Unit's bleak July Iraq report not its first caution to Bush's White House

[Clark4Prez]

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2004/09/28/MNG5D904AB1.DTL

Washington -- The same intelligence unit that produced a gloomy report in July about the prospect of growing instability in Iraq warned the Bush administration about the potential costly consequences of an American-led invasion two months before the war began, government officials said Monday.

The estimate came in two classified reports prepared for President Bush in January 2003 by the National Intelligence Council, an independent group that advises the director of central intelligence. The assessments predicted that an American-led invasion of Iraq would increase support for political Islam and would result in a deeply divided Iraqi society prone to violent internal conflict.

One of the reports also warned of a possible insurgency against the new Iraqi government or U.S.-led forces, saying that rogue elements from Saddam Hussein's government could work with existing terrorist groups or act independently to wage guerrilla warfare, the officials said. The assessments also said a war would increase sympathy across the Islamic world for some terrorist objectives, at least in the short run, the officials said.

The contents of the two assessments had not been previously disclosed. They were described by the officials after two weeks in which the White House has tried to minimize the council's latest report, which was prepared this summer and read by senior officials early this month.

[havocmom]

1. Neocons are running the country like a business. War is their business

They are profiteers, not Americans. Keep getting the word out. It is more than lives for oil, it is much more basic: Lives for $$ pure and simple.

[bif]

2. They could have just asked me

I could have told them that.

[schultzee]

3. All of *'s businesses failed. This one will affect all of us. He has never

had to face his mistakes like the rest of us. Someone always did it for him or saved him from his actions. Now this careless, privileged, spoiled,booze pickled brain idiot is running and ruining our great country. Whose not Patriotic? GW Bush is not patriotic, because he does not place America first. He places business and money first.

[The_Casual_Observer]

4. I saw a terrific freeper argument, the gist was that bush had to be

smart if he owned all those businesses and attended Yale and Harvard.
In fact, just about any below average person could do the same or better given the bush name and money.

[MasonJar]

5. There is no way that GWB gets in Yale without his grandfather,

even in the 60's. There is no way in HELL that he gets in Harvard Business School with a C minus average unless he was bought in. I do not know about Yale but that does not work at Princeton today. To think that this pitiful excuse for a person is our president continues to entrall me. How did we let this happen? It has to stop NOW.

[Jim__]

6. Good thing bush knew they were just guessing

The assessments predicted that an American-led invasion of Iraq would increase support for political Islam and would result in a deeply divided Iraqi society prone to violent internal conflict.


Paul Wolfowitz had a different guess. Just guesses. Nothing to distinguish between them.

[vogonity]

7. With current troops/resourses in Iraq...

What do you think that the military can reasonably accomplish in Iraq at this time? Do we have the manpower to (re)take Basra, Falluja, and whatever other cities that we don't currently control? What can we accomplish over there besides being sitting ducks?

[coalition_unwilling]

8. What would it mean to "(re)take Basra, Falluja . . ."?

I'm not sure we ever had effective control of them in the first place; what control we had was illusory, as there has been a low-level resistance movement going on from before the day Baghdad "fell". (Remember the efforts of the Fedayeen Saddam in Nasiriyah during the drive to Baghdad?)

Or were you merely asking rhetorical questions?

[Moderator]

9. Duplicate

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=869191