"We Tortured To Justify War"

It's starting to look like we used torture to generate false intelligence to give us a reason to invade Iraq.

From We Tortured to Justify War:

Dick Cheney keeps saying "enhanced interrogation" was used to stop imminent attacks, but evidence is mounting that the real reason was to invent evidence linking Saddam Hussein to al-Qaida.

They wanted the war with Iraq, and they were willing to do anything to get it.

I'd say it's more like: "it's starting to look like this extreme Left-Wing columnist thinks we used torture to generate false intelligence to give us a reason to invade Iraq."

Is it possible that the allegations presented in that article are true? Certainly. I'd be looking for a much more unbiased and reliable source of information though before I started pointing fingers and calling for trials.

In today's political climate, it's easy to overlook the fact that in 2003 America's leaders didn't need any exotic "justification" for invading Iraq. The American populace was still whipped into a frenzy from the World Trade Center's destruction two years earlier. We were writing happy songs about bombing Afghanistan, and as a whole this nation was ready to lunge at the throat of anyone pointed out as The Enemy.

Elycion wrote:

I'd say it's more like: "it's starting to look like this extreme Left-Wing columnist thinks we used torture to generate false intelligence to give us a reason to invade Iraq."

Is it possible that the allegations presented in that article are true? Certainly. I'd be looking for a much more unbiased and reliable source of information though before I started pointing fingers and calling for trials.

In today's political climate, it's easy to overlook the fact that in 2003 America's leaders didn't need any exotic "justification" for invading Iraq. The American populace was still whipped into a frenzy from the World Trade Center's destruction two years earlier. We were writing happy songs about bombing Afghanistan, and as a whole this nation was ready to lunge at the throat of anyone pointed out as The Enemy.

And yet, even in 2003, the Cheney administration had such a difficult job selling the idea of the Iraq war that it felt compelled to destroy the political career of Colin Powell by knowingly sending him to the UN with falsified information.

Elycion wrote:

In today's political climate, it's easy to overlook the fact that in 2003 America's leaders didn't need any exotic "justification" for invading Iraq. The American populace was still whipped into a frenzy from the World Trade Center's destruction two years earlier. We were writing happy songs about bombing Afghanistan, and as a whole this nation was ready to lunge at the throat of anyone pointed out as The Enemy.

Were we still whipped in a frenzy? I lived in NYC from the 80's until 05. All my friends and colleagues did a collective "WTF?" when the administration was advocating the pre-emptive invasion of Iraq. Afghanistan we could understand, but Iraq?

And there still is no memorial, no rebuilding of the towers. 1.6 trillion well spent.

Trainwreck wrote:

Were we still whipped in a frenzy? I lived in NYC from the 80's until 05. All my friends and colleagues did a collective "WTF?" when the administration was advocating the pre-emptive invasion of Iraq. Afghanistan we could understand, but Iraq?

I'll fully admit the scenes from that day is still one of the few things that gets me really, really angry.

Elycion wrote:

In today's political climate, it's easy to overlook the fact that in 2003 America's leaders didn't need any exotic "justification" for invading Iraq. The American populace was still whipped into a frenzy from the World Trade Center's destruction two years earlier. We were writing happy songs about bombing Afghanistan, and as a whole this nation was ready to lunge at the throat of anyone pointed out as The Enemy.

What I don't get is that basically 12 years of history is basically ignored prior to the invasion. It's not like Iraq became the center of discussion after 9/11. It had been for much of the previous decade. Sure we talked less about it for a couple of years after 9/11, but it was still right up there as a top 5 issue (if not #2 or #3). Sadam's regime was just as irritating as it had been through all of Clinton's presidency.

Did the White House cook the books? Looks like it. But my recollection of the time was that many different intelligence agencies were saying similar things, and Powell had nothing to do with their comments. Were other countries as ready to go tromping into Iraq, no, but not many Republicans or Democrats in Congress apparently saw enough evidence to be a strong opposing voice to what we were doing.

Did the White House present one particular view. Yes. Was the White House the sole source of information to Congress? I can't believe that they were.

sheared wrote:
Elycion wrote:

In today's political climate, it's easy to overlook the fact that in 2003 America's leaders didn't need any exotic "justification" for invading Iraq. The American populace was still whipped into a frenzy from the World Trade Center's destruction two years earlier. We were writing happy songs about bombing Afghanistan, and as a whole this nation was ready to lunge at the throat of anyone pointed out as The Enemy.

What I don't get is that basically 12 years of history is basically ignored prior to the invasion. It's not like Iraq became the center of discussion after 9/11. It had been for much of the previous decade. Sure we talked less about it for a couple of years after 9/11, but it was still right up there as a top 5 issue (if not #2 or #3). Sadam's regime was just as irritating as it had been through all of Clinton's presidency.

Did the White House cook the books? Looks like it. But my recollection of the time was that many different intelligence agencies were saying similar things, and Powell had nothing to do with their comments. Were other countries as ready to go tromping into Iraq, no, but not many Republicans or Democrats in Congress apparently saw enough evidence to be a strong opposing voice to what we were doing.

Did the White House present one particular view. Yes. Was the White House the sole source of information to Congress? I can't believe that they were.

I'll think you'll find that the notion that every other Western democracy was with the US and the UK on this is provably false. There was a massive row prior to the invasion that the Blair government had "cooked the books" to justify war and accused the BBC of slander with a single comment on one show at 7 o'clock in the morning. That resulted in the now infamous Hutton Tribunal that revealed that the intelligence was used in a hap-hazard fashion and the intelligence services warned the government as such.

Blair completely lost the faith of his party and had to rely on Tory votes in the end. Three ministers even resigned over the decision to go to war. Here is Robin Cook's full speech and video. It pretty much explodes the myth that the world was in lock step with the US on Iraq and Saddam.

During all that France and Germany's concerns were dismissed and they were called "old Europe". France's abuse worse and frankly tasteless verging on xenophobic. Smaller and poorer countries were threatened to join the cause or face the consequences. Ireland was often reminded how many American companies operated in the country and perhaps the continued use of Shannon would be in our interest. I'm sure we weren't alone.

That particular meme, that we all thought the same thing, just doesn't have any traction over here. As Mr Cook put it before a shot was fired in the conflict;

Robin Cook wrote:

Our difficulty in getting support this time is that neither the international community nor the British public is persuaded that there is an urgent and compelling reason for this military action in Iraq.

Axon wrote:

I'll think you'll find that the notion that every other Western democracy was with the US and the UK on this is provably false.

It's a good thing no one said every other Western democracy was with the US and the UK then.

Quintin_Stone wrote:
Axon wrote:

I'll think you'll find that the notion that every other Western democracy was with the US and the UK on this is provably false.

It's a good thing no one said every other Western democracy was with the US and the UK then.

Sheared actually said the opposite, in fact.

sheared wrote:

But my recollection of the time was that many different intelligence agencies were saying similar things, and Powell had nothing to do with their comments.

I should have narrowed it down. Sorry about that. I'm a little tired and perhaps I should have left the comments until the morning.

I was just pointing out that the particular belief that other intelligence agencies were briefing their governments with simialr data is just not what occurred. Perhaps I'm inferring too much from Sheared statement and if I am I'll gladly retract my comments.

The State Department I&R led the charge in refuting the assertions of the Cheney Administration regarding both Iraq's involvement in 9-11 and their nuclear capabilities. They were richly rewarded with a quiet purge at the hands of Conci Rice.

There's good evidence that a forged document and Curveball produced information that was sourced from different intel organizations and essentially used to point back to itself coming from other sources as "corroboration". That is, all those multiple independent sources were repeating information from the same unreliable sources.

I'm more worried that this possibility neither worries nor upsets me. I think I've become numb to any claims made about the last administration. If this kind of attitude is more common than I may think then I can definitely see how our leaders are becoming beyond reproach.

A congressman does something that insinuates he may be homosexual and people scream for him to be kicked out of office. The White House manufacturers intelligence, tortures people, invades countries based on fictional intelligence, abducts foreign citizens, holds suspects without charges in undisclosed locations for years on end and we just give a collective "aw f-it.", shrug our shoulders and move on. What's wrong with us? Seriously.

Color me dubious. More than any other cause, I blame Cheney for announcing at the 2002 Veterans of Foreign Wars conference that there is 'no doubt' that Saddam had WMD's, which was far from supported by the intelligence (and, I believe, was news to Bush at the time). That single statement turned the intelligence community on it's head.

There's always a lot of cruft and misinformation flowing through the hands of intelligence analysts--it's part of their job to filter out the good bits from the bad. But given a statement like that from the VP, it's hard for your average analyst not to start jumping at shadows and wondering what they've been missing. The resulting groupthink produced ample 'justification' for going to war.

Edit: Also, much of the specific intelligence linking Saddam and Al-Queda came from Ahmed Chalabi, who has now been completely discredited.

johnny, they also specifically cut the analysis out of the loop -- Cheney demanded access to 'raw intelligence', which is basically intelligence that hasn't been looked at or cross-checked by experts. Any claim made by anyone, no matter how dubious, ends up in the raw intelligence files. He was fishing for something, anything, and he destroyed anyone that got in his way.

It was never about WMDs. Never.