Any thoughts on today's NYT article on faulty pre-war intelligence?

[girl gone mad]

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/03/international/middleeast/03tube.html?oref=login&oref=login&hp

It's a very long article, but the biggest revalation to me is that the IAEA said there was no evidence of a revived nuclear program the day before Powell flashed slides of the aluminum tubes at the UN, yet there was no mention of their findings.

[tech3149]

1. Of Course

The IAEA could hardly be considered credible. <sarcasm off>

[patdem]

2. It was VERY long and gave too many excuses as to why

someone might think one way...then two pages latter we find out it is not true, but it just seemed to give more excuses for the Admin and seemed to blame Tenent, just as condaslezy did today, only a page and a half latter says Tenent says he gave warnings also??

I just did not feel it was harsh enough, though I only read about 10 pages of the 15, yesterday it was 16, today it was only 15 pages long? took out some advertising? or some words??

[creeksneakers2]

3. I think it was great

I'm really happy the Dems are pushing this story. We shouldn't avoid the obvious though. Bush said those aluminum tubes were for centrifuges in his State of the Union message. This was after there were press accounts to the contrary. Either Bush knew he was lying, or he is incredibly out of reality.

[tomfodw]

4. It's a very complicated issue

Yes, a very long article, but also, I thought, a serious attempt to grapple with a question that does not necessarily have an easy answer.

Trying to reconstruct the sequence after the fact is very hard work. Clearly there was a genuine disagreement in the intelligence community as to the aluminum tubes. The guy identified only as "Joe" had one opinion, others disagreed. Now we know those tubes could not have been used for centrifuges and in fact were not being so used. There was no path to absolute certitude then.

The question that remains is, what did the policy makers hear from the intelligence community? The article is not clear. Some say that dissenting opinions did not make it up the ladder, others say they did. It seems to me that the positive opinions got up the ladder quicker, higher, and louder than the negative ones, but that does not mean that no dissenting opinions were heard.

Still, if all you have to go on is aluminum tubes, that seems to me nothing at all like a true smoking gun justifying an invasion. Especially since the only other physical evidence, the yellowcake, anyone who wanted to could know was a fraud.

So, did the White House ignore evidence that Saddam was not close to getting nukes? Did they cherrypick evidence that he was and overvalue it? Did they even care what the evidence showed? Did they stovepipe? Did the intelligence community fail to provide them with sufficient evidence to stop the invasion, or would nothing have sufficed to do that This article does not answer those questions.

What is clear is, they desperately wanted to go into Iraq, and they went in with nothing remotely resembling a plan for the aftermath. Did they lie their way in or did they fool themselves that they had to go in? I don't care, although others may.