If Trump is not the Republican nominee

[AU64 10,122]

2 hours ago, aubiefifty said:

rice and powell both kept trying to tell w that cheney was cooking the books on intel. he did not believe it and when he realized the truth about a year or so before his term ended he quit speaking to bush and they have yet to speak. this was all in a documentary on hbo but i cannot remember the name of it. they say the truth broke pres bushes heart and i believe it. amn i wanted to punch him so bad at one time. now i want to give bush a hug and drink a cold one with him..........

I remember seeing George Tenet....Director of CIA telling Bush that the weapons of mass destruction was a "slam dunk" .  I guess he was influenced by Cheney but I have no idea why that could be....the VEEP is generally a non-person as long as the President is breathing. 

http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/04/18/woodward.book/

Strange thing is that Tenet was the only person not held accountable for the decision.   Bush taking the word of the CIA Director......why not?    Tenet, and 9/11 and Brennan are among the reasons that DT and many others don't trust the CIA to get it right. 

[homersapien 11,461]

15 hours ago, AU64 said:

I remember seeing George Tenet....Director of CIA telling Bush that the weapons of mass destruction was a "slam dunk" .  I guess he was influenced by Cheney but I have no idea why that could be....the VEEP is generally a non-person as long as the President is breathing. 

http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/04/18/woodward.book/

Strange thing is that Tenet was the only person not held accountable for the decision.   Bush taking the word of the CIA Director......why not?    Tenet, and 9/11 and Brennan are among the reasons that DT and many others don't trust the CIA to get it right. 

Bush gave Cheney a lot of power most VPs don't have.  And he paid a price.

But I agree that Tenet showed no backbone in going along.

[aubiefifty 16,931]

15 hours ago, AU64 said:

I remember seeing George Tenet....Director of CIA telling Bush that the weapons of mass destruction was a "slam dunk" .  I guess he was influenced by Cheney but I have no idea why that could be....the VEEP is generally a non-person as long as the President is breathing. 

http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/04/18/woodward.book/

Strange thing is that Tenet was the only person not held accountable for the decision.   Bush taking the word of the CIA Director......why not?    Tenet, and 9/11 and Brennan are among the reasons that DT and many others don't trust the CIA to get it right. 

man cheney only became vp when bush agreed to give him more power than normal. yes i know it was in the movie vice but the same thing has been said on that documentary. maybe i will google it for the title. cheney agreed to be interviewed in it. it is a small point 64 but i believe it to be true.

[AU64 10,122]

21 minutes ago, aubiefifty said:

man cheney only became vp when bush agreed to give him more power than normal. yes i know it was in the movie vice but the same thing has been said on that documentary. maybe i will google it for the title. cheney agreed to be interviewed in it. it is a small point 64 but i believe it to be true.

Don't know how old you are but I was around when all that took place.  As for Cheney.....he was pushed on Bush by people who wanted their candidate to have a VP who would bring more gravitas to the office.  JMO but I don't learn my history from movies....though I think a lot of Americans seem to think that Oliver Stone and others can be trusted sources.   

I'm still saying that despite what influence Cheney had, the CIA was the organization that gave the intelligence that got us into Iraq. ….WMD and plots to kill Bush 41 came from the intelligence services.   CIA and NSA have missed so many signals and miss-read so many situations....and yet DT is criticized for not trusting them?   JMO but there has been little reason to unquestionably trust the CIA for at least 30 years. 

[homersapien 11,461]

On 10/4/2019 at 1:44 PM, AU64 said:

Don't know how old you are but I was around when all that took place.  As for Cheney.....he was pushed on Bush by people who wanted their candidate to have a VP who would bring more gravitas to the office.  JMO but I don't learn my history from movies....though I think a lot of Americans seem to think that Oliver Stone and others can be trusted sources.   

I'm still saying that despite what influence Cheney had, the CIA was the organization that gave the intelligence that got us into Iraq. ….WMD and plots to kill Bush 41 came from the intelligence services.   CIA and NSA have missed so many signals and miss-read so many situations....and yet DT is criticized for not trusting them?   JMO but there has been little reason to unquestionably trust the CIA for at least 30 years. 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2016/12/13/the-pre-war-intelligence-on-iraq-wrong-or-hyped-by-the-bush-white-house/

Moreover, the Bush administration appeared determined to attack Iraq for any number of reasons beyond suspicions of WMDs; officials simply seized on WMDs because they concluded that that represented the strongest case for an invasion. “For bureaucratic reasons we settled on one issue, weapons of mass destruction, because it was the one reason everyone could agree on,” then-Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz told Vanity Fair in 2003.

But, in the interest of providing the historical record, what was the U.S. intelligence community’s record on Iraqi WMDs, and did the Bush administration hype the evidence?

The Facts

The short answer is that both played a role. There were serious problems in the intelligence, some of which were relegated to dissenting footnotes. But the Bush administration also chose to highlight aspects of the intelligence that helped make the administration’s case, while playing down others.

The clearest example of stretching the intelligence concerned Saddam Hussein’s links to al-Qaeda and by extension the 9/11 attacks, which were thin and nonexistent — but which the Bush administration (especially Vice President Cheney) suggested were deeply suspicious.

A 2008 Senate Intelligence Committee report, adopted in a bipartisan vote, that examined whether administration officials accurately portrayed the underlying intelligence was unsparing in its criticism of this aspect of the White House’s case for war. The 170-page report said such Iraq/al-Qaeda statements were “not substantiated by the intelligence,” adding that multiple CIA reports dismissed the claim that Iraq and al-Qaeda were cooperating partners – and that there was no intelligence information that supported administration statements that Iraq would provide weapons of mass destruction to al-Qaeda.

However, the Trump team kept its complaint isolated to intelligence findings that Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. In this case, the Senate report found that remarks by administration officials generally reflected the intelligence, but failed to convey “substantial disagreements that existed in the intelligence community.” In general, officials strongly suggested that WMD production was ongoing, reflecting “a higher degree of certainty than the intelligence judgments themselves.”

A key intelligence document before the war was an October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate, requested by Democrats before a vote to authorize the war.

Here are the findings on key weapons:

Nuclear weapons. Before the October 2002 NIE, some intelligence agencies assessed that the Iraqi government was reconstituting a nuclear weapons program, while others disagreed. The NIE reflected a majority view that it was being reconstituted but there were sharp dissents by the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research and the Department of Energy (which is the main source of nuclear weapons expertise in the U.S. government).

In particular, administration officials leaked to the New York Times that Iraq had obtained large quantities of aluminum tubes for use in the uranium enrichment project — though the Energy Department experts were convinced the tubes were poorly suited for such uses and instead were intended for artillery rockets.

Conclusion: “Statements by the president, vice president, secretary of state and the national security advisor regarding a possible Iraqi nuclear weapons program were generally substantiated by the intelligence community, but did not convey the substantial disagreements that existed in the intelligence community.” ....... etc.

 

Bottom line, if you have already decided to do something, you tend to look at ambiguous information and give weight to whatever justifies that decision.