Didn’t we already know all that?
Doug Bereuter, retiring Republican Representative from the great state of Nebraska, senior member of the House International Relations Committee and vice chairman of the House Intelligence Committee:
Knowing now what I know about the reliance on the tenuous or insufficiently corroborated intelligence used to conclude that Saddam maintained a substantial WMD (weapons of mass destruction) arsenal, I believe that launching the pre-emptive military action was not justified.
Worth noting: I like this answer to the question “Knowing what you know now…?” than I like John Kerry’s answer. But, what are you gonna do?
And, here’s the zinger:
Left unresolved for now is whether intelligence was intentionally misconstrued to justify military action.
What’s neat is that that question is going to remain unresolved, because the Congressional investigation looking into Intelligence failures regarding the matter in question has been carefully framed to not look into this unresolved question.
Further along, we get to:
The cost in casualties is already large and growing, and the immediate and long-term financial costs are incredible.
But… Rumsfeld and Cheney said back in 2002 that the Oil Revenues would pay for it all, and that allies would be clamoring to help out with the process after our grand victory shows them the errors of their ways, even further lessening the costs! Why, as Ahmad Chalabi put it, “Best of all, the INC will do this all for free!”
From the beginning of the conflict, it was doubtful that we for long would be seen as liberators, but instead increasingly as an occupying force.
Lessons learned in Conquering Nations 101…
Now we are immersed in a dangerous, costly mess, and there is no easy and quick way to end our responsibilities in Iraq without creating bigger future problems in the region and, in general, in the Muslim world.
Okay, that’s enough of Bereatuer. I’m guessing that he now regrets his “yes” vote for the Iraq War Resolution.
Turn to Joseph Lieberman for a prompt response. Where’s “The Committee on Present Danger Part III” when we need it, to straighten out wavering support to our noble quest?
What does David Kay, Bush’s hand-picked man to head the weapon’s inspectors after that clueless Hans Blix completely and utterly failed to expose Saddam Hussein’s massive stockpiles of weapons of the mass of the destruction, have to say these days?
The dog that did not bark in the case of Iraq’s W.M.D. weapons program, quite frankly, in my view, is the National Security Council.
Take that, Ms. Rice!
Where was the National Security Council when, apparently, the president expressed his own doubt about the adequacy of the case concerning Iraq’s W.M.D. weapons that was made before him?
Why was the secretary of state sent to the C.I.A. to personally vet the data that he was to take the Security Council in New York, and ultimately left to hang in the wind for data that was misleading and, in some cases, absolutely false and known by parts of the intelligence community to be false? Where was the N.S.C. then?
What — must we check Condellezza’s Rice’s minutes for all of 2002?
And… our new Intelligence Czar?
Until this is taken on board and people and organizations are held responsible for this failure, I have a real difficulty in seeking how a national intelligence director can correct these failures.
As the nation moves boxes around, I’m left with the question: Don’t we already have that job, anyway? “National Security Advisor”, or something to that effect?