Thursday, September 06, 2007

intelligence, and the lack thereof

It's worth mentioning that, when I was home, I got into a protracted argument with a hyperconservative friend of mine about whether or not we should've gone into Iraq, and his case (that we were right to do so) was based solely upon the credibility of the intelligence that Saddam had WMD. It was, so far as I could tell, the one thread he could hang on to in order to justify his hawkishness in 2002, and all my points about weapons inspectors being convinced that Saddam didn't have anything wouldn't budge him.

If there are a lot of people out there who think like him, and I'm pretty there are, this revelation is a big deal. Bush trusted a conman over one of Saddam's inner circle, and he did so because, as one of George Tenet's deputies says to the CIA agents trying to get the truth out:
"You haven't figured this out yet. This isn't about intelligence. It's about regime change."

Like something straight out of a Tom Clancy novel.

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