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Originally Posted by aceventura3
O.k. let's start fresh with two questions.
Are we at war?
Who declared war first?
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In one respect, we are starting fresh with the re-opening of the internal DoD investigation of Douglas Feith on the manipulation of pre-war intelligence to justify an invasion of Iraq. Along with the release of the full Phase II Senate Intel Committee investigaton of the use of pre-war intelligence.
The DoD internal investigation focused specifically on the actions of Feith and the Office of Special Plans (OSP). As earlier as 1998 while at a neo-con think tank, Feith called for the US to remove Saddam, and when he came to the DoD as Rumsfeld's second highest deputy, he created the OSP for the purpose of creating the intelligence to justify such action:
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Feith led the controversial Office of Special Plans at the Pentagon from September 2002 to June of 2003. This now defunct intelligence gathering unit has been accused of manipulating intelligence to bolster support for the 2003 US invasion of Iraq. According to the British newspaper, The Guardian, "This rightwing intelligence network [was] set up in Washington to second-guess the CIA and deliver a justification for toppling Saddam Hussein by force." According to Feith's former deputy, Lieutenant Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski, the Office of Special Plans was "a propaganda shop" and she personally "witnessed neoconservative agenda bearers within OSP usurp measured and carefully considered assessments, and through suppression and distortion of intelligence analysis promulgate what were in fact falsehoods to both Congress and the executive office of the president."
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The Dems on the Senate Armed Services Committee did release a report in 2004 detailing how Feith manpulated intelligence to show a Saddam-al Queda connection
(link - pdf)
Rumsfeld and the interim DoD Inspector General successfully stalled the DoD investigation for more than two years, but Gates has assured the new chair of the Armed Servies Committee and the Intel Committee that it will proceed (we shall see).
In any case, how the war (invasion) started is only helpful for historical purposes at this point. The issue that matters is where we go from here to end the quagmire created by such an ideologically driven and ineptly managed folly.
Ace...lets start again with a question that really matters and not rehash why we got to where we are today.
Why do you think the Bush plan is better, and has a greater likelihood of success, than the Biden plan or even the Iraq Study Group recommendations, both of which put a much greater emphasis on political and diplomatic options as the best way forward?