Deception and Deceit
Donald Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz were among 18 signatures on a letter to then President Clinton in 1998, which urged a preemptive war against Saddam Hussein. Of the eighteen signers of the letter; eleven held post in the Bush administration, when Iraq was invaded. In Ron Suskin's "The Price of Loyalty" former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill confirms that ten days after Bush's inauguration the focus at the first National Security Council meeting was war with Iraq.
Robert Baer's "See No Evil": "I knew enough about the way Washington worked to know that when it didn't like some piece of information it did everything in its power to discredit the messenger"... "The problem is the White House didn't go to the CIA and ask, tell me the truth, it said give me ammunition." Robert Baer a legendary CIA field officer, who served most of his 21 year career in the Middle East. In the movie "Syriana" the covert Arabic-speaking CIA agent played by George Clooney is partly based on the exploits of author Baer.
Bush supporters insist it was erroneous intelligence by the CIA, which resulted in his administration being wrong about weapons of mass destruction and a link between Saddam and al Qaeda. CNN's special "Dead Wrong", sought to analyze the process by which the argument for a preemptive war was made. Several quotes from the program provide insight into how the process got it wrong.
"Policy makers love intelligence when it supports their policy and they have difficulty with intelligence when it does not. The spies call it cherry picking, choosing scraps of intelligence to prove a worst case scenario." - former CIA deputy director of operations James Pavitt.
"As they embellished what the intelligence community was prepared to say and as the press reported that information, it began to acquire its own sense of truth and reality."- Rand Beers - former National Security Council Official, who resigned his White House post to work against the reelection of Bush.
"There was just a resignation within the agency that we were going to war against Iraq and it didn't make any difference what the analysis was or what kind of objections or countervailing forces there were to the invasion. We were going to war."- Former senior member of the U. S. intelligence community, Michael Scheuer has two decades of experience in national security issues. While with the CIA, he wrote "Imperial Hubris" under the pseudonym Anonymous.
"Imperial Hubris" warns: "One of the greatest dangers for Americans in deciding how to confront the threat from al Qaeda lies in continuing to believe... Muslims hate us for what we think, rather than for what we do. We repeatedly hear: ( because they hate freedom ) from senior U.S. leaders. Such a conclusion is potentially fatal nonsense".
Michael Scheuers "Imperial Hubris explores why they hate us and why our policies and actions are bin Laden's only indispensable allies. Scheuer quotes terrorist leader al Zawahiri: "Americans are facing a delicate situation in Iraq and Afghanistan. If they withdraw they will lose everything and if they stay, they will continue to bleed to death."
Scheuer emphasizes:" We must recognize that our invasion of Iraq was not preemptive; it was an avarice, premeditated, unprovoked war against a foe who posed no immediate threat but whose defeat did offer economic advantages." He wrote "Imperial Hubris" with certainty that: " al Qaeda will attack the continental U. S. again, that its next strike will be more damaging than 9/11."
Michael Parent's "Superpatriotism" points out: "We are told that during times of crisis we must trust the president. Democracy is not about trust; it's about distrust, accountability, public exposure and responsible government. We must enlist our fellow Americans to trust their leaders less and themselves more. Once fear takes hold, evidence becomes largely irrelevant."
Robert Baer's "See No Evil": "I knew enough about the way Washington worked to know that when it didn't like some piece of information it did everything in its power to discredit the messenger"... "The problem is the White House didn't go to the CIA and ask, tell me the truth, it said give me ammunition." Robert Baer a legendary CIA field officer, who served most of his 21 year career in the Middle East. In the movie "Syriana" the covert Arabic-speaking CIA agent played by George Clooney is partly based on the exploits of author Baer.
Bush supporters insist it was erroneous intelligence by the CIA, which resulted in his administration being wrong about weapons of mass destruction and a link between Saddam and al Qaeda. CNN's special "Dead Wrong", sought to analyze the process by which the argument for a preemptive war was made. Several quotes from the program provide insight into how the process got it wrong.
"Policy makers love intelligence when it supports their policy and they have difficulty with intelligence when it does not. The spies call it cherry picking, choosing scraps of intelligence to prove a worst case scenario." - former CIA deputy director of operations James Pavitt.
"As they embellished what the intelligence community was prepared to say and as the press reported that information, it began to acquire its own sense of truth and reality."- Rand Beers - former National Security Council Official, who resigned his White House post to work against the reelection of Bush.
"There was just a resignation within the agency that we were going to war against Iraq and it didn't make any difference what the analysis was or what kind of objections or countervailing forces there were to the invasion. We were going to war."- Former senior member of the U. S. intelligence community, Michael Scheuer has two decades of experience in national security issues. While with the CIA, he wrote "Imperial Hubris" under the pseudonym Anonymous.
"Imperial Hubris" warns: "One of the greatest dangers for Americans in deciding how to confront the threat from al Qaeda lies in continuing to believe... Muslims hate us for what we think, rather than for what we do. We repeatedly hear: ( because they hate freedom ) from senior U.S. leaders. Such a conclusion is potentially fatal nonsense".
Michael Scheuers "Imperial Hubris explores why they hate us and why our policies and actions are bin Laden's only indispensable allies. Scheuer quotes terrorist leader al Zawahiri: "Americans are facing a delicate situation in Iraq and Afghanistan. If they withdraw they will lose everything and if they stay, they will continue to bleed to death."
Scheuer emphasizes:" We must recognize that our invasion of Iraq was not preemptive; it was an avarice, premeditated, unprovoked war against a foe who posed no immediate threat but whose defeat did offer economic advantages." He wrote "Imperial Hubris" with certainty that: " al Qaeda will attack the continental U. S. again, that its next strike will be more damaging than 9/11."
Michael Parent's "Superpatriotism" points out: "We are told that during times of crisis we must trust the president. Democracy is not about trust; it's about distrust, accountability, public exposure and responsible government. We must enlist our fellow Americans to trust their leaders less and themselves more. Once fear takes hold, evidence becomes largely irrelevant."
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