TIME article on the Internal Republican War of Intelligence

[a_unique_person]

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/ar...5828-1,00.html

I used to say that Time was the CIA view of the world. This seems to justify it, in an ironic way.

Quote:

Weapons Of Mass Disappearance
The war in Iraq was based largely on intelligence about banned arms that still haven't been found. Was America's spy craft wrong — or manipulated?

Quote:

But if the Bush team overreached, one nagging question is, Why? A defense expert who has spent 20 years watching Republicans argue about foreign policy from the inside believes the hard-liners' agenda isn't about Iraq or even oil. It's simply that the most zealous defenders of America's role in the world are congenitally disposed to overreact to every threat — which leads them to read too much into the intelligence. "They came in with a world view, and they looked for things to fit into it," says Lawrence Korb, who served in the Reagan Pentagon and now works at the Council on Foreign Relations. "If you hadn't had 9/11, they would be doing the same things to China."

I have already noted that when Dubya came into power, China was the focus. After 9/11, they are back in the good books.

And the one vital question. Why?

Quote:

Two Bush aides in particular, Rumsfeld and his Pentagon deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, have a long record of questioning the assumptions, methods and conclusions of the CIA. Wolfowitz was a member of the famous B Team, created in the mid-'70s by the CIA, then headed by Bush's father, to double-check the work of the CIA's line analysts about the military strength of the Soviet Union. Filled with many hard-liners who now work in the younger Bush's Administration, the B Team was spoiling back then for bigger defense budgets and a more aggressive foreign policy. It found many of the CIA's conclusions about the Soviet Union softheaded and naive. Its final report helped launch the Reagan-era defense buildup of the 1980s. Rumsfeld also chaired a bipartisan commission in 1998 set up by Congress to assess the pace of rogue states' missile efforts, which concluded that the CIA wouldn't be able to gather intelligence quickly enough to meet the unseen threats posed by Iran, Iraq and North Korea. That dire prediction — reinforced by a North Korean missile launch a month later — turbocharged the nation's push to build a $100 billion missile shield, now under construction.

Just when the Soviet Union was collapsing under it's own internal contradictions, the US boosted spending on defense massively. Reagan was credited with being the greatest president of the century, when Russia actually underwent it's own internal peaceful revolution.

Quote:

Another official, an Army intelligence officer, singled out Rumsfeld for massaging the facts. "Rumsfeld was deeply, almost pathologically distorting the intelligence," says the officer.

Which appears to be the truth.

Quote:

"They made a decision to turn a blind eye to other explanations," says David Albright, a former International Atomic Energy Agency arms inspector who now heads the Institute for Science and International Security in Washington. "If the Pentagon said the worst-case assessment is that within a short period of time Iraq could build nuclear weapons, we'd agree with that. But we have trouble when they start portraying the worst-case scenario as fact. And I think that's the case here."

So, does a pack of Dr Strangeloves run the US?

[corplinx]

Sorry AUP, but Time isn't regarded as a serious news publication anymore. Somewhere in the early 90s they just went to hell. I put them in the same class as worldnetdaily for getting truthful, accurate, relevant news.

Their most recent blunder was a fiction based 9-11 expose that implicated Bush/Rice lack of foresight based on a powerpoint presentation.

I tried reading an issue while I was in the club's sauna last week. A braindead and factless opinion piece about imperialism was followed by an opinion piece by Dr. Charles Krauthammer. I hope they pay him well for appearing next to such propaganda.

[Malachi151]

Quote:

Originally posted by corplinx
Sorry AUP, but Time isn't regarded as a serious news publication anymore. Somewhere in the early 90s they just went to hell. I put them in the same class as worldnetdaily for getting truthful, accurate, relevant news.

Their most recent blunder was a fiction based 9-11 expose that implicated Bush/Rice lack of foresight based on a powerpoint presentation.

I tried reading an issue while I was in the club's sauna last week. A braindead and factless opinion piece about imperialism was followed by an opinion piece by Dr. Charles Krauthammer. I hope they pay him well for appearing next to such propaganda.

LOL.

Sorry AUP, stop trying to point out the truth and ruin my world of lies and misconceptions built on the conservative civil religion.

I'm a clueless American who beleive everything that bigoted hardline leaders say. They get on TV and they give hardline simple fact in a direct manner that feeds my masculinity and sense of self making me feel good about my role in the world and allowing me to place blame for all the world's problems on "liberals" and people and places that I don't understand aand am afraid of. Thier view allow me to justify taking any action that is perceived to be benefical to me while ignoring the cost to others.

If you facts don't agree with my baseless assumption then your facts must be wrong, most likely the evil work of teh "liberal media".

[corplinx]

Quote:

Originally posted by Malachi151


LOL.

Sorry AUP, stop trying to point out the truth and ruin my world of lies and misconceptions built on the conservative civil religion.

I'm a clueless American who beleive everything that bigoted hardline leaders say. They get on TV and they give hardline simple fact in a direct manner that feeds my masculinity and sense of self making me feel good about my role in the world and allowing me to place blame for all the world's problems on "liberals" and people and places that I don't understand aand am afraid of. Thier view allow me to justify taking any action that is perceived to be benefical to me while ignoring the cost to others.

If you facts don't agree with my baseless assumption then your facts must be wrong, most likely the evil work of teh "liberal media".

Are you really Jedi Knight roleplaying a brainwashed neo-communist who believes everyone is brainwashed but himself? Good job Jedi, you nearly had me fooled.