I should feel guilty...
... about using the words of Kristen Breitweiser, whose husband was killed on 9/11, but her comments are relevant.
This is what happens when I watch 9/11 stuff on the History Channel. I get all mad.
She said this on MSNBC's "Hardball" in 2004:
Read the text of the interview here: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4751052/
It never ceases to amaze me how we can take comments like that and criticize the government for not making intelligence "actionable", and feel better about ourselves for holding the government accountable, but...
When the government actually takes unfiltered intelligence and makes it "actionable"...
... you get the Iraq war.
Oopsie!
This country suffers from a total disconnect in that we can't take the lessons we (should) have learned from 9/11, and apply them to the Iraq war.
What we, as a country, are unwilling to accept is that the "actionable" intelligence we claim the government should have used to prevent 9/11 is no different than the "actionable" intelligence that led us into Iraq.
First of all: Actionable doesn't necessarily equate to correct. And even if it does, does this country have the spine to take action?
Frankly, I think we have every reason to be in Iraq. In their few calm, lucid moments, I think most people have no doubt that Saddam Hussein had chemical weapons, and most likely was making some efforts at a nuclear program. That's enough for me. We've all seen the footage of the Kurds he gassed. That's actionable intelligence, folks. The fact that he led the U.N. inspectors on a wild goose chase around the desert for about a decade while he got rid of the evidence does not make me lose sleep at night or second guess the war. Had we hit Afghanistan hard enough soon enough, we wouldn't have had 9/11. The logic has to apply to more than one example, folks. Iraq is smack in the middle of a region that hates us, for about a hundred reasons, and we'd already seen fit to go to war with them in 1991. That's a threat. Do the math. Apply the logic.
Our imagination fails us when we see what happens when we make intelligence actionable, and then we waffle.
You want someone to "Make it actionable", sister? You got him. Congratulations. Now stop whining.
She campaigned for Kerry, for cryin' out loud.
You want to avoid a failure of imagination? You want to take action on the intelligence?
Then You. Will. Get. WAR.
Next stop: Iran. Somebody warm up an ICBM. We do still have some of those, don't we?
A failure of imagination, indeed.
We're not suffering from a failure of imagination. We're suffering from a failure of spine.
This is what happens when I watch 9/11 stuff on the History Channel. I get all mad.
She said this on MSNBC's "Hardball" in 2004:
BREITWEISER: Listen, I heard a lot of talk about not having
actionable intelligence. Where was the initiative to make the intelligence
that they had actionable? That‘s someone‘s job.
MATTHEWS: The president, you mean?
BREITWEISER: That‘s someone‘s job to say—to turn to the intel
agencies and say, “Make it actionable.”
Read the text of the interview here: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4751052/
It never ceases to amaze me how we can take comments like that and criticize the government for not making intelligence "actionable", and feel better about ourselves for holding the government accountable, but...
When the government actually takes unfiltered intelligence and makes it "actionable"...
... you get the Iraq war.
Oopsie!
This country suffers from a total disconnect in that we can't take the lessons we (should) have learned from 9/11, and apply them to the Iraq war.
What we, as a country, are unwilling to accept is that the "actionable" intelligence we claim the government should have used to prevent 9/11 is no different than the "actionable" intelligence that led us into Iraq.
First of all: Actionable doesn't necessarily equate to correct. And even if it does, does this country have the spine to take action?
Frankly, I think we have every reason to be in Iraq. In their few calm, lucid moments, I think most people have no doubt that Saddam Hussein had chemical weapons, and most likely was making some efforts at a nuclear program. That's enough for me. We've all seen the footage of the Kurds he gassed. That's actionable intelligence, folks. The fact that he led the U.N. inspectors on a wild goose chase around the desert for about a decade while he got rid of the evidence does not make me lose sleep at night or second guess the war. Had we hit Afghanistan hard enough soon enough, we wouldn't have had 9/11. The logic has to apply to more than one example, folks. Iraq is smack in the middle of a region that hates us, for about a hundred reasons, and we'd already seen fit to go to war with them in 1991. That's a threat. Do the math. Apply the logic.
Our imagination fails us when we see what happens when we make intelligence actionable, and then we waffle.
You want someone to "Make it actionable", sister? You got him. Congratulations. Now stop whining.
She campaigned for Kerry, for cryin' out loud.
You want to avoid a failure of imagination? You want to take action on the intelligence?
Then You. Will. Get. WAR.
Next stop: Iran. Somebody warm up an ICBM. We do still have some of those, don't we?
A failure of imagination, indeed.
We're not suffering from a failure of imagination. We're suffering from a failure of spine.
posted by Alpineman, RN at 12:22 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home