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

RebSaint said

Fixed it. No, really I have no doubt that there are nuances about connectivity of hostile states to terrorists. By that logic, the United States should have invaded Saudi Arabia rather than Iraq.

No, still at the end of the day we were either lied to, or the intel. agencies completely dropped the ball. I'm thinking it was a little bit of both, but mostly the former. :shrug:

Click to expand...

Eh...I think you may be missing the point.

What the Pentagon reports does is a bit of CYA. It publishes the truth (no direct operational link) without insinuating a lie. It's playing both ends against the other in a very "hiding in plain sight" manner.

An example of how this applies is in the different "types" of strategy.

• Grand strategy - the art and science of coordinating the development and use of those instruments to achieve national security objectives
• Military strategy - coordinating the development, deployment, and employment of military forces
• Operational strategy - the art and science of planning, orchestrating, and directing military campaigns within a theater of operations to achieve national security objectives
• Battlefield strategy - the art and science of employing forces on the battlefield to achieve national security objectives

These are so similar that most folks just scratch their heads and wonder what the real differences are. But to the Pentagon, there are great differences between each in scope and scale.