Quote:
Originally Posted by peragro
That European Intelligence that you speak so highly of is the "cherry picked" intelligence that was used. In fact, the British have never rescinded their claim that Hussein was pursuing uranium in Nigeria and other weapons platforms. In addition, that exceptional European Intelligence, German this time, provided us with the "inside man" that made many erroneous claims about Saddams chem/bio capabilities on which we acted.
Unfortunately, hindsight is 20/20 and not foresight. It's easy enough to, after the fact, armchair quarterback decisions made based upon valid intelligence at the time. At least this time things weren't treated as a criminal investigation and then agencies prohibited from sharing data (they do that well enough on their own).
Trying to pin intelligence failure on "one day chopping trees and squirrel hunting" while ignoring the deliberate defunding and hamstringing of Intelligence Agencies in the 90's is ridiculous.
|
As tankdriver hinted at, the Germans were not pushing for war like the US and British governments were, quite the opposite. What I was really talking about is how Europe has been able to infiltrate and round up suspected terror cells on its own territory. They seem pretty good at that and that should be our priority as well. Only a retard would truly believe that invading an unrelated foreign country will somehow keep the terrorists that attacked us from attacking us again, yet this was the logic when going into Iraq. I'm not making any armchair quarterback decisions after the fact here. I was strongly against the war before it even started and I was very disappointed with how the majority of the American public let itself get so brainwashed, even labeling anti-war people as unpatriotic... truly disgusting.
Clinton certainly shares some of the blame for not dealing with Al Qaeda more effectively sooner, but the bottom line is that it happened 9 months after Bush's inauguration and he had plenty of time to start any intelligence reforms that were needed. He didn't even try and he resisted changes and inquires into what happened even long after 9/11 to hide his true incompetence.