----- Original Message ----- From: "Doug Pensinger" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Killer Bs Discussion" <[email protected]> Sent: Saturday, November 12, 2005 12:25 PM Subject: Re: Bitter Fruit
> Sorry Dan, but you need to take off the rose colored glasses. Actually, I'm arguing for shades of gray. > Dan wrote: > > >>But, this statement is quite different....any > > reasonable person at the time would know there were no WMD. > They had an agenda, Dan. Before 911. Read the PNAC white paper. Keep in > mind that several members of PNAC went on to become high ranking members > of the Bush administration. As well as one being a long term, senior member of Brin-L. :-) Anyways, it appears that your arguement is that statements originating from the Bush administration with respect to WMD are questionable, at best. OK, lets accept that arguement and accept the statements from the Bush administration as questionable data. The next obvious question is "are there other sources of data?" > > Let me give a parallel. A scientist proposes a series of experiments in > order to prove a hypothesis. Well prior to the experiment several key > members of his team express an agenda with regards to the hypothesis. > Tests are run, but only the results that favor the agenda are recorded, > those that don't favor the agenda are often the results with fewer > anomalies, but they are ignored just the same. How valid are the results? Well, for that parallel to be valid, no data were collected before Bush became president. There was no sharing of data with collaborators. All the data that were collected were collected by the United States. The data that were collected were reviewed by the Bush administration. Data inconsistent with the desired results were destroyed. I would aruge that this is not what happened. I argue for the following: Data were collected, and conclusions reached before Bush became president. There were sources of information that did not originate with US intelligence. Other countries had their own intelligence services. NATO countries shared basic intelligence, not just intelligence after it was filtered by Bush et. al. The conclusion of the French, the Germans, the Russians, etc. was that Hussein probably had WMD, but that he posed no imminent threat. IIRC, the conclusion on his nuclear program was that he was likely to be 10 years or so away from an A-bomb. If you would like to argue against these points, then we can discuss that. If not, then I don't see why a reasonable person, even one who considered any claim by the Bush administration as highly suspect at best, would conclude that it was obvious that Hussein had no WMD. Dan M. _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
