preemptive war on faulty intelligence

[unblock]

it's one thing to have gotten it wrong on iraq's wmd.

but it's another thing entirely to to have decided to launch an entirely novel foreign policy based on this faulty intel.

with a policy of preemptive war, the standards for the intel we rely on has to be greater.

normally, in attacking another country in self-defense, you do so with the obvious evidence of, well, an initial attack from the other country. the idea of preemptive war is that not just that we have evidence that they're an imminent threat, but that we're SO CONFIDENT in our intel that we don't need to or simply can't wait for more explicit evidence.

surely "we merely suspect they're am imminent threat" is not good enough. it has to be "we ABSOLUTELY KNOW they're an imminent threat".


basically, shrub not only got it wrong about whether or not they were an imminent threat, but he got it wrong about how confident we were.

the difference is that people might excuse the former as an "oops". tricky business, saddam was trying to deceive us, he had them at one point, etc., etc. BUT the latter is inexcusable.

he claimed to have solid evidence, and he didn't. the lie wasn't whether or not iraq was a threat, the lie was whether or not WE KNEW iraq was a threat.





but then, why bother with all this crap? we all know that the whole thing was a sham from the get-go. iraq was invaded because bush wanted to finish gulf war #1 and claim all that oil and so on. it never had anything to do with wmd, that was all just part of the snow, er, i mean, sales job.

[Terwilliger]

1. it's not faulty intelligence...

it's pre-emptive intelligence

[lastknowngood]

2. The shrub and everyone in this misadministration should

be taken to the Hague and convicted of genocide and making aggressive war without cause. The funny thing that no one seams to get is that Saddam was telling the truth and the repugs were lying. How would you like that to be your historical epitaph not even as honest as Saddam Hussein.

[Streetdoc270]

3. actually....

That is a good, lucid argument and thought provoking question. Is the US and/or administration figures now culpable for crimes violating Internatiomal law? What was done in Iraq by the US is not very different from what Hussain tried with the invasion of Kuwait.

[unblock]

5. germany to poland is more like it

bush's preemptive war doctrine is the sort of thing only a hitler apologist would dream up.

germany had a far stronger case for invading poland than we had for invading iraq.

[maggrwaggr]

4. you're still being way too nice. They don't deserve any benefit

of any doubt.

They lied, they knew they were lying, they wanted to invade Iraq so bad that they were in a huge hurry to do so before the inspectors discovered (as they were in the process of doing) that there weren't any WMD's.

There's this saying "it's easier to apologize than to get permission" and that's the Bush Foreign Policy Doctrine.

Bush: "There. Did it. Nyah nyah nyah. Can't make me stop now. It's done!"

[JCMach1]

6. Faith-based intelligence

is what we have here... cooked up by the Office of Special Planning