Since the Iraq war is being used as a reason to doubt our security agencies:

[JHan]

Other posters have pointed this out, like KittyWampus, and I'll do the same:

The CIA and the Bush Administration were in conflict over the danger of WMD's in Iraq.

The Bush Administration ignored the input of the CIA's top Iraq experts who had good reason to doubt claims that the U.S was in danger based on intelligence from two reliable CIA sources in the Iraqi Government. There was always push back against the Bush Administration by our intelligence community regarding the threat of Iraqi WMDs and it was left to Cheney & Co to make the case- and they did by deceiving the country.

There were chemical munitions found around 2004 as I recall, I could be wrong, but no sufficient intelligence ever pointed to intent by Iraq to threaten the U.S. using those munitions.

In this case of Russian hacking, it is extremely rare for all our security agencies to speak with one voice about threats to national security - on top of the work done by independent cyber-security firms like CrowdStrike.

It's one thing to be a skeptic , another to be in denial.

Russian cyber warfare is part of a long tradition of Russia expanding their espionage capabilities.

They have interfered in Europe, it shouldn't be shocking they'd interfere in the U.S. elections.

[ck4829]

1. Was it the CIA that said we'd be greeted as liberators?

Was it the CIA that said the absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence?
Was it the CIA that said the insurgents were in their "last throes"?

[JHan]

3. Exactly..

Cheney was hunting for an excuse to go to war.

[Proud Liberal Dem]

2. Bushco cherry-picked evidence and pressured CIA

to help them with develop a fig leaf of justification for invading Iraq. I don't believe the CIA was ever fully on board with the invasion, nor believed that Iraq was a serious threat. Republicans shouted down anybody whom didn't support the Iraq invasion, so their attempts to dismiss the CIA on Russia rings so empty and hollow now.

[TheBlackAdder]

4. Without delving into my research books, only one report stated a possibility, all others none.

.


Bush and Cheney cherry-picked the intelligence report that they wanted to read.

A report that was refuted by all others, but meeting the war narrative that Bush/Cheney & Co. wanted.


===


That's the problem wityh US Intel. The politicians who get the reports pick and choose what they want to see.

Trump is classic in this regards. He doesn't want to see anything that supports Russian hacking or involvement.


If there were two dozen reports, and one said it didn't happen, he'd cite that one and throw out the rest.


.

[JHan]

7. Yep,

I get the general skepticism towards our intelligence agencies. The Bush years were particularly bad because Cheney's disrespect for separation of powers and his willingness to abuse power shocked even Ashcroft.

I think I read somewhere that he didn't want to use Red Teams to challenge the narrative he wanted to push about Iraq.

[90-percent]

5. A lott of WTF memories of those infuriating Iraq 9/11 conflations....

One stands out; When Dick Cheney went to the CIA basement and scrutinized the raw data itself looking to pin it on Saddam by any sliver of bullshit info to justify his pet war crimes. 1% doctrine, tillmann, jessica lynch, dead or alive, with us or the terra-wrists, abu grahib, shock and awe, Winnebago's of death, halliburton, pallets of cash in big bundles, staged propaganda, resisting 9-11 inquiries, osama bin who? water boarding, 28 pages, you've covered your ass, system blinking red.

nostalgic for the good old days. now I have to worry full time about nuclear armageddon, or a greater depression or both, for possibly the rest of my life, or some time in 2017.

-90% jimmy

[lapucelle]

6. Matt Taibbi is pushing the Iraq Trump twitter talking point.

I'm sure that Taibbi sees himself as a clever, counter-intuitive maverick rather than as an increasingly irrelevant middle aged hipster.

[AwakeAtLast]

8. And W blew off 9/11 warnings!!!

After a stolen election......

[KG]

9. there's no reason to trust the CIA or any security agency, they've got their own agendas