The congress critters and the US press all chose to hide behind the argument "We saw the intelligence!"
That's a lousy excuse.Before the fiasco started, the Pentagon gave the UN inspectors a list of 500 sites in Iraq. These were inspected. Nothing was found. The White House invaded anyway.
They pretended to "believe in the intelligence" in order to have an excuse for war.
Many Democrats also pretended to accept the intelligence so they wouldn't be branded as anti-war. If a politician said no to a popular war, he would lose his seat in Congress. So they "believed the intelligence" and voted for the war.
And now they say "well, that was the intelligence". yrs, andreas www.andreas.com----- Original Message ----- From: "Lawrence Helm" <lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: "Lit-Ideas" <Lit-Ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Sent: Friday, September 28, 2007 1:26 PM Subject: [lit-ideas] On who lied about WMDs?The only complaint I have thus far against Norman Podhoretz is that in his book World War IV, The Long Struggle Against Islamofascism, he doesn't provide footnotes. For example, in his chapter, on page 158, "The Radicalization of the Democrats," he has the following"
"Even more telling would be the belated admission by Senator John Edwards, who as John Kerry's running mate in 2004 had silently acquiesced in the excuse that Bush's lies about weapons of mass destruction had misled him and others, that the lie was on the other foot:
'I was convinced that Saddam had chemical and biological weapons and was doing everything in his power to get nuclear weapons. . . . I didn't rely on George Bush for that. And I personally think there's some dishonesty in suggesting that members of the United States Senate relied on George Bush for that information, because I don't think it's true. It's great politics. But it's not the truth. . . . I've just heard people way, "Well, you know, George Bush . . . misled us." . . . I was there, it's not what happened. . . . I was on the Intelligence Committee, so I got direct information from the intelligence community. And then I had a series of meetings with former Clinton administration people. And they were all saying the same thing. Everything I was hearing in the Intelligence Committee was the same thing I was hearing from these guys. And there was nary a dissenting voice.'"
I sought the source for this quote and found:http://www.shns.com/shns/g_index2.cfm?action=detail&pk=GAILEY-01-15-07 in which the following words appear: "In an interview with Jeffrey Goldberg in the latest issue of The New Yorker, Edwards said: "I was convinced that Saddam had chemical and biological weapons and was doing everything in his power to get nuclear weapons. There was some disparity in the information I had about how far along he was in that process. I didn't rely on George Bush for that. And I personally think there's some dishonesty in suggesting that members of the United States Senate relied on George Bush for that information, because I don't think it's true. It's great politics. But it's not the truth." Edwards refused to single out anyone, but Goldberg wrote that he appeared to be referring to John Kerry, who chose Edwards as his 2004 presidential running mate. Like Nelson, Kerry claims he was misled and "given evidence that was not true." "I was on the intelligence committee," Edwards went on, "so I got direct information from the intelligence community. And then I had a series of meetings with former Clinton administration people. And they were all saying the same thing. Everything I was hearing in the intelligence committee was the same thing I was hearing from these guys. And there was nary a dissenting voice."
I subsequently found Jeffrey Goldberg's article: http://www.jeffreygoldberg.net/articles/tny/letter_from_washington_the_sta.php It is interesting. I was struck especially by how closely Hillary Clinton's position seemed to the Neocons on the exportation of Democracy.
Lawrence ------------------------------------------------------------------ To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off, digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html
