Big Ol' Smitty

Sorry to keep badgering you. But do you think the people who said that the Bush administration was pressuring the IC were disgruntled employees and the like?

Hehe...sorry I didn't get that far. I got bored. Man, you're like a teacher with the reading and the learning.

Oh, I thought Mike meant that Saddam actually did try to buy the yellow cake. I already knew that it was just a mix-up. I thought maybe something had come out later that it did actually happen.

Cerebus, I have a question. Do you think the Intelligence Community's "collective presumption that Iraq had an active and growing WMD program" (the groupthink dynamic) could have been reinforced by what Cannistraro referred to as "the [enormous] political pressure to come up with the right results"? Obviously, the actions of Saddam in dealing with inspections played a large role in developing this presumption.

Can you tell me more about this. I read otherwise. http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/07/09/...ain562312.shtml

Judging by your spelling, yes. *runs away* *claps hands* Point taken. I will go take down my degree and throw it into the nearest fireplace. I think that's an acceptable penalty.

Thanks. Good advice. But the documents are soooo boring.

I agree that the CIA should work with the President. But if that means cherry-picking intelligence to conform to preconceived views--that might be going to far. You're full of shit. I don't know what garbage you've been reading that put that in your head, but read this to start off. Whoa there, chieftain. No need for hostility. I'm not saying either side in this conflict is without fault. I was just making reference to the previous article. A powerful "old guard" faction in the Central Intelligence Agency has launched an unprecedented campaign to undermine the Bush administration with a battery of damaging leaks and briefings about Iraq. The White House is incensed by the increasingly public sniping from some senior intelligence officers who, it believes, are conducting a partisan operation to swing the election on November 2 in favour of John Kerry, the Democratic candidate, and against George W Bush. Jim Pavitt, a 31-year CIA veteran who retired as a departmental chief in August, said that he cannot recall a time of such "viciousness and vindictiveness" in a battle between the White House and the agency. John Roberts, a conservative security analyst, commented bluntly: "When the President cannot trust his own CIA, the nation faces dire consequences." Relations between the White House and the agency are widely regarded as being at their lowest ebb since the hopelessly botched Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba by CIA-sponsored exiles under President John F Kennedy in 1961. There is anger within the CIA that it has taken all the blame for the failings of pre-war intelligence on Saddam Hussein's weapons programmes. Former senior CIA officials argue that so-called "neo-conservative" hawks such as the vice president, Dick Cheney, the secretary of defence, Donald Rumsfeld, and his number three at the defence department, Douglas Feith, have prompted the ill-feeling by demanding "politically acceptable" results from the agency and rejecting conclusions they did not like. Yet Colin Powell, the less hardline secretary of state, has also been scathing in his criticism of pre-war intelligence briefings. The leaks are also a shot across the bows of Porter Goss, the agency's new director and a former Republican congressman. He takes over with orders from the White House to end the in-fighting and revamp the troubled spy agency as part of a radical overhaul of the American intelligence world. Bill Harlow, the former CIA spokesman who left with the former director George Tenet in July, acknowledged that there had been leaks from within the agency. "The intelligence community has been made the scapegoat for all the failings over Iraq," he said. "It deserves some of the blame, but not all of it. People are chafing at that, and that's the background to these leaks." Fighting to defend their patch ahead of the future review, anti-Bush CIA operatives have ensured that Iraq remains high on the election campaign agenda long after Republican strategists such as Karl Rove, the President's closest adviser, had hoped that it would fade from the front pages. In the latest clash, a senior former CIA agent revealed that Mr Cheney "blew up" when a report into links between the Saddam regime and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the terrorist behind the kidnappings and beheadings of hostages in Iraq, including the Briton Kenneth Bigley, proved inconclusive. Other recent leaks have included the contents of classified reports drawn up by CIA analysts before the invasion of Iraq, warning the White House about the dangers of post-war instability. Specifically, the reports said that rogue Ba'athist elements might team up with terrorist groups to wage a guerrilla war. Critics of the White House include officials who have served in previous Republican administrations such as Vince Cannistraro, a former CIA head of counter-terrorism and member of the National Security Council under Ronald Reagan. "These have been an extraordinary four years for the CIA and the political pressure to come up with the right results has been enormous, particularly from Vice-President Cheney. "I'm afraid that the agency is guilty of bending over backwards to please the administration. George Tenet was desperate to give them what they wanted and that was a complete disaster." With the simmering rows breaking out in public, the Wall Street Journal declared in an editorial that the administration was now fighting two insurgencies: one in Iraq and one at the CIA. In a difficult week for President Bush leading up to Friday's presidential debate, the CIA-led Iraqi Survey Group confirmed that Saddam had had no weapons of mass destruction, while Mr Rumsfeld distanced himself from the administration's long-held assertion of ties between Saddam and the al-Qaeda terror network. Earlier, unguarded comments by Paul Bremer, the former American administrator of Iraq who said that America "never had enough troops on the ground", had given the row about post-war strategy on the ground fresh impetus. With just 23 days before the country votes for its next president, both sides are braced for further bruising encounters.

Judging by your spelling, yes. *runs away*

I agree that the CIA should work with the President. But if that means cherry-picking intelligence to conform to preconceived views--that might be going to far.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml.../ixnewstop.html Here's another article on the CIA/Bush squabble. It's damning of both sides, in my opinion.

She looks pretty good for 50. Smitty likes Condi! Smitty likes Condi! Smitty and Condi sitting in a tree K-I-S-S-I-N-G! I could deal with a sugar mommy.

She looks pretty good for 50.

You want to make Current Events interesting, try listening to THIS! as you post. I resolve to always listen to that while posting from this day forward.

Hey at least he makes things around here interesting.

Touche.

Nice. How long did it take to think up that gem?

Powell could use a bath in this now that he's AUDI 5000.

No Iraqis want your STDs or the money you stole from your girlfriend. What about irrelevant visual aids? How is it irrelevant? Maddog is making a direct personal attack on INXS totally unrelated to the topic at hand. And here's a visual aid for you. Lay off the...

Totally agree with Czech. Partial-birth is pretty horrible.

I'm sorry if I offended you, I didn't mean to. And I'll admit, I have no idea what the apocalypse will be like. I don't have any problem with people having these religious beliefs. I don't, however, want them to affect my country's foreign policy. I wasn't trying to be dismissive of religion in general, but of those in positions of power who base their foreign policy on their religion. Tom Delay has very close ties to dispensational premillennialism. "Conservative evangelicals like House Majority Leader Tom DeLay offer unilateral support to Israel based on the New Testament prophecy that the reconstruction of the ancient kingdom of David will usher in the "end times" and the Second Coming of Christ." Source: Tim Lahaye's website "Dispensationalist House Majority Leader Tom Delay shares Graham’s belief: “I’ve been to Masada. I’ve toured Judea and Samaria. I’ve walked the streets of Jerusalem, and I’ve stood on the Golan Heights. . . . And you know what? I didn’t see any occupied territory. What I saw was Israel!” In other words, since God has given the land of Israel to the Jews, there can be no Palestinian state. The Palestinians simply do not have any claim to the land on which they have lived for 2,000 years. And anyone who disagrees will suffer the wrath of God. Divided loyalties such as these are nothing but a recipe for disaster in the realm of foreign policy. " Source: Chronicles

What about not having enough machines in minority precincts?

Traitors to the country. Not "traitors" to the politicians. Giving the enemy intel is a crime, being a left/right winger with a government job is normal, as far as DC goes. Where was the outrage in 1994 when this happened? -=Mike That doesn't make it okay now.

Oh come the fuck on. If you are stupid enough to have bought that, you were better off not voting anyway. I mean, wow, that is just sad. Either the Republicans are really really stupid with cheating, which I doubt because they are the crafty evil party that made shadow games an artform, or these are some of the stupidest accusations I have ever read. Sorry, the Republicans are too damn evil not to be clever about cheating. That doesn't make it okay.

Do you know how quickly all of these claims have been pretty thoroughly debunked? -=Mike How quickly? Where and by whom? http://www.sptimes.com/2004/11/11/Columns/...t_electio.shtml http://vote.caltech.edu/Reports/VotingMachines3.pdf http://yalefreepress.blogspot.com/2004/11/...r-tin-foil.html -=Mike Those didn't have anything to do with what I posted there, guy.