Did members of Congress have more information than us?

[oinkment]

I've heard from two of my (Democratic) representatives regarding the Iraq thing and both of them said that they were convinced by the administration's evidence that Saddam had biological and chemical weapons and meant to use them. Also they saw convincing evidence that he had ties to terrorist groups.

Based on everything I read in the paper before the war, I never was convinced of either of these claims and I'm wondering what evidence Congress was shown. If the administration had persuasive evidence, why was it never made public? Or are my representatives really that gullible? One of them is Barbara Mikulski, who seems like a pretty savvy customer.

[displacedtexan]

1. they were shown the actual intelligence reports

which we now know were 'edited' for maximum effect by bushco.

[demnan]

2. I hope I phrase this without causing offense

but I think that the harm threatened by Iraq was always toward Israel, not the United States, and that a certain ethnic pursuasion in this country is particularly sensitive to threats toward Israel.

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

5. Watch yourself

You might be an anti-Semite if you say that Jewish Americans have any political influence in this country, which of course they do not.

<looks at how campaign donations intensely affects our elected officials>
<checks campaign donor lists and sees numerous Jewish groups or people with traditionally Jewish last names>

Oh. Oops.

[Rose Siding]

3. Jay Inslee, my rep, said at a local forum...

that after questions about the intel were asked, they were allowed to see more. Once he'd seen it, he was even more angry- he'd voted no on the IWR- implying that it was even more thin than he had been led to believe.

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

4. Of course he had WMD

I mean, it's ridiculous to think that Saddam Hussein didn't have WMD. Seriously, the most logical thing any homicidal dictator would do is to hide in a hole and wait for the people who are not hiding the fact that they will indeed kill him to come and get him instead of using said weapons to defend oneself as if his life depended on it (which it did). Really people, your twisted liberal logic astounds me. :eyes: :puke:

[mazzarro]

6. I do believe that those Democratic legislators that bought into

bushies* game do not want to own up to the fact that they have been had. I wonder the kind of information they were privy to that Senator Byrd did not see. IMO Senator Byrd has the stature and lenght of terms in congress to deserve the priviledge of being fully briefed on national security matters such as the Iraq situation. Yet Senator Byrd was not persuaded. I think Senator Mikulski & co on the Democratic side are all part and parcel of the DLC group that were more swayed by the neo-con-lite sympathy of DLC (the shadow rethuglicans in the Democratic party.)

[AP]

7. Of course they did.

And I believe that they intentionally packed those reports with some great evidence, some mediocre evidence, and some crap evidence.

I think the only reason the media (and therefore, we) got wind of the bad evidence is because the Bush Administration wanted to generate and mass hatred of the invasion to encourage (1) hatred towards Blair in the UK, and (2) hatred towards himself during the run-up to the primaries. The more hatred there is towards Bush, the more likely the Dems nominate a McGovern and the more likely the Dems lose.

One piece of evidence to support number 1 -- on Democracy, Now! a CIA agent said that the intelligence agent in charge of the uranium claim evidence refused to let the WH to put that into the SOU address until he was told, 'don't worry, if it's wrong, we're blaming the British.' They WH also lied to him about how it would be phrased in the SOU. After he heard the SOU he resigned because they phrased it with more certainty than he was told it would be.

To support (2) -- I saw a documentary on Watergate on PBS. In the cross-exam of one of the members of the WH staff, there was a memo entered into evidence which proved that the WH encouraged and desired protests of Nixon on the campaign trail. The advance people were hoping for protests. Why? Because it drives moderates to the right. REmember, Nixon was reelected in 72 in the midst of the biggest protests in American history.

Now, there's another angle to this: was the excellent evidence all that excellent, or was it a pack of lies? Well, who knows. Sadaam certainly had some kind of weapons program, because the Saudis and the US gave him a ton of money to start one. Maybe he pocketed all that money? Maybe he had time to move it to Saudi Arabia after the US pulled out the army from SA.

To me, this is the big mystery. However, I have no doubt that the Congress saw very compelling classified reports showing good reason to go into Iraq, and they had more information than we had, and they made the decision any of us would have made on the IWR. And you can be sure that no Democrat, if president, would have done what Bush did.