Exhaustive review sponsored by the Pentagon finds NO link between Saddam, al Qaida
In your opinion. But then, I've been swapping stories with Bulldawg for years here. I'm telling you what the intent was. If you chose to discount that, well, that's your choice.
No, it had nothing to do with supporting the invasion. It had to do with responding to Bulldawg, then reading the news item, then providing background information regarding what I took from that article.
The rest of the junk in this thread (assigning motives and such to my reasons for posting) is pure hogwash.
You know what I'm not "buying?"
I'm not buying any notion of explaining your entrenched position based on the fact that it was somehow a discussion of language directed at Bulldawg. You dug in, and that doesn't dig you out. You were responding to Bulldawg, but you were also advocating a larger opinion, one that is well known on the board.
Yes, the obvious meaning of the report is that Saddam was not planning Brigade-sized conventional military operations with al-Qaeda. Correct.
That's what makes the news article and the way it was reported incorrect. :ezbill:
I'm not buying that you just put out an "opinion" when you explicitly stated that the other posters didn't understand the language of the report. It was a presumption of expertise (which may be true) to marginalize the counter-opinions.
You missed the entire point. See Bulldawg's post above.
Operational (standard English) - Working, viable.
Operational (Pentagon-ese) - A level of war involving Division-sized elements confined to a given geographical region, limited in size and scope, ie: Operation Desert Storm.
The headline of the story you posted is totally misleading and way off base. The report it cites is a Pentagon report, written in Pentagon lingo. It doesn't say there was "no link" it says there was no "direct operational link."
Given that al-Qaeda doesn't do conventional warfare, using division-sized maneuver elements, this is hardly surprising.
Non-news.
And I'm not buying that all the other "garbage" was what crapped up this thread. Your opinon is your own, and I think you raised some legitimate issues. When counterpoints were made, you deflected, per usual, into a discussion about semantics, and suggestions of superior knowledge about the workings of the military (assumed true) and the press corps. Others tried to assert that even if your understanding of the language of the DoD is accurate, the larger point advocated by the story is still accurate.
Utlimately, it does not vindicate the intelligence reports, nor the reasons the administration asserted for invading Iraq. It's abundantly clear to everyone that your wrangling of words--mixed in with your other posts on this thread and others--was a defense of the administrations position.
You'll of course deny that, and claim that you were only trying to clarify the language and the sourcing of the story. The body of your post, on this thread, suggests otherwise.
That's what I'm not buying.