[quote=Arraya][quote=Allan from Fallbrook]
Hussein not only had a well-developed chem- and bio-weapons capability, he had used it before and inflicted tens of thousands of casualties in so doing. .[/quote]
Yes, it’s a well established fact that we helped with that in the early 80s. Then provided cover with the UN when Iran complained about it to them.
[quote=Allan from Fallbrook]
You can assert the familiar neo-con conspiracy argument, but that runs into trouble when you look at the facts and facts from sources outside of the US and the US intelligence community (a point I made above)..[/quote]
Talk about assertion. It’s a well known fact that the intelligence was crap and twisted by dozens of intellgence officers across the globe. The downy street memo was the M16 admitteding it was cooked as well as, at least a dozen, former intelligence and insiders in the US
Oh, are you saying we relied on some secret report from the netherlands that nobody knows about? That also turned out to be wrong?
The neo-cons have names and put out reports – it sure IS NOT secret that they were gunning for him in the mid 90s. No conspiracy needed, the publically announced the severity of the matter in 98 and 2000.
Colin Powel from Feb 2001. Maybe he did not get the secret Dutch report you are talking about.
Arraya: I agree that the intel was crap. I’ll take it one step further and say that the intel, regardless of time and situation, is generally fucked up and thus you have to operate off of what you have. When I was in the Army, I can count on the fingers of one hand the times that the intel was solid. However, given the fact that Hussein had chem/bio weapons and had used them before and was also actively developing weaponized anthrax and botulin and was also actively supporting groups like al-Qaeda, the risk was simply too great to ignore, IMHO. As it turned out, I was clearly wrong and admitted that. If I had it to do over again, I’d go the same route. Neo-cons notwithstanding, Hussein was a weapons-grade asshole of the first order and one with delusions of a pan-Arab state with himself at the helm. Was it worth the blood and treasure expended to take him out? Nope. But most of that I ascribe to a really shitty “winning the peace” plan versus a really good “winning the war” plan (meaning we knew how to remove him from power, but didn’t have a fucking clue how to run the place after that happened).
Also, much of what came to light after, came to light after, meaning that we were operating on either leveraged intel (designed to bolster a thin case for war) or improperly managed intel (meaning the usual inter-agency bullshit obscured getting a proper picture of the whole situation). Again, this underscores the weakness of SIGINT/ELINT (which the NSA and CIA prefer) versus HUMINT (which we’re admittedly shitty at and is the most effective to develop/glean intel).
