Podhoretz: pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!

Podhoretz is a nutcase (0.00 / 0)

No further comment needed.

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by: Bob @ Tue Dec 04, 2007 at 23:40:50 PM UTC

Podhoretz is also Giuliani's foreign policy guy (0.00 / 0)

No further comment needed, either.

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by: Jay Stevens @ Tue Dec 04, 2007 at 23:53:00 PM UTC

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Frightening but not surprising! (0.00 / 0)

Spread the word!

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by: Bob @ Wed Dec 05, 2007 at 00:04:19 AM UTC

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History Lesson (0.00 / 0)

I need a history lesson here. It seems to me that the whole "oh yeah it's not my fault, we had bad intelligence" is a cop-out by the White House to pass the blame onto someone else. I seem to remember during the ramp-up to the war that there was plenty of intelligence, from U.S. agencies even, suggesting that there were no WMD in Iraq.

I thought it was just Bush saying "uhm...yes there are" and Colin Powell being forced to lie: "You see those trailer homes? Those are really mobile weapons labs. Don't ask how we know that, we just do."

Of course I can't find any references to support my belief so maybe I'm just making all this up (kinda like George W.)

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by: jjack @ Wed Dec 05, 2007 at 15:03:51 PM UTC

worse than that... (0.00 / 0)

Yes, the Bush administration blamed the intel for the misinformation on WMDs. However, that's actively misleading. Here's what they did:

--Created an intelligence agency out of the Pentagon (Douglas Feith, anyone?) whose primary task was to find links between al Qaeda and Iraq, and to find evidence of WMDs. They used highly suspect testimony from Iraqis provided by Ahmad Chalabi as evidence. Chalabi, of course, was promised to head Iraq after an invasion.

--Ordered intelligence agencies to provde them raw, "unvetted" intelligence data. That way they could pick out data that corraborated their stories on WMDs and terror without having to worry about its authenticity. (The uranium/Niger story that eventually expleded into the outing of Valerie Plame, e.g.)

--They planted stories in the media.

They'd send reporters (notably the NYTime's Judith Miller) to places like Thailand (it's illegal in the US for the govt to provide knowingly false information to the press), where they'd be briefed on bogus stories. Once the reporters dutifully reported the reports back in the States, the administration would use the stories as evidence of their suspicions. (The aluminum tubes.)

Worse still, Pentagon officials would forge false evidence and inject them into the international intelligence community, which would be picked up by the CIA and -- unvetted -- handed to the administration as proof. (The "Italian Job" -- Feith's folks forged a letter about the Niger/uranium story and gave it to the Italian intelligence agency, who passed it to the Brits, who passed it to the US. The Brits and Italians dismissed it as forged; unvetted by US intelligence agencies, it made it to the President's State of the Union address on the eve of the invasion.)

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by: Jay Stevens @ Wed Dec 05, 2007 at 18:45:12 PM UTC

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