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BBC got back-slapped (pg. 2)
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| occrider |
| quote: | Originally posted by razmataz
The Hutton Report was a disgrace. There is no doubt in my mind that both the British and American governments "sexed" up reports of Iraq's WMD program and I am sure a certain Mr. Kay will agree with me on this. |
Actually he does not.
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KAY: As you know and we discussed, I do not have a written statement. This hearing came about very quickly. I do have a few preliminary comments, but I suspect you're more interested in asking questions, and I'll be happy to respond to those questions to the best of my ability.
I would like to open by saying that the talent, dedication and bravery of the staff of the [Iraq Survey Group] that was my privilege to direct is unparalleled and the country owes a great debt of gratitude to the men and women who have served over there and continue to serve doing that.
A great deal has been accomplished by the team, and I do think ... it important that it goes on and it is allowed to reach its full conclusion. In fact, I really believe it ought to be better resourced and totally focused on WMD; that that is important to do it.
But I also believe that it is time to begin the fundamental analysis of how we got here, what led us here and what we need to do in order to ensure that we are equipped with the best possible intelligence as we face these issues in the future.
Let me begin by saying, we were almost all wrong, and I certainly include myself here.
Sen. [Edward] Kennedy knows very directly. Senator Kennedy and I talked on several occasions prior to the war that my view was that the best evidence that I had seen was that Iraq indeed had weapons of mass destruction.
I would also point out that many governments that chose not to support this war -- certainly, the French president, [Jacques] Chirac, as I recall in April of last year, referred to Iraq's possession of WMD.
The Germans certainly -- the intelligence service believed that there were WMD.
It turns out that we were all wrong, probably in my judgment, and that is most disturbing.
We're also in a period in which we've had intelligence surprises in the proliferation area that go the other way. The case of Iran, a nuclear program that the Iranians admit was 18 years on, that we underestimated. And, in fact, we didn't discover it. It was discovered by a group of Iranian dissidents outside the country who pointed the international community at the location.
The Libyan program recently discovered was far more extensive than was assessed prior to that.
There's a long record here of being wrong. There's a good reason for it. There are probably multiple reasons. Certainly proliferation is a hard thing to track, particularly in countries that deny easy and free access and don't have free and open societies.
In my judgment, based on the work that has been done to this point of the Iraq Survey Group, and in fact, that I reported to you in October, Iraq was in clear violation of the terms of [U.N.] Resolution 1441.
Resolution 1441 required that Iraq report all of its activities -- one last chance to come clean about what it had.
We have discovered hundreds of cases, based on both documents, physical evidence and the testimony of Iraqis, of activities that were prohibited under the initial U.N. Resolution 687 and that should have been reported under 1441, with Iraqi testimony that not only did they not tell the U.N. about this, they were instructed not to do it and they hid material.
I think the aim -- and certainly the aim of what I've tried to do since leaving -- is not political and certainly not a witch hunt at individuals. It's to try to direct our attention at what I believe is a fundamental fault analysis that we must now examine.
And let me take one of the explanations most commonly given: Analysts were pressured to reach conclusions that would fit the political agenda of one or another administration. I deeply think that is a wrong explanation.
As leader of the effort of the Iraqi Survey Group, I spent most of my days not out in the field leading inspections. It's typically what you do at that level. I was trying to motivate, direct, find strategies.
In the course of doing that, I had innumerable analysts who came to me in apology that the world that we were finding was not the world that they had thought existed and that they had estimated. Reality on the ground differed in advance.
And never -- not in a single case -- was the explanation, "I was pressured to do this." The explanation was very often, "The limited data we had led one to reasonably conclude this. I now see that there's another explanation for it."
And each case was different, but the conversations were sufficiently in depth and our relationship was sufficiently frank that I'm convinced that, at least to the analysts I dealt with, I did not come across a single one that felt it had been, in the military term, "inappropriate command influence" that led them to take that position.
It was not that. It was the honest difficulty based on the intelligence that had -- the information that had been collected that led the analysts to that conclusion.
And you know, almost in a perverse way, I wish it had been undue influence because we know how to correct that.
We get rid of the people who, in fact, were exercising that.
The fact that it wasn't tells me that we've got a much more fundamental problem of understanding what went wrong, and we've got to figure out what was there. And that's what I call fundamental fault analysis.
http://edition.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLI...ript/index.html
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my evidence is the lack of it... a year after the invasion there are no weapons... a year after the invasion Mr. Kay has resigned... my evidence is his testimony... my evidence is the late Dr. Kelly..
my evidence would just be a replication of what has already been said...what you choose to ignore.
my evidence is not MY evidence...its the truth.
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Unfortunately that's an argument from ignorance (no I'm not calling you ignorant, that's the name of the logical fallacy). The lack of proof is not a case for proof. The fact that no wmds have been found is not a conclusive "smoking gun" so to speak that Bush or Blair manipulated intelligence to deceive us from teh actual truth. For now , it only indicates that we suffered from bad intelligence, and poor judgement on acting on that intelligence. The very case you are making is very similar to the case Bush/Blair made. "Of course there are WMDs in Iraq ... show us the proof that there are none." |
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| Dervish |
| quote: | Originally posted by occrider
Unfortunately that's an argument from ignorance (no I'm not calling you ignorant, that's the name of the logical fallacy). The lack of proof is not a case for proof. The fact that no wmds have been found is not a conclusive "smoking gun" so to speak that Bush or Blair manipulated intelligence to deceive us from teh actual truth. For now , it only indicates that we suffered from bad intelligence, and poor judgement on acting on that intelligence. The very case you are making is very similar to the case Bush/Blair made. "Of course there are WMDs in Iraq ... show us the proof that there are none." |
Excelent point. |
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| imokruok |
occrider, thanks for posting Kay's comments. They certainly aren't what Uncle Ted was looking for yesterday.
As for the BBC, the hits just keep on coming! Their director general Greg Dyke just resigned today. (Major resignation #2...) |
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| MisterOpus1 |
| quote: | Originally posted by occrider
Unfortunately that's an argument from ignorance (no I'm not calling you ignorant, that's the name of the logical fallacy). The lack of proof is not a case for proof. The fact that no wmds have been found is not a conclusive "smoking gun" so to speak that Bush or Blair manipulated intelligence to deceive us from teh actual truth. For now , it only indicates that we suffered from bad intelligence, and poor judgement on acting on that intelligence. The very case you are making is very similar to the case Bush/Blair made. "Of course there are WMDs in Iraq ... show us the proof that there are none." |
I would agree with you on the logical fallacy, however there have been documents and articles on both the Bush and Blair Admin. doing just that - pressuring intelligence to bend towards their cause (i.e. sexing up documents). The articles themselves were taken from CIA agents and other Admin. officials who personally felt the Cheney/Rumsfeld vicegrip on them. If you want, I'll dig them up, but I think you know what I'm referring to. So while it's somewhat an argument from ignorance in the literal sense, there is supporting evidence to sexing up the documents.
However, I don't think it logically follows to tie this into the Hutton report. There was clear evidence of reporter exaggeration, and the proceeding fallout is absolutely necessary.
I don't quite understand all the rapture I see from certain people here, however (i.e. conservatives). The BBC is the only non-government controlled news that remains in Britain. Having a fallout on this whole story is necessary, but is the entire paper really that excrutiating for you? Would it be better to have more ties to the government? Would it be more appropriate for the government to be able to manipulate the news better? Keep in mind that Britain has much stricter free press laws, and that lawsuits towards printed stories are much more common than here in the U.S. |
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| eLe_vatE |
| quote: | Originally posted by razmataz
The Hutton Report was a disgrace. There is no doubt in my mind that both the British and American governments "sexed" up reports of Iraq's WMD program and I am sure a certain Mr. Kay will agree with me on this. Anyone who still thinks otherwise is naive beyond argument.
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Call me naive, but I think that an independent inquiry held by a law lord (Lord Hutton) who examined every piece of evidence and questioned everyone remotely related to the affair is just that little bit more reliable than some media & opposition hype, now proved to be "unfounded", as Hutton put.
The intelligence may turn out to be unreliable or completely wrong, but that would be no fault of the UK government at least (don't know about the US yet), they merely presented the evidence directly from the intelligence that was made available to them from the intelligence services, the findings from the Hutton report show this. |
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| imokruok |
| quote: | Originally posted by eLe_vatE
The intelligence may turn out to be unreliable or completely wrong, but that would be no fault of the UK government at least (don't know about the US yet), they merely presented the evidence directly from the intelligence that was made available to them from the intelligence services, the findings from the Hutton report show this. |
David Kay came to the same conclusion in his report yesterday. |
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| razmataz |
As far as incorrect intelligence goes, I find it hard to fathom that the American and British intelligence (2 governments that have some of the world's renowned intelligence agencies) got the plot completely wrong. Not to mention coupled with the volumes upon volumes of information that Iraq provided before the invasion, and the information collected by U.N. Inspectors.
It is just too easy to say "oh im sorry, we had bad intelligence". Maybe the BBC did cross the line in codes of conduct (not that i think they did) but I think what should be more worrying is the fact that American and British intelligence could be so "wrong" about a whole war. |
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| smokeape |
Well, there was a panel of smart guys to figure out the best excuse for the war. Problem is and will be bringing the country into international standards of behavior. Lol!!!
[[[smoke]]] |
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| Kia Kaha |
ITV reporting in the last few hours ...
1. Andrew Gilligan has resigned
2. An opinion poll carried out by ITV (who you would think would have every reason to kick the beeb while they're down :eyes: ) reports that
10% of the British public think the Hutton report was fair and unbiased
90% think it was a whitewash!!
The British public are not as stupid as Blair thinks they are :p
If he thinks this Hutton report is going to get him off the hook for leading us to war on what everyone could see were false pretenses, he better think again :whip: |
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| anuneventrade |
| quote: | Originally posted by smokeape
Well, there was a panel of smart guys to figure out the best excuse for the war. Problem is and will be bringing the country into international standards of behavior. Lol!!!
[[[smoke]]] |
I am quite sick of your posts. You have nothing to contribute to any thread you post in, and recently each and every post I have had the unfortunate luck to come across that was posted by yourself has had pictures of half naked women. Get some lotion and head to the bathroom, stop making moronic posts, please. For a man with children, the youngest being 13, I would expect to see a little more maturity, though I suppose with your insistent {{{smoke}}} after every post I should have known better.
[/rant] |
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| occrider |
| quote: | Originally posted by razmataz
As far as incorrect intelligence goes, I find it hard to fathom that the American and British intelligence (2 governments that have some of the world's renowned intelligence agencies) got the plot completely wrong. Not to mention coupled with the volumes upon volumes of information that Iraq provided before the invasion, and the information collected by U.N. Inspectors.
It is just too easy to say "oh im sorry, we had bad intelligence". Maybe the BBC did cross the line in codes of conduct (not that i think they did) but I think what should be more worrying is the fact that American and British intelligence could be so "wrong" about a whole war. |
And why is that so hard to fathom? The CIA and western intelligence services have a historical record of underestimating the nuclear capabilities and weapons of mass destruction development programs of many countries for much of the latter part of the 20th century. The Soviet testing of the atomic bomb in 1949, the Chinese nuclear development program in 1964, most notably the Indian and Pakistani nuclear weapons program which COMPLETELY caught western intellligence experts off guard in the 90's, the development of nuclear fuel rods by N. Korea right under our very noses during Clinton's term, and the extent of the Libyan and Iranian wmd programs due to pakistani assistance as gleaned by information provided by Quadafi. All of these were critical intelligence failures that the CIA should have known about yet didn't. And why did these developments catch the west off guard? They were covert programs that did not draw much attention. Iraq was the exact opposite ... Huessein made no pretenses of disguising his ambition for these programs, it drew the attention of all intelligence analysts, and it drew the most speculation not of what was discovered or found during inspections but what hadn't been found. Specifically, the speculation stemmed from wmds we knew he had prior to the first gulf war and what was unaccounted for by inspections following the first war. Furthermore, the weapons dossier they sent to the UN was by no means an accurate account of their wmd programs and contained so many holes that it was regarded by most nations as a complete joke. There was no evidence gleaned by Russian, French, or German intelligence services to indicate definitively that there were no wmds and their respective governments all thought that Iraq possessed them. So the intelligence was faulty and inaccurate, that fact cannot be denied. The Americans had it wrong, the brits had it wrong, the Germans, Russians, French, etc., everyone had it wrong. That shouldn't be the issue that is in dispute. What should be called into question are the US and Britain's brash decision to go to war on intelligence that may or may not have been entirely accurate or properly accounted for. More time should have been spent on verifying the veracity of all these accounts. |
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