Senate report concludes: no proof of contact between

[kandrathe]

Here is a more complete BBC excerpt. But I would still wait for the full report, before completing your analysis. Also, please read my first paragraph with the appropriate humor and sarcasm intended. We are all propagandized, but I'm just noting that you seem to be quickly quoting from one sides play book rather than waiting for all the facts. This is the same annual NIE assessment report that Bush used in 2001 to justify a war in Iraq, and now you believe it? Seems convenient.

Excerpts: Declassified US terror report

... Bush chose to go to war, he was not forced to do so. My opinion was then and is now that his administration was eager to invade Iraq, and were deeply dishonest in their justification of the war. Actions that are not based on reality have a way of working out badly, and that is part of the reason for the disasterous consequences (although even the bitterest anti-war critic could hardly have conceived of how badly the Bush adminstration would manage post-war Iraq).

It was not just him... How about?

"When I left office, there was a substantial amount of biological and chemical material unaccounted for. That is, at the end of the first Gulf War, we knew what he had. We knew what was destroyed in all the inspection processes and that was a lot. And then we bombed with the British for four days in 1998. We might have gotten it all; we might have gotten half of it; we might have gotten none of it. But we didn't know. So I thought it was prudent for the president to go to the U.N. and for the U.N. to say you got to let these inspectors in, and this time if you don't cooperate the penalty could be regime change, not just continued sanctions." --Bill Clinton, July 22, 2003

This is a national issue, not a Bush issue. Why this little leak now, a few weeks before an election, when the document has been available since April?

Must be nice to have the gift of knowing what would have happened in alternate histories.;)

Ok. What is your view?

These aren't PR nightmares, they are policy nightmares.

Both actually. But, you can choose to work with people or work against them. I fault both sides for not working together to develop better policies, and both sides for making it political.

So the NY Times story isn't really true, and the National Intellgence Estimate did not conclude that the Iraq war has fueled Islamic radicalism around the globe and has caused the terrorist threat to grow? No doubt, we will get the selected Bush version soon (just like we got the selected WMD info;)) and be able to see more of what it says.

I did not say that. Once it becomes declassified and I can read it for myself I might have an opinion, but until then I'm not willing to take the NYT snippets predigested for my consumption. I refuse to be propagandized.

Not that anyone needs leaks from a classified intelligence report to conclude that things like the US invasion of Iraq and Guantanomo are about as effective at combating Islamic terrorism as gasoline is at putting out fires.

Ok, so why was the Cole bombed? Why was the WTC targeted in 1993 and 2001? Why were the embassies bombed in Africa? We weren't in Iraq then, so why were the Jihadists after us then? Is your suggestion that if we don't to anything they will leave us alone? Play the blame game if you like. It's pretty easy to play arm chair President with 20/20 hindsight. The NIE had at least one thing right that I have heard, Iraq has become the glamorous zone for terror. Gasoline can extiguish fires if it also consumes all the oxygen, just as war when sustained doggedly can discourage the combatants taste for violence. I'm not advocating that strategy, but this is a chess game where acting wrongly, or failing to act might have the same consequences.