So you're telling me that the cooked up intelligence fooled the dilettante John Kerry? What an insight.

J. Pankratz:

Sorry, but multiple investigations, including by the bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee, have shown that the Bush administration did not massage the intelligence.

I never said he massaged the intel (though he did massage Angela Merkel), but he(they) did cherry-pick what and the way it was presented and lied about the supposed "consensus".

The intelligence was wrong, period. Just google "Kerry WMD" "Clinton WMD" "Gore WMD" or any number of other Democrats and you'll see that they were all claiming Saddam had WMD as far back as 1998, all based on the reports from the intel community.

If a Democrat claims something then it must be true. Regardless of what any politician said, there was no consensus. Do you consider weapons inspectors part of the intel community? After they re-started the inspections prior to the US invasion, they found none, and they almost unanimously asked that they be given time to complete inspections before any invasion started. That hardly sounds like consensus. Without even looking anything up I clearly remember there being a lot of disagreement in the year or two before the war. Like I said before, the fact that there are still people who believe there was a consensus and will argue about it yet today shows how effective the WHIG propaganda unit was at that time.

To the annoying and comprehension-deprived Pankratz troll:

Remember when you mother told you that just because everyone else was jumping off a cliff, there was no reason for you to, too? I thought not.

In the climate of PNAC-inspired mass hysteria, a lot of Democrats fell in with the Bushies about their Iraq nonsense, to their everlasting shame. (The everlasting shame of the Democrats is a recurring theme here, which you'd know about if you could read...)

But then, as righty cretins always do, you proceed to use such pathetic capitulation as evidence for your specious arguments, on both sides, in the classic "heads I win, tails you lose" manner of the dignity and honor restoring set.

See, Democrats (and even the perfidious French, no less!) believed there were WMD in Iraq, so Bush was right all along.

Also, intelligence agencies can't be trusted, anyway, particularly when their assumptions don't agree with yours, so you're, (surprise) right again.

The wronger you are, the righter you get. It's good work for otherwise unemployable Republicans like George Bush and yourself.

For a sane, thinking person, being wrong before, with company or not, does not lead to being right today.

Please make a note of it.

What is the big deal about what Obama said?

I'm no expert on Iran either. My point here is why Obama's changed his language on this issue (and/or position, such as FISA). If he's learned something new, something different, something else, he should say so.

Similarly, he's now talked of the difficulties in closing Guantanamo. Quoting Talk Left's Jeralyn (cited by GG)

During the presidential campaign, Barack Obama said he would close Guantanamo during his first 100 days in office. This morning, on ABC's This Week with Stephanopoulos, he backtracked:

"It is more difficult than I think a lot of people realize," the President-elect explained.

In that case, what has he learned that he didn't know already (as a former professor of Constitutional law) when he promised to close Guantanamo in his first 100 days?

I believe people have an obligation not to let these things just recede, as if prior positions were unimportant.

Now, I've set aside your points regarding Iran because I think that's a separate matter that works to confuse the issue (much as the threads on the I/P conflict quickly lose focus from) from what ought to be a specific matter of whether/how Obama is shifting his positions (at least rhetorically, at this point).

I guess you're new here (and to all places not completely infested with Dubya sycophants to the exclusion of anyone from the "reality-based world").

Which is why you're trotting out the half-a-decade-old horse-manure RW "talking points" purporting to prove that "everyone thought that Saddam had WoMD. They've been proffered, addressed, and refuted here (and other places) ... many years back. FWIW, I personally nailed the "Curveballl" crapola ... even before the invasion. I could tell by looking at it that this was Chalabi's henchman. And all you would have needed to do to tell that there was no "there" there is to look at what UNMOVIC reported....

I think you will find that most people here will not take too kindly to your trying to foist them off again, when they stink now even more than weeks-old fish from the cheapest fish-monger in town.

Cheers,

GG wrote:

So what's the justification for Obama's inflammatory and obviously consequential (though seemingly baseless) claim on national television that the Iranians "are pursuing a nuclear weapon that could potentially trigger a nuclear arms race" when the consensus of American intelligence agencies is that they are not doing so?

I doubt that GG really knows what the consensus of the intelligence agencies is, unless he has sources that don't know about. If he is going by the 2007 NIE, well, any English teacher will tell you that that report indicates what the consensus was.

Simple, it's wrong.

Just blame the NIE!

The US Government and its massive surveillance/police state can somehow protect its citizens from terrorists, but even with 16 agencies, the Government can't produce a reliable NIE re: Iran. They must not have enough torture and spying powers to protect us from the Islamofascists.

I doubt that GG really knows what the consensus of the intelligence agencies is, unless he has sources that don't know about. If he is going by the 2007 NIE, well, any English teacher will tell you that that report indicates what the consensus was.

-- leftistgadfly

If I told you to go to your room until further notice last month and haven't reported back, that tell still stands as is.

Crying about grammar is the victory cry of winners.