Harold Pinter acknowledgement speech

[Occhidiangela]

Great idea. Although I don't want to be in an Irish pub with you at the moment you mention "Guinness" and "british" in one sentence again. :D
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Guinness may be Irish, but a great number of the Brits that I know are very fond of it. :D

Jester:

From a recent column by Robert Novak. Consider the source, he's not quite objective, in my opinion. I'd call him a court reporter, along the lines of Sam Donaldson in the Reagan days. He's also still playing coy with who told him Ms. Palme was a CIA operative. The article excerpted from is the 19 December Washington Post, "Obsessed w ith Bush' 16 Words" editorial.

I get the feeling that Mr Pinter, Mr Chomske, and perhaps you, are similarly "obsessed."

Per Mr Novak:

The president’s trouble began with this statement: “The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.”  To investigate this, the CIA dispatched former ambassador Joseph Wilson to Niger.  When I quoted administration sources as saying Wilson’s CIA employee wife suggested this mission, an investigation by a special prosecutor was launched and Democrats alleged that there was a plot to hide the truth about going to war.

The latest form of their effort was a “privileged” resolution introduced by Rep. Maurice Hinchey of New York calling on the president to give the House “all documents in his possession” relating to the 2003 State of the Union and an Oct. 7, 2002, speech delivered in Cincinnati.  The reason for requesting material from the earlier speech was to show that in Cincinnati the president did not mention yellowcake uranium (used to produce nuclear weapons) because the CIA allegedly had told him there was no truth to the claim.  The implication is that Bush brought up the uranium-hunt story four months later to build support for war.

If that can be shown true, I'd predict an impeachment would succeed, if the audit trail to blatant falsehood can be shown. Funny old thing, politicians spin and lie all the time. Leaders aren't supposed to. :shuriken: That's the difference between a leader, and a politician.

Here is the problem: going down the rat hole of intelligence, of good intelligence and bad, of good assessment and bad, you run into the problem of the meteorologist and the economist. Errors there can also ruin lives, or cost lives.

Like an intel guy, the weatherman he takes some data and forecasts, but the weatherman doesn't have to make a decision. The economist embarks on a similar process, but he need not decide either.

The man who wants to go fishing does, and he relies on the weatherman's forecast
The man investing in a stock does, as does a company's board, or a Minister of the Treasury, based on the economists forecast.

The both then make risk based decisions.

Even meteorologists disagree on what the meaning and value of some of their data is, data unclouded by the human element, by intention. Economists have a harder time, due to their problem of dealing with the human element of economic models, and the odd variations of actual activity versus what the CONFLICTING MODELS show will happen, based on samples of data.

So with intelligence. The analysts disagree. The decision maker is led to wonder "what is true, and how true is it?" If the assessment was "this is bogus, this is false" one wonders how it survived to even get briefed at the NSC level.

Add this mindset: What piece of intel do I discard, only to have the World Trade Center blow up? The 9-11 report is full of 'this intelligence failure led to X , Y, or Z." What actionable intelligence was NOT acted on.

Is that all a smoke screen too, Jester? Is that all a lie? Is the systemic failure of interagency intelligence coordination a load of crap too?

If the system is imperfect, what do you then do when you feel the need to make a decision? The cherry picking of facts on which to base a decision that has long term impact is not that uncommon, look at economic policy for an example, or the decision to bomb Serbia.

The sense of urgency was provided by the forecast that 2004 was a loss, with a follow on bad/worst case forecast of what that does for Gulf stability. That's my theory, and I am sticking to it, considering PNAC influence and all. A more sanguine forecast of the 2004 election would have removed the sense of urgency.

Of course, if you PNAC is behind 9-11 and used it to garner emotional support for a war in the Middle East, then the whole lying for the sake of pursuing Imperial conquest in the Mid East takes on a whole different, and far more sinister, flavor.

Is that your position? Jester? Hello, are you still there?

This takes us to the mind set of "We must do something now." Jimmy Carter made that decision regarding Desert One, and had one more CH-53 not broken down, his very risky operation might have succeeded.

Did he really have to undertake a bold and daring military raid into Iran? Or was he too driven by political urgency to take a big risk? (Yes, the scales differ.) Had that raid not been aborted, and a gunbattle undertaken in Teheran during a hostage extraction, what then the prospects for peace or war in The Gulf?

Back to forecasting more current Mid East stability. The mid to long term contingency was dark. If you object to the selling of the threat as short term, that's a valid critique, if the Cabinet and teh NSC were aware of how uncertain their intelligence was.

Other members of UN Security Council did not feel the urgency, or like China took the position "sucks to be you, tough crap, deal with it." (Not an unrealistic position for them to take. )

Why not look at the reliability of intelligence assessments American policy has relied on since WW II, and map out the gaffes. Same time period as Pinter's. Look at the mistakes made on assessing Ho Chi Minh.

All the discussion on intelligence, its worth and failures, on intelligence's truth or falsity, gets back to the human intelligence, and intentions, as I mentioned earlier. You are left reaching into the dark future without certainty. When you are the leader, you must make a decision, that is what leaders are charged with doing. Did a decision have to be made now? I asked then, and I ask now, "Why now" and all I can come up with is the 2004 election cycle as the goad, as the primal cause for urgency.

Was it misguided? For my money, yes, since Iran wins no matter what happens, if the US goes in a breaks Iraq to try to fix it. (Whoa, there's a Viet Nam soundbyte revisited!)

Was it all nothing more than a lie, and only a lie, to justify a war that someone wanted, and had wanted, all along? I find that conclusion is to be shallow, but in defense of PNAC's detractors, I find the assertion that one can implement democracy at the point of a bayonet to be unrealistic as well. You can implement change by force, reform can only come from within.

I'll stand by my theory, thanks which includes a dark prospect in the mid and long term, and toss in an adage to boot:

"Don't attribute to malice what can be explained by stupidity."

Occhi