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Banned
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Originally Posted by roachboy
caveat lector: this is long. i decided not to use the hide function because i think the piece--which is also a kind of advert for a book that's just out about tony blair and the run-up to the iraq war--is kinda amazing.
read on:
so..yeah.
there's alot of interest in the above--particularly in the duplication of the administration's way of railroading their war through by passing folk who actually knew the area and who, therefore, had some idea of what they were talking about---the way in which the duplication worked should be obvious from the descriptions of blair's political calculations concerning what was and was not in the uk's best interests and the foreign office charged with iraq.
it also sheds some new light on france's opposition to the neocon war.
but it's also about the bush administration--and the level of--well what?
their incompetence.
their irresponsibility.
in a way, this farce of a war has played out now for long enough that most of this information seems like a repeat of information that has since emerged about the war, about the situation the bush people have created, into which they have placed american military personnel without even fucking bothering to gather accurate information about what they were putting these people into.
which makes me wonder---again----why are these incompetents still in power? how is it that a debacle of this magnitude is not grounds for an extraordinary act of removal from office? how on earth is it possible that in a supposedly free society, this can be done by a president and his administration and the rest of us carry on as if everything is still, somehow, normal or ok?....
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Evidently, it is okay.....and, to be fair, the problem isn't all democrats in the senate, it is the ones who occupy the majority leader's office and the senate intelligence committe chair, although I will submit, that if I was a member of the senate democratic caucus I would work openly to remove both Reid and Rockefeller from their positions. Remember this?
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...110101037.html
GOP Angered by Closed Senate Session
Meeting Reopened After Two Hours
By Charles Babington and Dafna Linzer
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, November 2, 2005; Page A01
Democrats forced the Senate into a rare closed-door session yesterday, infuriating Republicans but extracting from them a promise to speed up an inquiry into the Bush administration's handling of intelligence about Iraq's weapons in the run-up to the war.
With no warning in the mid-afternoon, the Senate's top Democrat invoked the little-used Rule 21, which forced aides to turn off the chamber's cameras and close its massive doors after evicting all visitors, reporters and most staffers.
Republicans condemned the Democrats' maneuver, which marked the first time in more than 25 years that one party had insisted on a closed session without consulting the other party. But within two hours, Republicans appointed a bipartisan panel to report on the progress of a Senate intelligence committee report on prewar intelligence, which Democrats say has been delayed for nearly a year.
"Finally, after months and months and months of begging, cajoling, writing letters, we're finally going to be able to have phase two of the investigation regarding how the intelligence was used to lead us into the intractable war in Iraq," Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) told reporters, claiming a rare victory for Democrats in the GOP-controlled Congress......
...In February 2004, senators agreed to a second phase that would investigate the Bush administration's use of intelligence and examine public statements made by key policymakers about the threat posed by Iraq.
In July 2004, the committee issued the first phase of its bipartisan report, which found the U.S. intelligence community had assembled a deeply flawed and exaggerated assessment of Saddam Hussein's weapons capabilities. The second phase was to focus on the administration's deliberations over the intelligence or how it was used. Sources familiar with the committee's work said there has been little examination of these topics to date.....
...Reid said he was forced to seek the closed session to spur action on the investigation. "The only way we've been able to get their attention is to spend 3 1/2 hours in a closed session," he said. "It's a slap in the face to the American people that this investigation has been stymied."
Rockefeller said Democratic requests for information related to the investigation are routinely denied or ignored, and he suggested that the Senate Republican leadership was under orders from the Bush administration not to cooperate.
"Any time the intelligence committee pursued a line of inquiry that brought us close to the role of the White House in all of this in the use of intelligence prior to the war, our efforts have been thwarted time and time again," Rockefeller said. "The very independence of the United States Congress as a separate and coequal branch of the government has been called into question."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senate_...igence_on_Iraq
Senate Report on Pre-war Intelligence on Iraq
...A September 7, 2006, article by journalist Jonathon Weisman in the Washington Post reported that the part of the phase two report comparing the Bush administration's public statements about Saddam Hussein with the evidence senior officials reviewed in private would not be released before the November 2006 election.<a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/06/AR2006090601920.html">[8]</a>..
....After Democrats gained a majority in the Senate during the 2006 midterm election, chairmanship of the committee passed to Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV). The former chair, Sen. Pat Roberts (R-KS) left the committee; the ranking Republican and vice chairman of the committee is now Sen. Kit Bond (R-MO).
On May 25, 2007, the committee released a volume of the phase II report titled, "Prewar
Intelligence Assessments About Postwar Iraq". This volume of the report includes seven pages of conclusions regarding assessments provided by the intelligence community to U.S. government leaders prior to the Iraq war. ...
...The intelligence community also assessed that a U.S. defeat and occupation of Iraq would lead to a surge in political Islam and increased funding for terrorist groups, and that the war would not cause other countries in the region to abandon their WMD programs.
This volume of the report includes an appendix containing two previously classified reports by the National Intelligence Council (NIC) titled, "Regional Consequences of Regime Change in Iraq" and "Principal Challenges in Post-Saddam Iraq", as well as a long list of recipients within the government of NIC assessments on Iraq. The appendix also contains a number of "Additional Views" in which different members of the committee comment on the history of the committee's work in this area, and criticize what they characterize as the politicization of that work by members of the other party.
<h2>As of May, 2007, the portions of the phase II report that have not yet been released</h2> are the review of public statements by U.S. government leaders prior to the war, and the assessment of the activities of Douglas Feith and the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans.
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I'd love to be wrong, but it is as if we've voted in a party of enablers, instead of what we though that we were voting for.....accountability !
This 2004 article meshes with the info in your book, roachboy:
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http://findarticles.com/p/articles/m...12762397/print
Independent on Sunday, The > Oct 17, 2004 > Article > Print friendly
INSIDE STORY: THE COUNTDOWN TO WAR: Revealed: the meeting that could
Alan George, Raymond Whitaker
They felt it was their duty. Six of Britain's leading experts on Iraq trooped into No 10 Downing Street on a Tuesday afternoon in November 2002, determined to warn Tony Blair that occupying the country would be difficult at best and catastrophic at worst. By the time they left an hour and a half later, most were convinced that war was inevitable - and, in the view of one at least, that there was nothing the Prime Minister could do about it.....
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Last edited by host; 01-20-2008 at 08:08 PM..
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