( - promoted by jczacher)
It seems as if our intelligence agencies have it wrong once again. According to the latest news, Iran abandoned it's nuclear weapons development program in 2003 but continued with the enrichment aspect.Now, the pile-on is beginning once again and Bush is being held up as the idiot who is "crying wolf" over a non-existent nuclear threat. I think it is time for these shells of their former selves namely our "intelligence" gathering agences to have the bulk of the blame placed squarely on their shoulders. And if as I suspect there is an agenda within the organizations political in nature, the offenders should be summarily dismissed with prejudice. We do not have the luxury of being wrong anymore. We do not enjoy the former prestige we once had in the international community and after all is said and done, Democrats and Republicans are equally to blame. Our intelligence community was decimated along with the military during Clinton's presidency. And, if we should forget, there were enough Republicans out there to raise enough of a stink to prevent Clinton from destroying both. We had no way of actually knowing what our enemies were doing and the intelligence sources we had were provided mostly from allies in other countries. When you don't use in-house resources for information and depend on those whose political winds blow in a different direction, you are subject to embarrassment and ridicule when your source is faulty and inaccurate. I am convinced deep inside that if Bush knew for sure WMDs did not exist in Iraq and he had truthful information, we would not be there today. Saddam Hussein would still be in power, creating problems for everyone else but without the destructive biological and chemical weapons everyone thought he had. Saddam himself perpetuated the myth in order to maintain his position as the strong man of the Middle East. That lie not only cost him his dictatorship but his life. Now we are engaged in a war that no one really wanted except for a few neocons who live for conflict. Sometimes I wonder just how the group of candidates vying for the White House would have reacted to the same information Bush was given under the same circumstances surrounding 9/11 and the terrorist threat that was very real at the time and still is. Would they have taken the same road? If you go by some of the comments some Democrats deniers made then denied, I think we may have been in Iraq under their administration too. This brings me to my point. How will our current group of candidates address the intelligence issue confronting us now? Will they take steps to improve and expand or will they do the ostrich thing and hide their heads in the sand? Will they depend on foreign sources the way Bush had to do? Will they send operatives and I use that word loosely considering the fiasco with the Plame outing to secure verifiable facts or just depend on a casual meeting that had no real substance? Will they trust other governments to be truthful and be upfront in sharing dependable intelligence? The war in Iraq is still a flashpoint with the majority of voters. The surge has been working and it looks as if some real gain has been made with the general population of Iraq and maybe, just maybe we can get out in a reasonable time frame and save some face. Otherwise we will have to honestly address the possibility of a withdrawal much in the same manner as we did in Vietnam. Fortunately the news about Iran came out before any action could be taken against them. We were lucky to be able to avoid another conflict and further alieniate our so-called allies in Europe and other parts of the world. I think it would be an interesting exercise in 20/20 hindsight to ask each candidate, Democrat and Republican what would you have done under the same circumstances. The answers would be interesting to say the least. |
