Pulled right off of MSNBC.
I'm confused. Why not have an independent investigation? What is so wrong about having that? I mean...if everything's all well and good, then why not shut up the detractors and have some unbiased research?
I don't know what's going on here, but I really don't see the harm in having an outside investigation. If everything turns out fine, then it's fine. If there are some serious gaps, which many suspect, then we know what they were and perhaps we can work on...I don't know...fixing them?
Somebody enlighten me here, please.
Rice rejects calls
for outside probe
of Iraq intelligence
Security adviser admits
some prewar data flawed
Updated: 3:52 p.m. ET Jan. 29, 2004
WASHINGTON - President Bushs national security adviser acknowledged Thursday that some prewar intelligence about Iraq was flawed but brushed aside calls for an independent investigation.
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Condoleezza Rice, in a series of television interviews, defended Bushs decision to go to war and said the United States may never learn the whole truth about Iraqs weapons capabilities because of looting, which U.S. forces failed to stop immediately after the invasion.
While she defended the intelligence community, Rice said on CBSs Early Show: I think that what we have is evidence that there are differences between what we knew going in and what we found on the ground.
But she added: Thats not surprising in a country that was as closed and secretive as Iraq, a country that was doing everything that it could to deceive the United Nations, to deceive the world.
When you are dealing with secretive regimes that want to deceive, youre never going to be able to be positive about intelligence, Rice said on NBCs Today show.
She said the U.S. team hunting for Iraqs weapons would gather all of the facts that we possibly can, leaving open the possibility that its findings might be inconclusive.
She put the blame for any gaps on looters and former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, who she said was so secretive that he allowed the world to continue to wonder what weapons he still had.
Critics say the administration did little to secure sensitive sites immediately after the invasion, undercutting efforts to find the alleged weapons at the center of Bushs case for going to war.
Unresolved ambiguity
David Kay, who had led the U.S. team hunting for Iraqs weapons, warned Wednesday of an unresolved ambiguity about Saddams weapons capabilities because of the looting of documents, laboratories and military bases.
A lot of that traces to the failure on April 9th to establish immediately physical security in Iraq, he told Congress.
Kay said he would support an independent investigation into the intelligence the White House used to justify going to war after concluding that it was highly unlikely that Iraq had large stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction, as stated repeatedly by Bush and his top aides before launching the invasion.
But Rice said on NBC that the intelligence community had already launched its own investigation a kind of audit of what was known going in and what was found when they got there.
A CIA official said the investigation, headed by Richard Kerr, a former CIA deputy director, was still under way.
Rice said Kay had raised some questions that we will want to answer. But she said on ABCs Good Morning America: We will never know fully because a lot of looting took place before our armed forces could secure various areas.
Rice said the administration wanted to get all the facts to compare what the White House thought would be found in Iraq and what was actually found.
Nobody will want to know better and more about what we found when we got to Iraq than this president and the administration, she said.
Whatever the outcome, Rice said, the administration would not change its position that Saddam had to go.
The judgment is going to be the same: This is a dangerous man in a dangerous part of the world, and it was time to do something about this threat, she said.
I'm confused. Why not have an independent investigation? What is so wrong about having that? I mean...if everything's all well and good, then why not shut up the detractors and have some unbiased research?
I don't know what's going on here, but I really don't see the harm in having an outside investigation. If everything turns out fine, then it's fine. If there are some serious gaps, which many suspect, then we know what they were and perhaps we can work on...I don't know...fixing them?
Somebody enlighten me here, please.