[besson3c]

Anybody read this article yet?

What do you think?

[constrictor]

No one read this. The New York Times is written in New York, I think, and that place is full of welfare moms and gays.

Sorry, couldn't resist.

[bamburg dunes]

Oops, I posted this up top without seeing your post here.

It's on /. too, I love the comments they have.

here's the links

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/10/03/1924229

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/03/in...er=rssuserland

[macvillage.net]

It's really old news. Nothing that hasn't been out for a long time.

It's just a nice broken down analysis of it all in a popular newspaper.

It's not 'news' per say, since it's a few months old. Nothing new was said.

It's the article itself that is 'new'.

[besson3c]

Originally posted by macvillage.net:
It's really old news. Nothing that hasn't been out for a long time.

It's just a nice broken down analysis of it all in a popular newspaper.

It's not 'news' per say, since it's a few months old. Nothing new was said.

It's the article itself that is 'new'.

New or old, can anybody refute it? Can anybody justify a lie this grand in scope?

[macvillage.net]

I think if it was possible, it would have been done ages ago.

[Mrjinglesusa]

Originally posted by besson3c:
New or old, can anybody refute it? Can anybody justify a lie this grand in scope?

No, they can't. That's why they aren't posting here. Same thing happens in every post that contains facts. Bush fanboys can't say anything to refute them. If an ad hominem attack won't work they stay away. At least that's been my experience...

[tie]

Here is an extensive NY Times report on the aluminum tubes Iraq tried to buy for rockets, but which the administration claimed were for uranium centrifuges.

There are a number of lies revealed from members throughout the Bush administration.

For example, in September 2002, Cheney called the tubes "irrefutable evidence" of Iraq's nuclear program. Also that September, Rice said the tubes were "only really suited for nuclear weapons programs. We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud."

But almost a year before, Ms. Rice's staff had been told that the government's foremost nuclear experts seriously doubted that the tubes were for nuclear weapons, according to four officials at the Central Intelligence Agency and two senior administration officials, all of whom spoke on condition of anonymity. The experts, at the Energy Department, believed the tubes were likely intended for small artillery rockets.

Powell flat-out lied in his UN presentation for example when he claimed that the tubes were manufactured to a tolerance "that far exceeds U.S. requirements for comparable rockets."

Yet in a memo written two days earlier, Mr. Powell's intelligence experts had specifically cautioned him about those very same words. "In fact," they explained, "the most comparable U.S. system is a tactical rocket - the U.S. Mark 66 air-launched 70-millimeter rocket - that uses the same, high-grade (7075-T6) aluminum, and that has specifications with similar tolerances."
[Similar tubes were also used in the Italian Medusa rocket, which the Iraqis had copied. The Energy Department had make a remark to the effect that "many common industrial items, even aluminum cans, were made to specifications as good or better than the tubes sought by Iraq."]

Cheney seems to find the truth intolerable:

"Armed with an arsenal of these weapons of terror, and seated atop 10 percent of the world's oil reserves, Saddam Hussein could then be expected to seek domination of the entire Middle East, take control of a great portion of the world's energy supplies, directly threaten America's friends throughout the region, and subject the United States or any other nation to nuclear blackmail."
...
In his Nashville speech, Mr. Cheney had not mentioned the aluminum tubes or any other fresh intelligence when he said, "We now know that Saddam has resumed his efforts to acquire nuclear weapons." The one specific source he did cite was Hussein Kamel al-Majid, a son-in-law of Mr. Hussein's who defected in 1994 after running Iraq's chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs. But Mr. Majid told American intelligence officials in 1995 that Iraq's nuclear program had been dismantled. What's more, Mr. Majid could not have had any insight into Mr. Hussein's current nuclear activities: he was assassinated in 1996 on his return to Iraq.
...
Not only did Mr. Cheney draw attention to the tubes; he did so with a certitude that could not be found in even the C.I.A.'s assessments. On "Meet the Press," Mr. Cheney said he knew "for sure" and "in fact" and "with absolute certainty" that Mr. Hussein was buying equipment to build a nuclear weapon.

"He has reconstituted his nuclear program," Mr. Cheney said flatly.

There is an extensive summary of the saga of the centrifuges, one which should have ended within days, but somehow was kept alive. I've summarized below a short part of the story, basically some of the extensive evidence against the tubes being ordered as centrifuges.

[Not a quote from the NY Times, just separated for emphasis]
The original analyst asserted in April 2001 that the tubes "have little use other than for a uranium enrichment program." (One reason given later was "that the tubes' dimensions matched those used in an early uranium centrifuge developed in the 1950's by a German scientist, Gernot Zippe. Most centrifuge designs are highly classified; this one, though, was readily available in science reports." In fact, however, this was not true, since the thicknesses of the rocket tubes were 3x that of Zippe's tubes.)

"The next day, Energy Department officials ticked off a long list of reasons why the tubes did not appear well suited for centrifuges. Simply put, the analysis concluded that the tubes were the wrong size .. to be of much practical use in a centrifuge.

"What was more, the analysis reasoned, if the tubes were part of a secret, high-risk venture to build a nuclear bomb, why were the Iraqis haggling over prices with suppliers all around the world? And why weren't they shopping for all the other sensitive equipment needed for centrifuges?"
..
Within weeks, the Energy Department reported, "that Iraq had for years used high-strength aluminum tubes to make combustion chambers for slim rockets fired from launcher pods... The tubes now sought by Iraq had precisely the same dimensions - a perfect match."

A team of top US nuclear scientists and intelligence officials inspected an intercepted shipment of the tubes. In August 2001, they concluded that the tubes were unlikely to be used as centrifuges, and that "rocket production is the much more likely end use for these tubes." "First, in size and material, the tubes were very different from those Iraq had used in its centrifuge prototypes before the first gulf war .. made of exotic materials that performed far better than aluminum. 'Aluminum was a huge step backwards,' Dr. Wood recalled."

"In fact, the team could find no centrifuge machines "deployed in a production environment" that used such narrow tubes. Their walls were three times too thick for 'favorable use' in a centrifuge, the team wrote. They were also anodized, meaning they had a special coating to protect them from weather. Anodized tubes, the team pointed out, are 'not consistent' with a uranium centrifuge because the coating can produce bad reactions with uranium gas.

"Similar conclusions were being reached by Britain's intelligence service and experts at the International Atomic Energy Agency, a United Nations body. ... Britain's experts believed the tubes would need 'substantial re-engineering' to work in centrifuges... Their experts found it 'paradoxical' that Iraq would order such finely crafted tubes only to radically rebuild each one for a centrifuge. Yes, it was theoretically possible, but as an Energy Department analyst later told Senate investigators, it was also theoretically possible to 'turn your new Yugo into a Cadillac.'"

"By year's end, Energy Department analysts published a classified report that even more firmly rejected the theory that the tubes could work as rotors in a 1950's Zippe centrifuge. These particular Zippe centrifuges, they noted, were especially ill suited for bomb making. They were a prototype designed for laboratory experiments, operating as single units. To produce enough enriched uranium to make just one bomb a year, Iraq would need up to 16,000 of them working in concert, a challenge for even the most sophisticated centrifuge plants."

"The Energy Department team concluded it was 'unlikely that anyone' could build a centrifuge site capable of producing significant amounts of enriched uranium 'based on these tubes.' One analyst summed it up this way: the tubes were so poorly suited for centrifuges, he told Senate investigators, that if Iraq truly wanted to use them this way, 'we should just give them the tubes.'"

The article also claims that our worries about the intelligence communities reliance on "group think" may be inaccurate. The problem was the leadership.

Far from "group think," American nuclear and intelligence experts argued bitterly over the tubes. A "holy war" is how one Congressional investigator described it. But if the opinions of the nuclear experts were seemingly disregarded at every turn, an overwhelming momentum gathered behind the C.I.A. assessment. It was a momentum built on a pattern of haste, secrecy, ambiguity, bureaucratic maneuver and a persistent failure in the Bush administration and among both Republicans and Democrats in Congress to ask hard questions.

(Sorry for the long post.)

[macintologist]

Nice post tie

[kido]

I've read the NYTimes article three times now, as it is a very eye-opening piece. It speaks to how the world works and how our perceptions of that world affect how we think it should work. In the end, it really comes down to "what did they know, and when did they know it." Six unamed sources state that the National Security Advisor, Condi Rice, where aware of the dissenting opinions regarding the state of Saddam's nuclear weapons program. She says she was aware of a debate, but no one said definitively that Saddam had no program. It is an article that spreads the blame fairly and without too much judgment, which is why I think people on both sides should read it. Depending upon your political leaning, I am sure you will find elements of this whole affair that both support and detract from your position. The simple truth is no one was without blame in the runup to war with Iraq, but of course the Bush administration should accept responsibility for it's actions. However, I also feel that the Congress, U.N., International Intelligence experts, DOE officials, CIA administrators, Tenet, Powell, had a part in this. But we should not forget that Saddam Hussein himself is also culpable for the events which led to his downfall.

kido

[tie]

Bush claimed during the debate that Kerry voted based on the same intelligence Bush saw. (Of course this is an odd argument to make, since Bush also says he made the right decision..) Quote: Kerry "looked at the same intelligence I looked at."

This was not the case. The White House was told of the strong dissenting views about the aluminum tubes. The Senate was not told. Bush lied.

"But several Congressional and intelligence officials with access to the 15 assessments said not one of them informed senior policy makers of the Energy Department's dissent. They described a series of reports, some with ominous titles, that failed to convey either the existence or the substance of the intensifying debate."

I have quoted the entire section below, since the NY Times article will disappear soon.

What White House Is Told

As the Senate Intelligence Committee report made clear, the American intelligence community "is not a level playing field when it comes to the competition of ideas in intelligence analysis."

The C.I.A. has a distinct edge: "unique access to policy makers and unique control of intelligence reporting," the report found. The Presidential Daily Briefs, for example, are prepared and presented by agency analysts; the agency's director is the president's principal intelligence adviser. This allows agency analysts to control the presentation of information to policy makers "without having to explain dissenting views or defend their analysis from potential challenges," the committee's report said.

This problem, the report said, was "particularly evident" with the C.I.A.'s analysis of the tubes, when agency analysts "lost objectivity and in several cases took action that improperly excluded useful expertise from the intelligence debate." In interviews, Senate investigators said the agency's written assessments did a poor job of describing the debate over the intelligence.

From April 2001 to September 2002, the agency wrote at least 15 reports on the tubes. Many were sent only to high-level policy makers, including President Bush, and did not circulate to other intelligence agencies. None have been released, though some were described in the Senate's report.

Several senior C.I.A. officials insisted that those reports did describe at least in general terms the intelligence debate. "You don't go into all that detail but you do try to evince it when you write your current product," one agency official said.

But several Congressional and intelligence officials with access to the 15 assessments said not one of them informed senior policy makers of the Energy Department's dissent. They described a series of reports, some with ominous titles, that failed to convey either the existence or the substance of the intensifying debate.

Over and over, the reports restated Joe's main conclusions for the C.I.A. - that the tubes matched the 1950's Zippe centrifuge design and were built to specifications that "exceeded any known conventional weapons application." They did not state what Energy Department experts had noted - that many common industrial items, even aluminum cans, were made to specifications as good or better than the tubes sought by Iraq. Nor did the reports acknowledge a significant error in Joe's claim - that the tubes "matched" those used in a Zippe centrifuge.

The tubes sought by Iraq had a wall thickness of 3.3 millimeters. When Energy Department experts checked with Dr. Zippe, a step Joe did not take, they learned that the walls of Zippe tubes did not exceed 1.1 millimeters, a substantial difference.

"They never lay out the other case," one Congressional official said of those C.I.A. assessments.

The Senate report provides only a partial picture of the agency's communications with the White House. In an arrangement endorsed by both parties, the Intelligence Committee agreed to delay an examination of whether White House descriptions of Iraq's military capabilities were "substantiated by intelligence information." As a result, Senate investigators were not permitted to interview White House officials about what they knew of the tubes debate and when they knew it.

But in interviews, C.I.A. and administration officials disclosed that the dissenting views were repeatedly discussed in meetings and telephone calls.

One senior official at the agency said its "fundamental approach" was to tell policy makers about dissenting views. Another senior official acknowledged that some of their agency's reports "weren't as well caveated as, in retrospect, they should have been." But he added, "There was certainly nothing that was hidden."

Four agency officials insisted that Winpac analysts repeatedly explained the contrasting assessments during briefings with senior National Security Council officials who dealt with nuclear proliferation issues. "We think we were reasonably clear about this," a senior C.I.A. official said.

A senior administration official confirmed that Winpac was indeed candid about the differing views. The official, who recalled at least a half dozen C.I.A. briefings on tubes, said he knew by late 2001 that there were differing views on the tubes. "To the best of my knowledge, he never hid anything from me," the official said of his counterpart at Winpac.

This official said he also spoke to senior officials at the Department of Energy about the tubes, and a spokeswoman for the department said in a written statement that the agency "strongly conveyed its viewpoint to senior policy makers."

But if senior White House officials understood the department's main arguments against the tubes, they also took into account its caveats. "As far as I know," the senior administration official said, "D.O.E. never concluded that these tubes could not be used for centrifuges."

[kido]

Originally posted by tie:
Bush claimed during the debate that Kerry voted based on the same intelligence Bush saw. (Of course this is an odd argument to make, since Bush also says he made the right decision..) Quote: Kerry "looked at the same intelligence I looked at."

This was not the case. The White House was told of the strong dissenting views about the aluminum tubes. The Senate was not told. Bush lied.

Also from the NYTimes article:

In closed hearings that month, though, Congress began to hear testimony about the debate. Several Democrats said in interviews that secrecy rules had prevented them from speaking out about the gap between the administration's view of the tubes and the more benign explanations described in classified testimony.

One senior C.I.A. official recalled cautioning members of Congress in a closed session not to speak publicly about the possibility that the tubes were for rockets. "If people start talking about that and the Iraqis see that people are saying rocket bodies, that will automatically become their explanation whenever anyone goes to Iraq," the official said in an interview.

And later on in the NYTimes article:

But Senator Bob Graham, then chairman of the Intelligence Committee, said he voted against the resolution in part because of doubts about the tubes. "It reinforced in my mind pre-existing questions I had about the unreliability of the intelligence community, especially the C.I.A.," Mr. Graham, a Florida Democrat, said in an interview.

At the Democratic convention in Boston this summer, Senator John Kerry pledged that should he be elected president, "I will ask hard questions and demand hard evidence." But in October 2002, when the Senate voted on Iraq, Mr. Kerry had not read the National Intelligence Estimate, but instead had relied on a briefing from Mr. Tenet, a spokeswoman said. "According to the C.I.A.'s report, all U.S. intelligence experts agree that Iraq is seeking nuclear weapons," Mr. Kerry said then, explaining his vote. "There is little question that Saddam Hussein wants to develop nuclear weapons."

The report cited by Mr. Kerry, an unclassified white paper, said nothing about the tubes debate except that "some" analysts believed the tubes were "probably intended" for conventional arms.

"It is common knowledge that Congress does not have the same access as the executive branch," Brooke Anderson, a Kerry spokeswoman, said yesterday.

Mr. Kerry's running mate, Senator John Edwards, served on the Intelligence Committee, which gave him ample opportunity to ask hard questions. But in voting to authorize war, Mr. Edwards expressed no uncertainty about the principal evidence of Mr. Hussein's alleged nuclear program.

"We know that he is doing everything he can to build nuclear weapons," Mr. Edwards said then.

It seems Senator Kerry's evidence that he did not have access to the same intelligence by the time he needed to cast his vote is "common knowledge" even though somehow Senator Bob Graham was able to make his decision to vote against the resolution based on the information given.

[tie]

Oops, you are right. I missed that.

"Several Democrats said in interviews that secrecy rules had prevented them from speaking out about the gap between the administration's view of the tubes and the more benign explanations described in classified testimony."

Congressional members from both parties should not have let this stood.

If the CIA was giving accurate briefings to Congress and the administration, then Congress should have called the president on statements that were (according to their briefings) lies. Perhaps the CIA didn't really give the true story to Congress (this seems likely). But even still, Congress should have looked harder, and tried to pull it out.

The truth about the missile tubes clearly did not stay within the CIA, so the blame for the mistake doesn't fit only on the CIA.

[zigzag]

It's my impression that there were failures up and down the line. The problem I have with the administration is that I believe they were determined to topple Saddam and sought evidence to support that policy rather than having the policy emerge from solid intelligence. It's easy to be misled if you're eager to be misled.

Their reasoning is that they wanted to plan for a worst-case scenario, but the rhetoric tells me that there was a larger agenda at work. They had to sell the idea of an invasion and talking about mushroom clouds was the easiest way to do that.

Congress is also responsible, but when a President starts beating the drums, it's very difficult to resist for fear of being labeled a dove or an appeaser or unpatriotic. You can bet that this entered into the administration's calculations. Even now, knowing what we know, the people who questioned the invasion at the time are looked upon as oddities.

One of the great ironies is that it was the New York Times that the administration used to promote the tubes story. Many media outlets are now asking: "Did we do our jobs? Why didn't we ask more questions?" But if they had done so, they would've suffered even more "liberal media" tirades. As President Bush himself knows, sometimes you're damned if you do, damned if you don't.

[kido]

It is a tough position to be in. The Bush administration is criticized for not paying attention to what their intelligence agencies said before 9/11 and then they are criticized for paying attention to what their intelligence agencies said after 9/11. I think Prime Minister Tony Blair explained it best in his address to a joint session of Congress, July 17, 2003.

Can we be sure that terrorism and weapons of mass destruction will join together? Let us say one thing: If we are wrong, we will have destroyed a threat that at its least is responsible for inhuman carnage and suffering. That is something I am confident history will forgive.

But if our critics are wrong, if we are right, as I believe with every fiber of instinct and conviction I have that we are, and we do not act, then we will have hesitated in the face of this menace when we should have given leadership. That is something history will not forgive.

[zigzag]

Originally posted by kido:
It is a tough position to be in. The Bush administration is criticized for not paying attention to what their intelligence agencies said before 9/11 and then they are criticized for paying attention to what their intelligence agencies said after 9/11. I think Prime Minister Tony Blair explained it best in his address to a joint session of Congress, July 17, 2003.

That's a valid point and a good illustration of the damned-if-you-do-damned-if-you-don't problem. But the skeptics among us would point out that by the administration's own reckoning, Saddam was being well-contained before 9/11, and nothing had changed on the ground since that time - indeed, Saddam was being watched as closely as ever. It's therefore legitimate to ask why there was a need to invade at that particular time, and whether the "worst case" rhetoric was justified.

I try to look at it holistically. When it all started, I said "I think the administration is exaggerating the WMD threat, but I support the overthrow of Saddam for a variety of reasons." I assumed that they had a sound plan and knew what they were getting into. If things had gone better than they have, I'd be congratulating them. It's the accumulation of gross miscalculations and (IMO) deceptions that have led me to conclude that they used poor judgment and don't deserve another term.

[Ratm]

Originally posted by bamburg dunes:[/B]

Whaaaa? (Score:5, Funny)
by acxr is wasted (653126) *
Politicians? Lying??

Bullsh*t.

[kido]

Bob Woodward quoted President Bush as telling his political war room that he wanted to be a two-term President, but if his decision on Iraq caused him to be a one-term President, then so be it. I remind myself that there was an easier and safer path politically that President Bush could have taken, but he believes this path is the one which will change the Middle East in the long term and make America safer eventually. Whether he is right or not is anyone's guess. We may indeed be less safe right now, but creating a cycle in which America is attacked every couple of years by terrorists with a fury after each attack that fades away shortly after, while technology becomes more and more advanced making those attacks more and more deadly, is not a wise course either. Unless the environment in the Middle East is somehow changed, or the U.S. removes troops and drops Israel, I'm not sure what else you could do.

[besson3c]

Originally posted by kido:
Bob Woodward quoted President Bush as telling his political war room that he wanted to be a two-term President, but if his decision on Iraq caused him to be a one-term President, then so be it. I remind myself that there was an easier and safer path politically that President Bush could have taken, but he believes this path is the one which will change the Middle East in the long term and make America safer eventually. Whether he is right or not is anyone's guess. We may indeed be less safe right now, but creating a cycle in which America is attacked every couple of years by terrorists with a fury after each attack that fades away shortly after, while technology becomes more and more advanced making those attacks more and more deadly, is not a wise course either. Unless the environment in the Middle East is somehow changed, or the U.S. removes troops and drops Israel, I'm not sure what else you could do.

How is the environment in the Middle East going to improve with unilateral attacks?

One of the reason why design teams exist and succeed more than any other sort of organizational unit is so that one person is not dictating the direction of the group, and if there is disagreement within the group hostility is not directed towards one individual. If the terrorist groups feel hostility, they don't have one lone destination to channel their rage. If other countries feel hostility towards an invasion or some other military action, they likewise don't have a single destination to channel their rage. This is one argument for alliances.

As far as addressing the fury in the first place, I don't think we will ever "solve" the problem of terrorism like both Democrats and Republicans would want you to believe.

I don't think we disagree with the idea of removing Saddam, it's simply the method for doing so which seems to be in dispute.

[zigzag]

Originally posted by kido:
Bob Woodward quoted President Bush as telling his political war room that he wanted to be a two-term President, but if his decision on Iraq caused him to be a one-term President, then so be it. I remind myself that there was an easier and safer path politically that President Bush could have taken, but he believes this path is the one which will change the Middle East in the long term and make America safer eventually. Whether he is right or not is anyone's guess. We may indeed be less safe right now, but creating a cycle in which America is attacked every couple of years by terrorists with a fury after each attack that fades away shortly after, while technology becomes more and more advanced making those attacks more and more deadly, is not a wise course either. Unless the environment in the Middle East is somehow changed, or the U.S. removes troops and drops Israel, I'm not sure what else you could do.

I bought into that idea and commended Bush for risking his Presidency on such a bold move. The problem is in the execution. I hope he can turn it around but I don't have a great deal of confidence left in him.

My views, of course, are colored by the fact that his politics are otherwise different from mine - I'm a moderate and IMO he's turned out to be anything but - but there are also a number of conservatives who are dissatisfied with his performance.