Reply #42: Response #2 [View All]

You are not dealing on a factual basis. Ms. Rice did not grow up in an affluent family, that is simply not the truth. She achieved what she did through hard work and applying herself. While you are entitled to your opinion of whether she lied or not, it is simply not supported by the facts and intelligence available at the time. You also seek to blame her, Bush and the administration for the information the democrats voted on, which once again does not stand up to the actual facts. The democrats had been making similar statements dating back to the Clinton administration.

Was the intelligence flawed ? No one disputes that, but in the wake of 9/11, the option to err on the side of caution was not viable when put to the test of risk assessment. If they erred on the side of caution and were wrong, the number of deaths that could have occurred may have paled the 9/11 disaster.

Why is it that the left cannot grasp the concept of risk assessment at the time, instead of engaging in hindsight to criticize ? Yes, there were some competing intelligence assessments and the responsibility is to assess the risks encumbent with each being true and no further evidence to validate the pre-eminence of one over the other. So the choice they faced, was a preponderance of the intelligence, both here and abroad, was that he had WMDs (the types and amounts varied, but there was an overall agreement he had them), so the debate was really about what the threat was of those WMDs and how to respond. The question asked in risk assessment is: What would be the result of actions or of inaction ? If he has them, as all intelligence agencies here and abroad agreed, and uses them, and we have taken no action, how many lives could be lost ? What is the risk of being wrong in taking action ? In the wake of 9/11, the choice is a no brainer when held up to the scrutiny of risk assessment. It would have been irresponsible to err on the side of having the result be another terrorist attack and having to trust Saddam. And that is only one small aspect of the complex geopolitical paradigm that was in play.