The Clinton Administration said it, it must be true...

[headscratcher4]

Ok, so, recently, the explaination to excuse the Bush Administration's relience of faulty intelligence in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq runs along these lines:

Saddam was a threat. Every one agreed. Even Bill Clinton and his national security team thought he had the WMDs or was actively trying to secure them. So, our mistake, such as it was, was understandable...let's move on to the glory of removing a terrible dictator from power.

All right. This is not an entirely disreputable argument. The Clinton people did, clearly, also fear Saddam and his believed search for WMDs.

And, reasonable mistakes do occur, especially dealing with the murky world of intelligence gathering in the MiddleEast.

My own bias against the Bush people aside -- my belief that in many instances they knowingly inflated the threat and essentially lied to the world and the American public about it -- the excuse, explaination, etc. has some validity.

Here's what gets me in this effort, however. My recollection is that one of the things that the Bush campaign in 2000 was about was not only reputiating Clinton and his foriegn policy, but suggesting its incompetence. So, it would seem that the question back at the Administration when it says "Clinton thought so too" is, why did you accept that intelligence as valid, given your low opinion of the Clinton Whitehouse? or, to put it in Shcool yard terms..."If little Billy Clinton jumps off a bridge, will you do it too?"

But, the great thing about Politics, is that you can have it exactly both ways....

 

[headscratcher4]

Oops, double post. Could the Administrator remove this one? Thanks.

 

[Mark]

Ok, so, recently, the explaination to excuse the Bush Administration's relience of faulty intelligence in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq runs along these lines:

Saddam was a threat. Every one agreed. Even Bill Clinton and his national security team thought he had the WMDs or was actively trying to secure them. So, our mistake, such as it was, was understandable...let's move on to the glory of removing a terrible dictator from power.

All right. This is not an entirely disreputable argument. The Clinton people did, clearly, also fear Saddam and his believed search for WMDs.

And, reasonable mistakes do occur, especially dealing with the murky world of intelligence gathering in the MiddleEast.

My own bias against the Bush people aside -- my belief that in many instances they knowingly inflated the threat and essentially lied to the world and the American public about it -- the excuse, explaination, etc. has some validity.

Here's what gets me in this effort, however. My recollection is that one of the things that the Bush campaign in 2000 was about was not only reputiating Clinton and his foriegn policy, but suggesting its incompetence. So, it would seem that the question back at the Administration when it says "Clinton thought so too" is, why did you accept that intelligence as valid, given your low opinion of the Clinton Whitehouse? or, to put it in Shcool yard terms..."If little Billy Clinton jumps off a bridge, will you do it too?"

But, the great thing about Politics, is that you can have it exactly both ways....

Pretty safe bet that any administration which---well into its second term---is still relying on the previous administration to support what it is doing is in serious trouble.

 

[headscratcher4]

Pretty safe bet that any administration which---well into its second term---is still relying on the previous administration to support what it is doing is in serious trouble.

Indeed, because in retrospect, Bush was really running against his father and the perception of the neo-cons that the GHWB didn't follow through and take Saddam out at the end of the gulf war (again, btw, a legitimate argument, IMO, it would have been better for all at that time, and GHWB might have even been able to wind re-election not to mention keeping a global coalition together as opposed to this solo-cowboy dog and poney show we got going over there....).

 

[Manny]

My recollection is that one of the things that the Bush campaign in 2000 was about was not only reputiating Clinton and his foriegn policy, but suggesting its incompetence. So, it would seem that the question back at the Administration when it says "Clinton thought so too" is, why did you accept that intelligence as valid, given your low opinion of the Clinton Whitehouse?

Well, being incompetent in some things doesn't mean being incompetent in everything, of course. That said, I'll agree that more skepticism of the intelligence would have been appropriate -- the CIA has been getting Presidents in trouble since JFK, and you'd think that eventually someone would just say on his first day on the job "Look, you're all fired. Reapply for your jobs, because I'm tired of showing up in the papers looking stupid because of Bay of Pigs/Chile/Iran/Soviet Union/Pharma plants in Sudan/Iraq/etc. etc. etc." I was kind of hoping Porter Goss might do something like this, given his history, but he seems to have been subsumed into the culture already.

But the point of this particular line of argument isn't to say that the CIA should be trusted but to rebut the far left's charge that "BUSH LIED! WTFOMGHALLIBURTON!!!!eleventy!" The allegation has been found to be false by the Senate Intelligence Committee, the Butler Commission in Britain, the Robb-Silverman report and even partially by the Fitzgerald special prosecution -- so often that at this point it's not so much paranoia as a bald-faced lie. And yet the left continues to tell it. So it become reasonable to ask, "well, if you're alleging that, who else lied? Did Clinton lie? Secretary Albright? The people who voted for the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998 or just the ones on the intelligence committees who voted for it? Sandy Berger? Nancy Pelosi? As long as you're calling people liars, why not fill out the list?"

 

[Mark]

Well, being incompetent in some things doesn't mean being incompetent in everything, of course. That said, I'll agree that more skepticism of the intelligence would have been appropriate -- the CIA has been getting Presidents in trouble since JFK, and you'd think that eventually someone would just say on his first day on the job "Look, you're all fired. Reapply for your jobs, because I'm tired of showing up in the papers looking stupid because of Bay of Pigs/Chile/Iran/Soviet Union/Pharma plants in Sudan/Iraq/etc. etc. etc." I was kind of hoping Porter Goss might do something like this, given his history, but he seems to have been subsumed into the culture already.

But the point of this particular line of argument isn't to say that the CIA should be trusted but to rebut the far left's charge that "BUSH LIED! WTFOMGHALLIBURTON!!!!eleventy!" The allegation has been found to be false by the Senate Intelligence Committee, the Butler Commission in Britain, the Robb-Silverman report and even partially by the Fitzgerald special prosecution -- so often that at this point it's not so much paranoia as a bald-faced lie. And yet the left continues to tell it. So it become reasonable to ask, "well, if you're alleging that, who else lied? Did Clinton lie? Secretary Albright? The people who voted for the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998 or just the ones on the intelligence committees who voted for it? Sandy Berger? Nancy Pelosi? As long as you're calling people liars, why not fill out the list?"

The "Far Left's" contention that Bush lied?!?!?!

Guess again. Look at Bush's current poll numbers: it is only the hardcore Republican faithful---the Far Right---who imagine he didn't lie.

 

[headscratcher4]

"...as you're calling people liars, why not fill out the list."

So basically, the alleged lies of this Administration -- The people in charge, actually running the show right now -- are excusable because of the lies and incompetence, etc. of the previous Administration and the exagerations and lies of their minority (and thus essentially powerless ) opponents?

In short, George Bush and this Adminsitration, who you often defend, should be held to the same standard as Nancy Pelosi who you revile?

It seems to me that what we should expect -- of this Administration or any other -- in not only their best efforts, but accountability and resonsibilty. When they are wrong, or even just in good-faith error, that would seemt o require a mia-culpa, not a "hey, Bill Clinton blew it too..." Bill Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, Sandy Berger aren't driving the train just now, and as Mark pointed out, if you are pointing to the last, seemingly discredited, Administration for support of your policy choices five years out, than you've got real problems...and not just blindness.

 

[Manny]

So basically, the alleged lies of this Administration -- The people in charge, actually running the show right now -- are excusable because of the lies and incompetence, etc. of the previous Administration and the exagerations and lies of their minority (and thus essentially powerless ) opponents?

You'd do better asking that question to the people who are alleging that Bush (and by extension all those other people) lied. It is my belief that President Clinton et. al. were not lying about this subject -- that they were making good-faith statements based on the totality of information available to them which statements later turned out to be incorrect.

 

[headscratcher4]

Ok, so the errors of the Clinton Adminsitration justifies the errors of the Bush Administration and the policy, based on errors, that the Bush Administration persued and continues to persue is justified and should not be re-evaluated or changed because the Clinton Administration got it wrong first.

This is responsible government and policy making at its best -- we are all wrong, in error, mistaken together, so everythign that follows from those errors is ok and we have no reason to go back and re-evaluate the choices we made based on erroneous assumptions, intelligence, analsysis, whatever.

This is the "George Armstrong Custer" school of policy justification?

 

[Manny]

This is the "George Armstrong Custer" school of policy justification?

No. You're proceeding from the false presumption that the Clinton errors make everything "OK" or "justified." The Clinton errors, again, are simply to rebut the charge of Bush's alleged lying. If one believes that Bush lied, one MUST also believe that Clinton lied, as they said the same things based on the same information. There's literally no alternative.

As regards going forward or evaluating the policy choices that were made in response to the erroneous data, it means that the WMD part of the justification for war was in error. An error which Saddam Hussein could easily have remedied, as it happens, but there you go. But the failing to comply with UN resolutions part, the brutality of the regime part, the supporting terrorists part, the proven danger to his neighbors part turn out to be true, with an addition of stealing from the oil-for-food program thrown in for good measure and 25 million people freed to boot. All in all, not so bad on the scale of things presidents have done in response to erroneous information from the CIA.

 

[Mark]

No. You're proceeding from the false presumption that the Clinton errors make everything "OK" or "justified." The Clinton errors, again, are simply to rebut the charge of Bush's alleged lying. If one believes that Bush lied, one MUST also believe that Clinton lied, as they said the same things based on the same information. There's literally no alternative.

As regards going forward or evaluating the policy choices that were made in response to the erroneous data, it means that the WMD part of the justification for war was in error. An error which Saddam Hussein could easily have remedied, as it happens, but there you go. But the failing to comply with UN resolutions part, the brutality of the regime part, the supporting terrorists part, the proven danger to his neighbors part turn out to be true, with an addition of stealing from the oil-for-food program thrown in for good measure and 25 million people freed to boot. All in all, not so bad on the scale of things presidents have done in response to erroneous information from the CIA.

A) Clinton did not invade Iraq.

B) Additional information came in after Bush was President that clearly showed Iraq had no WMD. Bush continued to push for war anyway. That is lying. Tying Clinton to it is disengenuous.

 

[headscratcher4]

The big lie, it seems to me wasn’t WMDs or not WMDs. It may have even been noble at its base: get rid of Saddam (not a bad goal by any means). No the big lie was not leveling with the American people. WMDs were pretext…we all know that know. This Administration was looking for any excuse to go in. They also knew that without a pretext they couldn’t sell the proposition. Bush didn’t come before the country and say: we have a moral, ethical, global, geopolitical, energy reason for overthrowing Saddam. No, he said Saddam had WMDs and than he said, oops, ok he didn’t but you don’t want us to go back to the way it was do you…

There is no responsibility in these people. There is no accountability either. Yes, Saddam is/was evil, and yes maybe he should have been overthrown…but that isn’t the debate we had in this country. We invaded because he posed a clear and present danger. The policy was fixed, to use the Downing Street memo language. And, as outrageously, the invasion policy itself was a muddle. Nearly everyone save the Administration and its dwindling defenders, understands that there were too few troops to secure the country and that it would have been a heck of a lot better had we spent the time to build a real international coalition.

This has been a policy con-game. And, in a Democracy that is unacceptable. That’s my argument. They haven’t really leveld with the American people from day one…which, in my mind, calls into question their commitment to their underlying premise that Saddam was so bad and so dangerous that he had to be thrown over in the first place.

Worse still, the argument now seems to be, We (the Bushies) got us into this mess doing exactly what we are doing now, and that is the best way to get us out of it.

Ok, so if it isn't a "george armstrong custer" justification, it is a "let the drunk-doctor continue operating, he knows there's a cancer in there somewhere..." justification.

 

[zakur]

Intelligence, Policy,and the War in Iraq

At the same time, an acrimonious and highly partisan debate broke out over whether the Bush administration manipulated and misused intelligence in making its case for war. The administration defended itself by pointing out that it was not alone in its view that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and active weapons programs, however mistaken that view may have been.

In this regard, the Bush administration was quite right: its perception of Saddam's weapons capacities was shared by the Clinton administration, congressional Democrats, and most other Western governments and intelligence services. But in making this defense, the White House also inadvertently pointed out the real problem: intelligence on Iraqi weapons programs did not drive its decision to go to war. A view broadly held in the United States and even more so overseas was that deterrence of Iraq was working, that Saddam was being kept "in his box," and that the best way to deal with the weapons problem was through an aggressive inspections program to supplement the sanctions already in place. That the administration arrived at so different a policy solution indicates that its decision to topple Saddam was driven by other factors -- namely, the desire to shake up the sclerotic power structures of the Middle East and hasten the spread of more liberal politics and economics in the region.

There's some other pretty damning information in this article, specifically:

The administration used intelligence not to inform decision-making, but to justify a decision already made. It went to war without requesting -- and evidently without being influenced by -- any strategic-level intelligence assessments on any aspect of Iraq. (The military made extensive use of intelligence in its war planning, although much of it was of a more tactical nature.) Congress, not the administration, asked for the now-infamous October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iraq's unconventional weapons programs, although few members of Congress actually read it. (According to several congressional aides responsible for safeguarding the classified material, no more than six senators and only a handful of House members got beyond the five-page executive summary.) As the national intelligence officer for the Middle East, I was in charge of coordinating all of the intelligence community's assessments regarding Iraq; the first request I received from any administration policymaker for any such assessment was not until a year into the war.

 

[Zep]

How far back do you want to go with this line of thinking of comparing current policy and actions to previous administrations? Didn't FDR know full well about the pending Japanese attack on the USA in 1941, but said nothing and allowed it to happen, for his own political purposes? Is that a justification for doing the same 50+ years later?

Incidentally, there was a very good post elsewhere here about why Pappy Bush decided NOT to take out Saddam in 1991. They were much the same reasons why Bush Jr should not have invaded in 2003...

 

[The Central Scrutinizer]

Oops, double post. Could the Administrator remove this one? Thanks.

Couldn't you remove the first one instead?

 

[Cylinder]

How far back do you want to go with this line of thinking of comparing current policy and actions to previous administrations? Didn't FDR know full well about the pending Japanese attack on the USA in 1941, but said nothing and allowed it to happen, for his own political purposes? Is that a justification for doing the same 50+ years later?

Incidentally, there was a very good post elsewhere here about why Pappy Bush decided NOT to take out Saddam in 1991. They were much the same reasons why Bush Jr should not have invaded in 2003...

I don't think you understand the argument.

The Clinton era estimate of Iraq's WMD programs does nothing to rebut the claim that invading Iraq and toppling the Baathist regime was a bad idea. It does, however, make a very strong rebuttal to the claim that President Bush lied about the US assessment of Iraq in order to carry out that policy.

 

[Art Vandelay]

Ok, so, recently, the [explanation] to excuse the Bush Administration's [reliance on] faulty intelligence in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq runs along these lines:

Besides being poorly spelled, I believe this is a strawman. Can you cite an example?

 

[peptoabysmal]

The "Far Left's" contention that Bush lied?!?!?!

Guess again. Look at Bush's current poll numbers: it is only the hardcore Republican faithful---the Far Right---who imagine he didn't lie.

Your argument is that if enough people believe it, then it is true?

 

[Crazytree]

 

[rikzilla]

Intelligence, Policy,and the War in Iraq


There's some other pretty damning information in this article, specifically:

Good information man! Like a nugget of gold in a pile of raw (rule8)! I found much the same thing here

The administration's overarching point is true: Intelligence agencies overwhelmingly believed that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, and very few members of Congress from either party were skeptical about this belief before the war began in 2003. Indeed, top lawmakers in both parties were emphatic and certain in their public statements.

If "Bush lied, people died" is true there should be at least two different versions of the pre-war intel. Two different stories. Yet I've seen no evidence come to light that there were different versions...just different interpretations of the same info. (and most of this after the fact of the invasion)

No, Congress was biased to the point of laziness. Saddam as a threat was simply not controversial:

The lawmakers are partly to blame for their ignorance. Congress was entitled to view the 92-page National Intelligence Estimate about Iraq before the October 2002 vote. But, as The Washington Post reported last year, no more than six senators and a handful of House members read beyond the five-page executive summary.

Six senators! SIX! If the Senate and House had bothered to even read the damned thing we might have had a decently informed debate. As it was they were a rubberstamp....yup Kerry, Clinton, Kennedy et al.... They would have you believe they were hoodwinked, lied to, mislead....but in reality it was a humdrum case of chronicly lazy assumption making.

Yet it's fair to say that one reason why the pre-war intelligence estimate that Saddam Hussein constituted a national security threat to the US did not elicit more scrutiny was because the view had been held for years. Milbank and Pincus noted that President Clinton ordered Iraq bombed on four days in 1998 based on a Congressional authorization to defend "against the continuing threat by Iraq". Although a Bush-administration ground invasion of Iraq was a far more serious step than a Clinton cruise missile barrage it was based on the same general narrative -- a narrative which had been accepted for years.

As I've noted all along. Confirmation bias. GWB was guilty of it certainly...but this bit of info demonstrates that he was hardly alone in his assumptions.

-z