It was widely reported before the war that Saddam was sending support checks to the widows of Palestinian suicide bombers.
That was interpreted in many quarters (including by some Dopers) as “supporting terrorism” and in a broad sense of demonstrating solidarity, it surely was that.
However, it did NOT constitute providing financial support for terrorist operations, nor did it involve any role in the planning of such operations.
IOW, it had nothing to do with the question of whether Saddam represented some sort of threat to the Western world.
By definition, ‘pre-emptive’ mean that an attack is imminent. W/o an imminent attack, there can be no pre-emptive war.
While GWB himself may not have used the phrase ‘imminent threat’ more than one member of Team Bush did. Further, the entire Admin made the case that Iraq was threat that had to be dealt w/ posthaste.
Would Team Bush actively promoting an aQ-Hussein connection while the US Intel Community was telling them hat no operational or collaborative relationship existed count in your book?
Q: Why was the Iraq WMD intel not as good as it shopuld have been? A: Iraq didn’t get enough attention because the CIA was busy combating terrorism and WMD proliferation.
from the Kerr Report, p5:[indent]Iraq was not the only significant intelligence problem facing the Community in the years immediately preceding the war. Counter terrorism and counter proliferation were given higher priority …
Bureaucratic drollery no doubt.
Least ways, I’m roflmao.
Q: What about the Saddam Hussein - al-Qa’ida linkage? A: The report says that despite the US Intelligence Community’s purposely aggressive, exhaustive and repetitive searches for such a relationship, their assessment was and still is that no operational or collaborative relationship existed.
from the Kerr Report, p11:In the case of al-Qa’ida, the constant stream of questions aimed at finding links between Saddam and the terrorist network caused analysts take what they termed a “purposely aggressive approach” in conducting exhaustive and repetitive searches for such links. Despite the pressure, however, the Intelligence Community remained firm in its assessment that no operational or collaborative relationship existed.
All of Team Bush’s cacophonous din to the contrary was made in spite of the Best Information Available at the Time.[/INDENT]
Of course, you may not consider Team Bush’s case to the public that they made via the efforts of their own special intel cherry-picking crew that there was a collaborative relationship between aQ and Hussein evidence of acting in bad faith.
I mean just because the US Intel Community was saying (and still says) that there was no such relationship doesn’t necessarily mean that GWB didn’t believe that there was.
And the fact that the US Intel Community’s best estimate was that Hussein was unlikely to attack the US in the forseeable future while Team Bush was pimping the idea that we couldn’t wait to invade Iraq lest we have a mushroom cloud over an american city- well that might not count as acting in bad faith. Perhaps Team Bush believed they had intel from On High or some such.
Can’t really conlusively speak as to the internal dialogue of these characters. It can be shown however, that they had ample opportunity to know that what they were selling wasn’t backed by the US Intel experts. Yet the question remains as to whether or not they believed they knew better than the US Intel Community.
Perhaps they did believe that. Perhapos that’s why they set up the OSP and the PCTEG that I referenced in a previous post in this thread.
Yet, of course, the US Intel Community was right and the ad hoc committees put together were wrong. The question you’re asking though is what was the internal mental state of the players in Team Bush. That is ultimately unanswerable. However, they did have good reason to know that what they were saying was not supported by the best intel available at the time.