I was thinking we needed to whip Grenada's ass again but whatever.

Everyone except the PNAC members knew that Saddam was contained, and that the sanctions were working. Colin Powell said as much. And now we're dealing with Iraq, and making deals with the Taleban in Afghanistan. We're providing recruitment material for terrorists, and allowing women's rights to collapse back to prewar levels in Afghanistan.

I listened to Tenet's speech. His primary claim was that Saddam had an extensive wishlist.

Providing recruitment material to terrorists: you mean aside from the primary material we always give... the example of being free and heathen and still massively successful and wealthy, a living example of heresy, of Allah not really coming through on his promises?

How DARE we! We MUST get in line!

No. "They hate us because we're free?" Come on.

Anyway, here's an article on how supportive the CIA was of the administration's war hype.

edit: Sorry, should have said "the intelligence community" rather than "the CIA".

I saw a TV show the other day where women were going to school in record numbers, taking karate and doing things unthinkable in the days of the Taliban.

Besides, the US is not responsible for the cultural attitudes Afghans have towards females. In addition it takes time to instill new notions. Hell, 50 years ago, black people couldn't sit in the front of the bus here! I think its asking a bit much to expect hot pants and halter tops this soon after the Taliban was deposed. The people there are still Afghans and they still believe what they believe. But the women they showed in this program (hosted by Dianne Sawyer now that I think about it) enjoyed rights, priviliges and, more importantly, attitudes that indicate otherwise. Although, for the sake of completeness, the women did concede that they do fear the men who are very threatened by their newfound self-worth and self-determination.

Like I said, they hate us because we're heathen and our very successful existence is heretical to their beliefs.

And, HM, your Guardian article is written by a relentlessly political former member of the Clinton administration... which put the current intel community into place and believed it when it held that Saddam had WMDs.

Nobody (almost) disputes that almost everybody believed there were weapons. The debate was over whether what weapons they were thought to have were grounds for war. I'm not sure what you were going for with the "put the current intel community into place", since the article supports the intelligence community against the administration's scapegoating. And if "relentlessly political" is grounds for discounting the article, then I hope you don't accept anything coming out of the White House.

But back to the belief in weapons. When the new doctrine of "preemptive war" was unveiled, the State Department provided "imminent threat" as the trigger. When Bush went to war, he and his spokespeople used everything but those exect words. When it eventually was proven that there was, in fact, no imminent threat, Bush said that he never said there was. He didn't say "We all thought it was an imminent threat", he said that we had to take Saddam out before he became an imminent threat. That's like using a self defense claim in a murder trial after killing someone who may have threatened you in the future. It's alright in a pride of lions, but not in human society.

But even that doctrine fails to cover possible imminent threats.

http://www.belmontclub.blogspot.com/...63193280039775

Libya was found to have purchased, not produced its nuclear program. The question the Belmont Club poses is: what if rogue nations collaborate to produce nuclear weapons? No one particular state would be seen as even being capable of an imminent threat. Maybe the early lesson from Libya is that not only is it possible, it's probable.

Going directly to Iraq may well be the least bloody of all solutions if it produces productive change in the mideast. There are promising signs but we won't be able to judge the whole thing for some time now, I imagine.

So, journalists are expected to be politically biased propoganda machines whose role is to advance an agenda under the guise of objective reporting (provided, I assume, they share your viewpoint) and politicians are not supposed to politicize?

Guffaw! I didn't know Andrew Gilligan posted here! :)

If the ends justify the means, then perhaps. I'm not sure I want to adopt that philosophy.

Within days, Bush declared that he would, after all, appoint a commission to investigate; significantly, it would report its findings only after the presidential election.

This is rather surprising -- an actual investigation is going to take place? I'm impressed.

At the same time, I'm confused: I can't understand why the American people have not demanded an investigation into the intelligence failure/intelligence misinterpretation/ignorance of intellicence/whatever. Do people just trust the government this much these days? We sent our sons and daughters off to war for a threat that was hyped up to be bigger than the 9/11 attacks only to find that there really wasn't an incredible danger. We didn't find gallons of biological weapons ready to be launched at the invanding troops, we didn't find any evidence of a nuclear program, and we didn't even find radio controlled planes that could be flown from "just off US shores hundreds of miles inland to launch an attack". Many of our soliders died to find no masses of missiles, tons of gases, links to 9/11, connections to Al Queda, or a even a small slice of yellow cake. Yet, no one really seems to care that such a possible huge blunder was made. We've seen some fingerpointing, but that's about it.

When the police raid a home and shoot a man who doesn't even have a gun, the cities riot with people demanding that someone's head roll. When we invade a country and hundreds of our soliders die while thousands more become embedded in a lengthy stay in a hostile country because somewhere, somehow, someone screwed up, what do we hear in reply?

Crickets.

Whichever side people are on in this matter, I don't get why more aren't asking questions and seeking answers. Most people I've spoken with seem complacent to simply trust assurances from above that the right thing was done, regardless of what information was handed out before the war, after the invasion, and has yet to be found. An even greater number shrug it off as though it isn't a big deal. (Currently "the boob" has proven to surpass the importance of all current and previous war discussions.)

Don't any of these dealings seem shady to most people? Why are so many so quick to scoff at questions and dismiss asking them as an unpatriotic thing? (I'm not suggesting any of this of The Cellar's population. In fact, I'm always really impressed with the debates that go on here and the discussion that takes place.)

When we invade a country and hundreds of our soliders die while thousands more become embedded in a lengthy stay in a hostile country because somewhere, somehow, someone screwed up, what do we hear in reply?

I wouldn't say Chiraq "screwed up", so much as that he made a few simple miscalculations.

Don't be too impressed. Bush is appointing the investigators, last I heard.

It's an election year so cover as many bases as possible.