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  #1  
Old 04-19-2004, 09:40 AM
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Tenant's "slam dunk" comment

A few months back George Tenant gave a speech that was mostly about how the CIA kept telling the White House that the intelligence on Iraq was equivocal. That speech, it seemed to me, confirmed my suspicions that Bush, Cheney, Powell, and others had exaggerated or lied about the threat posed by Saddam.

Now, Bob Woodward says that Tenant told the President that the WMD issue was a slam dunk.

What am I missing? Can Tenant's speech be reconciled with Woodward's book?

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Old 04-19-2004, 08:19 PM
Joseph Bauers
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Yes, I noticed that paradox as well. First, Tenant took responsibility for Bush's uranium from Niger claim, even though he indicated at the time that the information was tenuous. He subsequently, as I recall, indicated that the WMD stuff was very equivocal. Now, we have this "slam dunk" talk. Which is it?

Many people have argued that if Bush had been honestly misled on what our intelligence knew about WMD in Iraq, heads should have rolled--probably Tenant's, for starters. Bush's support for Tenant, despite the colossal blunder of U.S. intelligence, leads one to believe that some sort of deal has been struck by them.

Actually, I believe that it mattered not to Bush what the intelligence said--we now have several witnesses, such as O'Neil and Clarke, who assert that Iraq was on the agenda almost immediately after the inauguration.
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Old 04-19-2004, 09:10 PM
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This kind of analysis reminds me of the Kremlin watchers of the old USSR. A bit more informative than tea leaves, astrology, and owl guts, but not as useful as actual knowledge.

In the case of intelligence information, the DCIA is very unlikely to say anything unequivocal on the public record that has clandestine roots. A smart DCIA would give equivocal answers whenever possible, or obscure answers or vague answers, etc. Like the chairman of the fed reserve does. We all want to know exactly what's going but its better for us all if we don't know everything.

That being the case, we Kremlin watch. The downside of having a gov that is not always and everywhere forthright is that conspiracy theories propagate faster than truth. Since we don't know the truth with certainty, we cannot differentiate truth for conspiracy theory. So we're left with intestinal intuition.

Your gut tells you "A" my gut tells me "B" and we Kremlin watch and jump on "facts" that support our gut feelings.

B
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Old 04-19-2004, 09:33 PM
Joseph Bauers
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We all want to know exactly what's going but its better for us all if we don't know everything.--Botnst
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The problem with this concept is the question of who decides what's good for us to know? This is an open society. Before we send our children off to war, we ought to have a reasonable explanation for the cause. If you believe that the cause for war is among those things that we would be better off not knowing, then you have far more faith in politicians than I do.

If our government says, first, that there is a threat, that a mad dictator has weapons of mass destruction and intends to use them on us--but then recants after said weapons are nowhere to be found--the citizenry have a right to be ouraged.

The "we'd be better off not knowing" rationale has been around for eons, and has been used by politicians to screw the public time and again. Remember the government assurances, for example, that atomic testing in the west was of absolutely no danger for the citizens living there?

I think that in a democracy, the people must work constantly to unveil government secrecy. What we don't know can (and probably will) hurt us.
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Old 04-19-2004, 09:52 PM
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Wasn't justifyin', was 'splainin'. Folks are free to pick up whatever marbles they want and play'em as the see'em in Nov.

B

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