Neil Brooks wrote:
Mark Hickey wrote:
The thing that makes me absolutely certain that no evidence of
intelligence tampering by the Bush administration will come to light
is simply that it didn't.
That's what's known as "argumentum ad ignorantiam--" the assertion
that--because something is inexplicable--it must not be true. It may
bolster a belief, but it doesn't prove a case.
If there HAD been a "smoking gun", is there
any doubt at all that the Democrats on the 9/11 committee (or one of
the other bipartisan committees looking into related topics) would
have come forward? After all, this was all happening during the
run-up to a VERY close election, and could have clearly changed the
outcome of the election.
OK, now this sounds dangerously close to contradicting Rumsfeld's
famous "Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence." :-)
The Democrats couldn't find a smoking gun if it were pointed at them
on national TV. Things that do, and things that don't, get picked up
by the national media often have no rhyme or reason (sometimes the
reason is that they're too controversial, or likely to upset corporate
sponsors . . . or media owners).
Oh, c'mon... can you really believe that if ANYONE came forward with
semi-provable evidence that GWB had influenced the evidence that was
presented to the intelligence subcommity(ies) that it wouldn't have
been splashed across every front page / cover story in the US? Look
at the treatment a forged document from a very shaky source about
Bush's behavior a few decades ago got.
This story got enough legs that the administration should have had
much to answer for . . . but it didn't. I can't definitively explain
that . . . but that doesn't mean it's not all true (nor, of course,
does it mean that it all /is/ true).
There were just too many people who sincerely wanted to find the
"smoking gun", who were intimately involved in the events, and who
didn't bring it up. I'd be absoutely dumbfounded to find out that the
"smoking gun" is actually just laying there on the ground where a
casual google search will bring it all to light.
To surmise that the evidence was obvious enough for "civilians" like
you or me to uncover, but hidden from those on the Senate intelligence
subcommittee or those on the various commissions is a bit of a
(loooong) reach.
I thought Watergate taught us all that this just isn't necessarily the
case. Sometimes it takes the public to unearth the darkest acts of
our government. Why didn't it go further? I dunno . . . but I'd like
to find out.
One of the beauties of our two-party system is that neither of 'em let
the other get away with major things.
CNN just did a show ("Dead Wrong: Inside an Intelligence Meltdown")
[5] which--while not going into any detail--mentions the OSP as a
filter used by the administration to cherry pick intelligence in
support of a war. You should watch this show if you get a chance. If
I could figure out how to dump it from TiVo to a VCR, I might :-)
Here's a quote from the show:
"At the Pentagon, SECDEF Donald Rumsfeld sets up a special office to
provide him with alternative intelligence analysis, focusing on a
possible link between Saddam and Al Qaeda. The Pentagon unit is not
mentioned by the President's Commission."
Larry Johnson, Counterterrorism expert from the State Department, is
quoted as saying (about OSP), "They would brief their findings to the
[intelligence] Community and the Community would come back and say,
'Wait a second. You don't know what you're talking about. That's
garbage. That's misleading. That misrepresents, . . . ' and then
they would take the same brief--or even a more extreme version--and
brief it directly to people like the Vice President."
To assume that the Democrat congresscritters knew of
wrongdoing by Bush but kept it to themselves is even further from the
neighborhood of reality.
Here we just disagree, and for several reasons. First, I would say
that the current world of Democrats are anything but masterful
politicians. That, as much as anything, explains why they continue to
lose elections.
They might not be masterful, but they're certainly vindictive (with
certain refreshing exceptions like Joe Lieberman). They would have
gone for the kill had they had the chance (does anyone really doubt
that?).
You may find (Senator John Kyl's and ) the Pentagon's non-denial
denial interesting as well. Very little in it directly contradicts
the direct accusations that the OSP was a filtering mechanism, asked
to find intelligence in support of a particular policy, which actively
ignored the intelligence community's admonitions [6]
And--though thoroughly trashed by certain groups who don't like her
position--you might be interested in reading about, and the
publications of, Air Force Lt. Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski, formerly of
the Pentagon and the NSA [7]
Now I'm trying to muster up the grit to jump on my damned bike. I'm
not gonna' b*tch to you--a desert rat--about how hot it is here, but .
. . for us . . . it's hot ;-)
"Only" 111F here today (got my morning ride in VERY early). ;-)
I'll try to get through some of the links - no guarantees though. In
the meantime I'll be happy to admit that I'm basing my position only
on the logic presented above.
Mark Hickey
Habanero Cycles
http://www.habcycles.com
Home of the $795 ti frame
[1] http://snipurl.com/h9fu
[2] http://snipurl.com/h9fv
[3] http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/...nate.pentagon/
[4] http://snipurl.com/h9fw
[5] http://www.cnn.com/CNN/Programs/presents/
[6] http://rpc.senate.gov/_files/iraqpentagoncsisspeech.pdf
[7] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Kwiatkowski