re: Bush Press Sec Ari Fleischer tries to "call out Iraq war Myths". Believe him or not?

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Edit: and you are also the guy saying I didn’t see what I saw and my friends didn’t get sick from what they got sick from...

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Again, typical Intel guy, not understanding context, or even the concept of context, at all.

It's actually incredible.

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Getting rid of SH was big for them. Worth it for sure.

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I just don't think the geopolitics ever made sense for Israel. Iraq was a useful buffer in the region, against the dreaded Iranians. In the aftermath of all this fighting, the net effect was to make two more of their enemies, Syria and Iran, battle-hardened and stronger. It seems the pre-2003 balance of power favored Israel, and the current one doesn't.

The odd thing is that Hussein thought rapprochement was possible in the days after 9/11. He thought that he would be welcomed back into the fold as it were because of his treatment of terrorists.

The geopolitical situation now doesn't help Israel, as I imagine they feel more hemmed in than ever.

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You missed a Green Beret thread.

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Oh snap! Lol i heard about that shite. I honestly don't know that much about it. I think it's obvious that there is a huge problem with SOF, SF in particular, and it needs a big time brain to solve without annihilating what's left. SF is pretty close to the point of no return right now, I doubt it survives as anything other than a shadow of itself.

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Lol i heard about that shite.

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You heard about the OP or the story I posted about?

It was like watching the most predictable train wreck of a sitcom play out before my eyes.

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Which leads me to conclude that there was a liar and his name was Saddam Hussein. He created an elaborate system of lies to fool western intelligence services and he succeeded. He wanted us to believe he had WMDs


Amazing. Incredible that Saddam Hussein could fool multiple intelligence officials and analysts by just saying "Yeah, I have WMDs."

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Well he did have massive stores of chemical weapons precursors or chemical weapons that were in terrible shape of decay that they could not be used, but thousands of Americans were injured destroying them. Saddam also was not allowing UN weapons inspectors access to sites (which was a violation of the ceasefire agreement and UN Security Council Resolutions from the Gulf War and gave the GWB administration legal clearance to invade Iraq), and Saddam was a dictator that had used chemical weapons before. So it would not be that hard of a sale for Saddam to make people believe that he still had them.

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As Robert McNamara said in the Fog of War, "we see what we want to believe." If Fleischer's ultimate conclusion is that they were led astray by an admitted enemy, shouldn't that have been self-evident from the beginning? I mean, his conclusion is effectively that of a toddler who's seen a magic trick or something.

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No his argument is that there were multiple intelligence failures during a time period where the US was too vigilant about terrorism.

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The blowback of the Iraq War has been massive. From millions of civilian deaths to the deaths of American and coalition soldiers to the open distrust of the intelligence community to the rise of new terrorist groups to the rise of a geopolitical environment that seemed impossible in 1999, among other things, and all for what? The US can't even compel the Iraqis, who are our supposed ally, to distance themselves from the Iranians.

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Can't argue with that with the exception of two things.

1. An open distrust of an intelligence community is a good thing.

2. As late as 9/10/01 the idea that someone would hijack airplanes and fly into multiple buildings was unheard of. 9/11/01 will go down in history as one of those days that changed the way the world just like the the day that the Berlin Wall came down, the day that the atomic bomb was invented, the day that FDR and Churchill basically rolled over and let Stalin have control of eastern europe, and many other days throughout history. Just like the civil wars in the former Yugoslavia were unintended or unforeseen consequences that seemed very unlikely prior to the Berlin Wall coming down, the Korean and Vietnam Wars were the unintended and unforeseen consequences that seemed impossible prior to letting Stalin expand communism in eastern europe, and the proliferation of nuclear and atomic weapons. The Iraq war was an unintended consequence of 9/11/01. I am not defending the War in Iraq or any of the other examples that I listed, but I am saying that hindsight is 20-20 and monday morning quarterbacking is easy. That is not the same as being there and being involved in the decision making.

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honestly can't believe that Fleischer has the audacity to defend himself, Bush, or his administration, in light of the fact that American soldiers effectively died for no reason, by his own admission. He should be embarrassed of himself.

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God forbid that someone who was actually involved in something try to clear his name and the name of the administration straight instead of just letting a bullshite talking point like "Bush lied; people died!" go down as the only version that history remembers.

I honestly can't believe that you think that someone should just shut up and never try to tell their side of the story.

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So it would not be that hard of a sale for Saddam to make people believe that he still had them.

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No shite. Saddam had every incentive to have people think he had weapons of mass destruction, because generally having WMD's would dissuade an invasion. Why people didn't stop and think that perhaps everything was too convenient, even though French and British intelligence found and reported to the US that there was no active weapons program of WMDs? We came to the conclusion very early after the war, after the Iraqi Survey Group's report, that there was no evidence that Iraq had produced or stockpiled weapons of mass destruction since 1991, when sanctions were imposed.

Also we didn't care in 1979, 1986, 1988 and 1991 when he used chemical weapons. Why did we have to invade in 2003?

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No his argument is that there were multiple intelligence failures during a time period where the US was too vigilant about terrorism.

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They wanted to believe what they wanted to believe. They should be criticized for their myopia, not forgiven.

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I am saying that hindsight is 20-20 and monday morning quarterbacking is easy.

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There were plenty of people against the war. I was one of them. I was so vocal one of my high school teacher's assigned me a project justifying the invasion, so I could "learn the other side." We weren't prepared for what an invasion meant. We were specially unprepared for the project of rebuilding, and our efforts have been for naught in the long-run.

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I honestly can't believe that you think that someone should just shut up and never try to tell their side of the story.

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I think Fleischer was being dishonest. He didn't mention that the French debunked the administration's yellowcake theory in the summer of 2002. Nor did he mention that Cheney went on TV afterwards, in 2003, and said that Iraq had an active nuclear weapons program. He did this multiple times after the summer of 2002, through multiple outlets, such as Rush (where his direct words were “What’s happening, of course, is we’re getting additional information that, in fact, Hussein is reconstituting his biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons programs" which was a lie) and Meet the Press.

There's a vast difference for being mistaken and apologizing for that mistake, and being dishonest, which allows you to obviate any need to take the blame. Fleischer is doing the latter here, in my view. No one should stand for more lies from the establishment that effectively destroyed the ME (through repeated ill-fated interventions) and Europe (through the refugee crisis, as the refugee resettlement programs had been broken since the Balkan Wars).

What has the fallout been for these administration officials? Very little, in my view. They were catastrophically wrong, openly dishonest, and still refuse to take responsibility. Fleischer, of course, can defend himself all he likes, but he should be truthful. His narrative here doesn't represent the reality of what happened. It's designed to avoid taking responsibility.

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well we did cut ties with SH after he used chemical weapons on the iranians OUR ENEMIES during that war in the 80s.

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We cut ties when he invaded the Kuwaiti's.

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SH was a sponsor of terror.

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There were no findings that Iraq or its intelligence services had any contact with Al-Qaeda. Who else did they sponsor? In 1979, they sponsered the MEK. Guess who else sponsors the MEK, including promising them that they will be in charge of Iran if an invasion occurs? Who else do they sponsor? The PKK, a group that is geographically limited to Kurdistan and operates primarily in Turkey. The Iraqis sponsoring the PKK didn't affect the US one bit, and indeed, was the pattern of politics in the ME in the 70's, with Turkey, Syria, Iran and Iraq all sponsoring different Kurdish groups.

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yet stupid arse obama takes out khadaffi who WAS NOT a state sponsor of terror anymore and had given up his weapons program. crazy.

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All of the evidence, including the 50,000 documents we procured after the war from the Iraqi state apparatus, shows that Iraq's weapons programs ended in 1991.