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Originally Posted by The_Jazz
Ace, most members of Congress don't have the security clearance necessary to view most of the information. Without making any judgement on whether or not the intelligence was worthy of "top secret" status or not, anyone who sees it has to have gone through the necessary procedures required by law, including background checks, etc. That's not a part of being in either the House or the Senate, although it is to be on the Intelligence Committees. It's not like Congress could just google "Iraq Secret Chemical Weapons" and expect to get credible information of the type necessary to support (or not) the administration's arguement. There is no "Intelligence Consumer Reports" or "The Robb Report on Iraqi Weapons". Using any sort of consumer analogy is one big ol' strawman.
So many Democrats voted by using the "information available at the time". There was no possible way for Congress to do their "homework". The only information that they were allowed, by law, was what the administration was willing to tell them, and even that was supposed to be a major concession on the administration's part. That information proved to be false, and the problem is that the administration knew that. It would be one thing if there wasn't any intelligenct to the contrary, but there was plenty of it. If they didn't know, they should have. Hence the problem.
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I know we are drifting off topic a bit, but I will be brief.
Psst!
I want your vote to comit our country to a multi-billion dollar, bloody war that will cost American lives. I can't tell you exactly why I came to that conclusion, but Iraq is really, really, bad, oh and they are connected to other really, really bad people - trust me.
What sould the average person do with that? What should elected officials do with that? What should the media do with that? I know I am simplifying this, but perhaps some folks in Congress should have insisted on seeing what Cheney and Bush saw, and report back to the rest. Oh, wait, they did that. Sorry.
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Originally Posted by pigglet
ace, i have to say that while i recognize the seriousness of the point you're making, i think that this underscores exactly the problem with this administration, similarly to what ratbastid just pointed out. the idea is for the people in charge to look at the data, and then develop a position...not to take a position, then pull facts to support it. that's the entire problem, in a nutshell. they did the latter...and now its backfiring bigtime. not just on them, but the whole country is catching it for that fuck up.
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I thought the decision at the time was the correct decision, just like millions of others including people in other countries. I thought the reasons given where clear, and I understood them. We did not go to war simply based on the weapons of mass destruction issue or the "link" issue. I was not lied to. My support of invading Iraq was not singularly based on statements by Bush or Cheney. I guess that was not true for the folks in Congress who voted for the war but were against it based on what they think are lies.