TO LA TIMES: 9/11 & Iraq were White House decisions not intel failures

[yurbud]

May 24's "Danger in 'Fixing' CIA" by Richard A. Posner starts on the false assumption that both 9/11 and the Iraq WMD claims were the result of intelligence "failures." As we saw in the 9/11 Commission testimony, the people in the field did their work, reported suspicious activities of key players, and passed on warnings to the White House--where the information was ignored.

With Iraq, the opposite occurred. The apolitical, professional analysts said it was unlikely Saddam had significant WMDs, and unlikely that he was a threat to us in any case. Instead of accepting this assessment and adjusting their policy accordingly, the Bush people browbeat the CIA and others to adjust their reports, a pattern that even the mid-level neocon scold John Bolton did in trying to trump up a WMD case against Cuba, then retaliating against analyst who refused to comply.

The Los Angeles Times does a disservice to those in the intelligence services and American citizens by going along with the charade that the fault for these two massive failures lies anywhere but with the people who profited from them, the Bush administration and their defense contractor and oil cronies.

People aren't stupid, and the longer you continue to go along with these lies that have cost and are costing American lives, the more the reputation of the Times will erode, as will your readership.

We need you to do your job.

Yurbud

Link to original story

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-posner24may24,0,7220860.story?coll=la-news-comment-opinions

[oblivious]

1. That's an excellent reply. Did you send it to LAT? Did they print it?

Strike that last question.

[yurbud]

2. I sent it a couple of minutes before I posted it.

[oblivious]

3. Did they have the guts print it?

It would be amazing if they did.

But even if they didn't we still have to keep sending these letters.

[yurbud]

4. still waiting