, this was true. Our question is when would this have been known. As it turns out, this was not known until after the invasion. As I recall, even Mr. Blix maintained some doubts until the very eve of the invasion. Luckily for me, this OP includes the proviso “At the time”.

[David_Simmons]

@pervert

Well, this was true at the end. But there was a lot of interference early on, and it was only through extremely tough rhetoric that the interference was lifted. And the question of whether or not the progress was steady enough or too slow is in itself a value judgement.

But it was true and progress was being made. And I think that inspection program and the progress in it made it unreasonable to launch a preventive war based on an imminent threat to US national security. The OP question concerned the best available data. In my view the reports of the Blix group were the best available data and the data were ignored if not scorned.

As well as some other stuff (not caches of WMD) that they had not found.

???

As it turns out, this was true. Our question is when would this have been known. As it turns out, this was not known until after the invasion. As I recall, even Mr. Blix maintained some doubts until the very eve of the invasion. Luckily for me, this OP includes the proviso “At the time”.

Doubts or not, I doubt that Blix would have counseled a preemptive invasion based on nothing more than doubts.

I continue to be astounded at the casual way that such a serious matter as a US invasion of another country on such flimsy grounds is tolerated by the US population and actually applauded by many.

[Sevastopol]

No, because you are missing an important point.

The real sense in which President Bush didn’t lie to his constituency, the evil and the ignorant, is that the war was about the Sept 11 attacks.

In downtown West Podunk they weren’t wondering “does Saddam actually have WMD?”

No, it was “We’re at war, when do we attack someone?” It’s policy by viscera, the pre-emininet threat to the American republic. That’s why there is no uproar. All that stuff about a rational connection, evidence policy, inspections and a threat to the US, that’s all just a sap to thinking American and the allies. Republican US is deaf to that and never heard it, so doesn’t feel lied to. Vindicated rather, deep in the viscera.

[David_Simmons]

@Sevastopol

No, because you are missing an important point.

The real sense in which President Bush didn’t lie to his constituency, the evil and the ignorant, is that the war was about the Sept 11 attacks.

In downtown West Podunk they weren’t wondering “does Saddam actually have WMD?”

No, it was “We’re at war, when do we attack someone?” It’s policy by viscera, the pre-emininet threat to the American republic. That’s why there is no uproar. All that stuff about a rational connection, evidence policy, inspections and a threat to the US, that’s all just a sap to thinking American and the allies. Republican US is deaf to that and never heard it, so doesn’t feel lied to. Vindicated rather, deep in the viscera.

Good points. I guess I have been foolishly assuming that the way to solve problems is to try to change the conditions that are actually related to the cause of the problem. Silly me.

[PatriotX]

perv,
I’ve been kinda caught of late with my efforts to infiltrate an Islamo-Marxist terrorist fundraiser. So instead of the traditional response, let just condense and summarize.

I said that Team Bush’s case for the invasion of Iraq depended on malinfo as opposed to the “best information available at the time.” Then I provided a few meager examples. One of which was the US intel community’s estimate that Hussein was unlikely to attack. I contended that his was not how the situation was portrayed by Team Bush. To illustrate this contention about the case that TB made, I pointed to how TB invoked the doctrine of preemptive war. In order for a war to be preemptive, there must be an imminent threat. You have specifically chosen not contended that an unlikely event could constitute an imminent threat. If this issue- unlikely ≠ imminent -were alone, which it is not, it would provides an excellent example of how TB went with something other than the best info available at the time.
However, you have decided to try out the idea (faulty though it is) that in re preemptive war, something can be both imminent and years away, outside of what the US intel community called “the foreseeable future.”* Yet, in this context of preemptive war takes some fancy balloon bending of ‘imminent’ to make it mean years away. So far you have failed to perform this nifty trick of turning “unlikely in the foreseeable future” into an equivalent of ‘imminent.’

So where we still stand is that the US intel community said that Hussein was unlikely to attack in the foreseeable future while TB invoked the concept preemptive war (albeit an adapted one). The two concepts, preemptive war and unlikely to attack in the foreseeable future do not jibe.
This is an example of how TB used something other than the best info available at the time to root for war.
*[illustrative quote from perv “If an attack is imminent but may be unlikely to occur for many years, how is that different form an attack which is unlikely by our latest estimation?”]

[elucidator]

Your problem, Pat, is in the definition of “imminent”. Friend Pervert has adopted a much more flexible standard. You are clinging to the previous concept of “imminent”, i.e., days, weeks and months. He simply wishes to expand the context to include years, ages and eons, a shift to include geologic time frames, rather than the narrow and exclusive definition that you and I share.

Similar deconstruction can, apparently, be applied to terms like “urgent”, which can be taken to mean “could be pretty important, someday, if a whole bunch of unlikely circumstances should come to pass”. “Grave and gathering” means “he doesn’t love us, and tomorrow, will love us even less, which is worse.” “Invasion” simply means a proactive defensive posture that entails stationing defensive forces within the borders of a potential adversary. Clearly, the chances for successful negotiation are much enhanced when you have an armored division located in the other’s capitol city.

[pervert]

@PatriotX

So where we still stand is that the US intel community said that Hussein was unlikely to attack in the foreseeable future while TB invoked the concept preemptive war (albeit an adapted one).

See, I keep asking about this and I do not seem to be able to get you to do my research for me.

From the Congressional report on prewar intelligence.

The IC’s understanding of the Iraqi threat to regional stability and security evolved from the end of the first Gulf War in 1991 until early 2003, but the assessments came to the same general conclusions that Saddam Hussein: was unpredictable and aggressive; retained the capability to strike militarily in the region; and, would probably not choose to use force against neighbors as long as U.S. and Coalition forces were in the region. The body of assessments showed that Iraqi military capabilities had steadily degraded following defeat in the first Gulf War in 1991. Analysts also believed those capabilities would continue to erode as long as economic sanctions remained in place.

If I challenge your contention that there was an intelligence agency consensus that Saddam was unlikely to attack, would you provide a source?

The two concepts, preemptive war and unlikely to attack in the foreseeable future do not jibe.

What I have been trying to get accross, is that this is true going by the letter of international law (whatever that means). But preemptive war is simply a way to start a war in defence of oneself. It has long been agreed (tacitly, not necessarily explicitly) that such a defensive first strike must only be allowed in cases where the threat is clear and obvious. What Bush has said is that this stricture is not sufficient to meet the threats of the new century. That another justification for military action is necessary. He attempted to lay out a case that imminent may not mean imminent on a known date. Perhaps you would be happier if he invented an entirely new term. Instead of calling it preemptive war, we could call it defensive war or something along those lines.

Just to check ourselves, If we had evidence that aQ had WMD in 1995, we would not have been justified in attacking them or those who harbored them. Correct?

This is an example of how TB used something other than the best info available at the time to root for war.

You mean he did not use the best international law information?

*[illustrative quote from perv “If an attack is imminent but may be unlikely to occur for many years, how is that different form an attack which is unlikely by our latest estimation?”]

I’ll back off of that it it helps. I’m not confident that a possible attack many years from now is what is meant in the Bush doctrine. I used that phrase in error. What I was trying to get accross was the idea that a threat in the future may not have to be known with complete confidence or complete detail for it to qualify as a threat legitimately addressed by preemptive military action.

Like this:

@elucidator

You are clinging to the previous concept of “imminent”, i.e., days, weeks and months.

No, I am contending that you guys are clinging to a definition of imminent which is explicitely known. It could be many months, as long as we know for a certainty that it is inevitable. The time frame is less important, I think to your use of the word, than the certainty.
Let me ask you in all seriousness. If we had had intelligence in 1995 that aQ had some WMD and Clinton had ordered an invasion of Afghanistan in order to stop its being used against America or her allies, and given that he may not have had specific intelligence regarding aQ’s intentions for thier WMD, would you have condemned such an attack as not allowed under the terms of preemptive war?

Please try to answer this. I am not trying to trap you with an irrelevant hypothetical. I am trying to understand your position regarding the conditions necessary for a justified first strike.

@David Simmons

But it was true and progress was being made. And I think that inspection program and the progress in it made it unreasonable to launch a preventive war based on an imminent threat to US national security. The OP question concerned the best available data. In my view the reports of the Blix group were the best available data and the data were ignored if not scorned.

That is entirely fair. I disagree.

Doubts or not, I doubt that Blix would have counseled a preemptive invasion based on nothing more than doubts.

No, he would not. But then he was not president.

I continue to be astounded at the casual way that such a serious matter as a US invasion of another country on such flimsy grounds is tolerated by the US population and actually applauded by many.

Just for the record, I have not said that I tolerated the invasion of Iraq. I have most certainly not applauded it.

[pervert]

One more post then I have to leave for a few days.

Am I misunderstanding the meaning of “imminent” if I say that when a person is born his death is imminent?

Perhaps I am.

[elucidator]

@Perv

Let me ask you in all seriousness… under the terms of preemptive war?

Way too hypothetical. Lets start with the rather simplistic “WMD” that AlQ has somehow “got”. You will recall when this whole mishigoss was still just a gleam in Death’s eye, we were talking nukes, then we were talking nukes as a subset of WMD, then they tried to pretend they never said anything about nukes at all, but had always meant “vast stockpiles” of Bad Mojo.

So…Obie Wan Laden’s got a nuke? A fully functional nuke, atop an ICBM, as well as the several thousands of personnel and the launching pad in a secret location… Or what? Thing is, the theat of the multi and various other forms of WMD are not subject to location, the technology of nerve gas predates WWII, bio warfare goes way back. It isn’t vulnerable to the airplanes, bombs and tanks military might that we have in abundance, its vulnerable to the shadowy networks of snitches and informants that we suck at so spectacularly.

We own the biggest motherfuck hammer ever, so the problem became a nail. We had to find something to flex that power against, so we could pretend that we could cope with terrorism on our terms, reduce it to a military objective subject to the power we have.

So my primary objection to the invasion of Afghanistan was not that it was illegal, or even immoral, just that it was so bloody useless. Very bloody, very useless.

A giant military power fighting a shadowy terrorist movement is like a man assailed by a swarm of hornets, flailing at them with a hammer. From the git-go, trying to force a military force round peg into this square hole was stupid, just plain ol’ stupid.

Or have I answered every question but the one you asked?

[David_Simmons]

@pervert

As I recall, even Mr. Blix maintained some doubts until the very eve of the invasion.

@David Simmons

Doubts or not, I doubt that Blix would have counseled a preemptive invasion based on nothing more than doubts.

No, he would not. But then he was not president.

In saying that Blix would not have counseled war I was merely responding to your original statement about his “doubt until the ver eve of the invasion.” If you hadn’t brought in Blix in this fashion I wouldn’t have mentioned him in this context.

Am I misunderstanding the meaning of “imminent” if I say that when a person is born his death is imminent?

I think so. Unless you consider that on every single day of a person life he or she feels that death looms threateningly overhead.

[David_Simmons]

@pervert

As I recall, even Mr. Blix maintained some doubts until the very eve of the invasion.

@David Simmons

Doubts or not, I doubt that Blix would have counseled a preemptive invasion based on nothing more than doubts.

No, he would not. But then he was not president.

In saying that Blix would not have counseled war I was merely responding to your original statement about his “doubt until the eve of the invasion.” If you hadn’t brought in Blix in this fashion I wouldn’t have mentioned him in this context.

Am I misunderstanding the meaning of “imminent” if I say that when a person is born his death is imminent?

I think so. Unless you consider that on every single day of a person life he or she feels that death looms threateningly overhead.

[Uncommon_Sense]

@elucidator

Got my faults, Lord knows, and its a long list…

Really?
Name one.

[elucidator]

They already have names. Anger, Lust, Envy, Sarcasm…

[RedFury]

@pervert

One more post then I have to leave for a few days.

Am I misunderstanding the meaning of “imminent” if I say that when a person is born his death is imminent?

Perhaps I am.

A rather convenient misunderstanding that you share with BushCo it appears:

@The American Heritage® Dictionary

Imminent = About to occur; impending: in imminent danger

Considering that the average lifespan is somewhere around 70 years in most developed countries, I can’t possibly imagine how said span qualifies as “imminent” in any proper usage of the word.

Hell, a very good argument could be put forth that in 70 years China will have surpassed the US of A as the pre-eminent economic world power – along with a military might second to none. Under your definition of “imminent,” may as well launch the invasion yesterday.

Hell, just to be on the safe side, invade every damn country in the world, 'cause, you know, in seventy years just about any of them will have the technology to kill a large number of Americans.

Hmm…never mind, it just struck that I understand and commune with your concerns. Boxcutters and large passenger aircraft? They have those now!

Hurry! Bombs away!

USA! USA! Number 1!