The surrendercrat narrative has it that Saddam not only did not attack us, but that he wouldn’t attack us. The latter assumption is tenuous at best, but all we have to prove is that he COULD have attacked us. Motive and capability are there in spades. The sacking of Saddam also has crucial value on the psychological battlefield, in that he was perceived to be the region’s “strong horse”, having been seen by the Arab street as having won the Gulf War, simply by maintaining his power after facing the Great Satan’s war machine. He simply had to be taken out.

Though we have attempted (mistakenly, in my view) to frame our post 9-11 actions as defensive and altruistic in nature, the Arab world has (fortunately) seen every one of them as punitive and retaliatory; this is one of two reasons we have not been attacked on our soil since 9-11. The other is our willingness to stand and shed blood in Iraq, which restored the dearth of respect that caused the attack on our buildings to begin with.

Weren’t there millions of documents recovered?

Keep up the great posts.

There are still multiple warehouses of documents in Kuwait yet to be exploited for intel and also about 2 years ago one of the documentaries on Gitmo had the base commander noting that they also had a large warehouse of captured documents that came with their detainees that have yet to be looked at.

Now if they have not translated and transcribed documents from those who were closest to OBL, it is likely that one could conclude the picture we have now is less than complete.

The conclusions you drew based on the excepts are indeed grounded in reason. A sound mind would be hard put to come to any other conclusion. But as so oft happens in the course of collection of intelligence, the source of the intelligence may have been flawed.

I personally cannot image a report issued the Department of Defense refuting the administration’s claim of the existence of a smoking gun absent irrefutable evidence that the intelligence in the original assessment was flawed. Honor, over and above political loyalties, is their creed.

Perhaps, rather the beg the question of “what was their definition of a smoking gun.” is to query whom were their sources on a smoking gun, which is what I suspect may have influenced their conclusion on the absence of a smoking gun.

The conclusions you drew based on the excepts are indeed grounded in reason. A sound mind would be hard put to come to any other conclusion. But as so oft happens in the course of collection of intelligence, the source of the intelligence may have been flawed.

I personally cannot image a report issued the Department of Defense refuting the administration’s claim of the existence of a smoking gun absent irrefutable evidence that the intelligence in the original assessment was flawed. Honor, over and above political loyalties, is their creed.

The Pentagon said on Friday it has taken custody from the CIA of an Afghan national who helped arrange Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden’s escape from Tora Bora in 2001, a spokesman said Friday.
Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman would not say when or where Muhammad Rahim was captured or how long he was held by the CIA, but said he was transferred to US military custody at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba earlier this week.

“He is one of UBL’s (Osama bin Laden’s) most trusted facilitators and procurement specialists. He helped prepare Tora Bora as a hideout for Osama bin Laden. He assisted Al-Qaeda’s exodus from the area in late 2001,”

Really. That is what they would have to see.

I think Saddam and Osama are/were both Alpha males. Neither of them would have let the other one run things and so they worked through other people. They used each other, but each one retained a certain amount of autonomy over their respective operations.

That means that Osama might be willing to let some of Saddam’s intel people train his people on the use of chemicals…but they would not let Saddam tell them exactly when and where to use them.

We have people in prison on less evidence of complicity.