Exhaustive review sponsored by the Pentagon finds NO link between Saddam, al Qaida

[RebSaint]

Dad's-
Above quote is your first post on this thread. It doesn't make mention of language in the article. It is a rationalization for the invasion of Iraq. "He sealed his fate ."
No mention of the wording of the article........until you needed something to help prop up an undefendable opinion. IMHO

I would argue that Hussein's fate was sealed when GWBush was elected to the presidency, a man with deep ties to the oil/energy industry and lobby.

 

[blackadder]

Wait for what? DadsDream did get one thing right--in many cases, this story is a bit of non-news. Just about every government study, commission, committee and agency has since debunked the administration's claim that there was significant ties between AQ and Hussein. Face it, either we were lied to by the bunch in the White House, or our intelligence agencies failed at an unprecedented level.

It's the former and it was from the VPs office down to the specially created propaganda "Office of Special Plans."

George Tenet colluded by filtering out or de-emphasizing dissent from the CIA and the intelligence community.

The entire CIA has been scapegaoted by the administration and Congress thanks to the efforts of Tenet, which is why he got one of these:

 

[Mr. Littlejeans]

"Formations are of the operational level if they are able to conduct operations on their own, and are of sufficient size to be directly handled or have a significant impact at the strategic level."

So Al Qaeda received no help from Iraq "of sufficient size to be directly handled or have a significant impact at the strategic level."

And yet we invaded a sovereign country at the cost of 4000+ lives and $12 BILLION a month.

Yes this report is newsworthy.

 

[blackadder]

Threat assessment, based on captured enemy documents is done at three levels:

Tactical
Operational
Strategic

We're talking about a Pentagon report regarding captured Iraqi documents. The methodology used to dissect said documents requires categorization, addressing each level, in turn.

"no direct operational link" means no links at a level which would provide warfare at that level.

There's nothing hard about this. Y'all can quibble with what I'm saying all you want though. That's fine.

You could understand someone with some level of exasperation with the semantics.

Why would be need to undertake an exhaustive review of 600,000 documents to determine that Al Queda, with help from Saddam, was not a threat to field whole divisions of fighters?

 

[champ76]

Wait for what? DadsDream did get one thing right--in many cases, this story is a bit of non-news. Just about every government study, commission, committee and agency has since debunked the administration's claim that there was significant ties between AQ and Hussein. Face it, either we were lied to by the bunch in the White House, or our intelligence agencies failed at an unprecedented level.

I think it's a "slam dunk" which it was. And not to parse, but I don't believe anyone in the administration ever claimed "operational" ties, or even "significant" ties between Saddam and AQ. They mentioned ties, some of which were proven true, some of which were the result of faulty intelligence. When DD mentioned Saddam "sealed his fate" because of his unpredictability, that's important because in the post 9-11 world, an unpredictable man who harbors weapons of mass destruction and who has links of any kind with a terror organization, risks a certain end. The belief was Saddam was all three, unpredictable, a harborer of wmd, who had links to terror organizations.

 

[blackadder]

"Formations are of the operational level if they are able to conduct operations on their own, and are of sufficient size to be directly handled or have a significant impact at the strategic level."

What's the source on that?

Seems at odds with the monolithic defintion of "oerational" so far advanced by DD...

 

[DadsDream]

"Formations are of the operational level if they are able to conduct operations on their own, and are of sufficient size to be directly handled or have a significant impact at the strategic level."

So Al Qaeda received no help from Iraq "of sufficient size to be directly handled or have a significant impact at the strategic level."

And yet we invaded a sovereign country at the cost of 4000+ lives and $12 BILLION a month.

Yes this report is newsworthy.

Now, that makes sense, in a conventional warfare scenario. True.

 

[BourgeoisBob]

There were no operational connections - so what? There were other connections, terrorist connections

AP writers are dumb, they do not know what the Pentagon means when it writes reports.

Thanks DadsDream. People on here should stick to talking about what they know. Or go to work for the AP LOL!

 

[DadsDream]

What's the source on that?

Seems at odds with the monolithic defintion of "oerational" so far advanced by DD...

You posted a Wikipedia entry showing that the Pentagon uses the word "operational" in different ways.

I responded with the Wikipedia entry for "Operational Warfare."

Guess you didn't bother to read it. Oh, well. I tried.

 

[Shawn]

There were no operational connections - so what? There were other connections, terrorist connections

AP writers are dumb, they do not know what the Pentagon means when it writes reports.

Thanks DadsDream. People on here should stick to talking about what they know. Or go to work for the AP LOL!

No they do, and they don't try to parse words, sentences, and juggle semantics to obfuscate the painfully obvious, broader picture that is laid out clearly, in this report and virtually every other investigation of the administrations claims.

 

[Mr. Littlejeans]

Now, that makes sense, in a conventional warfare scenario. True.

So why is the Pentagon bothering to report on this if it only makes sense in a "conventional war." We did wage a "conventional war " on Iraq, when we should have been waging an "unconventional" war on Afghanistan. We don't need Pentagon reports to tell us that there was exponentially more threat to our security and more support for AlQaeda in Afghanistan than in Iraq. Even those "dumb AP writers " know that!!! But some on this thread are still in Denial......DEEP

 

[RebSaint]

I think it's a "slam dunk" which it was. And not to parse, but I don't believe anyone in the administration ever claimed "operational" ties, or even "significant" ties between Saddam and AQ. .

Wrong. Again.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2004/06/18/MNGP278BI61.DTL

"long history of ties" Sounds to me like the Bush administration was engaging in good old fashioned fear mongering to whip up support for the war. Simple.

The administration overplayed its hand to whip up the post 9-11 climate to go to war. Really, it's that simple. Administration officials repeated over and over again these "ties" and "connections." That, combined with the "slam dunk" case laid out by Powell before the UN on WMDs completes the circle of simply manipulating bad information to go to war. You either have to be completely blind or unbelievably partisan to not see we got played.

And looking at ALL available evidence to make a decision to go to war? Nope. Not this administration.

http://nationaljournal.com/about/njweekly/stories/2005/1122nj1.htm

Well looky here, not wanting to look at evidence which undermined this "connection," whatever it was.

 

[blackadder]

I think it's a "slam dunk" which it was. And not to parse, but I don't believe anyone in the administration ever claimed "operational" ties, or even "significant" ties between Saddam and AQ. They mentioned ties, some of which were proven true, some of which were the result of faulty intelligence. When DD mentioned Saddam "sealed his fate" because of his unpredictability, that's important because in the post 9-11 world, an unpredictable man who harbors weapons of mass destruction and who has links of any kind with a terror organization, risks a certain end. The belief was Saddam was all three, unpredictable, a harborer of wmd, who had links to terror organizations.

What was unpredictable?

The man did deals with us in the past and would gladly have done so again. He TOLD us he was "leaving all options on the table" with the Kuwaitis in 1990, when he accused them of slant drilling and tapping Iraqi oil. We responded that "we had no opinion on the dispute."

He was begging for a peace deal through back channels the entire time throughout 2002/03...

I disagree. If he was a legitmate threat they would not have had to create their own shadow organization in the Pentagon (OSP) to doctor the intel to show a threat.

It was a setup and Saddam was an easy mark for the setup. As you know, the Bush administration was already mulling action in Iraq prior to 9/11 and it was not about WMD.

My god, the adminstration came out and admitted it wasn't about WMD but rather WMD was just the conveneint excuse:

"The truth is that for reasons that have a lot to do with the U.S. government bureaucracy, we settled on the one issue that everyone could agree on which was weapons of mass destruction as the core reason."

http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2003-05-30-wolfowitz-iraq_x.htm

"The Bush administration began planning to use U.S. troops to invade Iraq within days after the former Texas governor entered the White House three years ago, former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill told CBS News' 60 Minutes."

http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/01/10/oneill.bush/

What more do you need to hear?

We are in an interesting phase of formation of a historical myth, where facts become irrelevant to the cherished myth.

"Slam dunk" my eye.

 

[Mr. Littlejeans]

You posted a Wikipedia entry showing that the Pentagon uses the word "operational" in different ways.

I responded with the Wikipedia entry for "Operational Warfare."

Guess you didn't bother to read it. Oh, well. I tried.

I'm sure the Pentagon bases their use of the word operational on a Wikipedia entry

Maybe I should go in and change it to "whatever we want it to mean"