A "home run" post ER. Keep up the excellent work. And, Thank you!
Posted by Bad Ass at November 17, 2005 09:17 AMThis speech was just on cnn:
The Honorable John P. Murtha
War in Iraq
(Washington D.C.)- The war in Iraq is not going as advertised. It is a flawed policy wrapped in illusion. The American public is way ahead of us. The United States and coalition troops have done all they can in Iraq, but it is time for a change in direction. Our military is suffering. The future of our country is at risk. We can not continue on the present course. It is evident that continued military action in Iraq is not in the best interest of the United States of America, the Iraqi people or the Persian Gulf Region.
http://www.house.gov/apps/list/press/pa12_murtha/pr051117iraq.html
Bio:
U.S. Rep. John P. Murtha has dedicated his life to serving his country both in the military and in the halls of Congress. He had a long and distinguished 37-year career in the U.S. Marine Corps, retiring from the Marine Corps Reserve as a colonel in 1990; and he has been serving the people of the 12th Congressional District since 1974, one of only 131 people in the nation's history to have served more than 30 years in the U.S. House of Representatives and one of only 224 Members of Congress who have served 30 or more years.
Congressman Murtha is so well-respected for his first-hand knowledge of military and defense issues that he has been a trusted adviser to presidents of both parties on military and defense issues and is one of the most effective advocates for the national defense in the country. He is ranking member and former chairman of the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, a Vietnam combat veteran and a retired Marine Corps colonel with 37 years of service, a rare combination of experience that enables him to understand defense and military operations from every perspective.
He learned about military service from the bottom up, beginning as a raw recruit when he left Washington and Jefferson College in 1952 to join the Marines out of a growing sense of obligation to his country during the Korean War. There he earned the American Spirit Honor Medal, awarded to fewer than one in 10,000 recruits. He rose through the ranks to become a drill instructor at Parris Island and was selected for Officer Candidate School at Quantico, Virginia. He then was assigned to the Second Marine Division, Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. In 1959, Captain Murtha took command of the 34th Special Infantry Company, Marine Corps Reserves, in Johnstown. He remained in the Reserves after his discharge from active duty until he volunteered for Vietnam in 1966-67, receiving the Bronze Star with Combat "V", two Purple Hearts and the Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry. He remained in the Reserves until his retirement. This first-hand knowledge of military and defense issues has made him a trusted adviser to presidents of both parties and one of the most effective advocates for the national defense in Washington. At the request of Presidents and Speakers of the House, he served as chairman of delegations monitoring elections in the Philippines, El Salvador, Panama and Bosnia.
He was awarded the Navy Distinguished Service Medal by the Marine Corps Commandant when he retired from the Marines.
http://www.house.gov/murtha/bio.shtml
Posted by nik at November 17, 2005 09:22 AMAgain, nice work, eR. Concise and conclusive.
Rice's ex post spin is so self-damning that you really don't need any further evidence to prove she was lying. You can convict her on the sole basis of her own (false) later account.
Assume for a moment that account is true. If indeed she knew there was a debate about the tubes but didn't know what its "nature" was (a typically shifty/ambiguous statement, but no matter -- every possible interpretation is equally damning), then the conclusion is unassailable: she had no basis whatsoever for, and was in absolutely no position to make, her statement about the tubes only really being suited for centrifuge programmes. Moreover, by making her public statement while well aware (as her spin logically entails) that she was unqualified to do so, she would have been acting, by her own admission, in a patently dishonest and unethical fashion.
Posted by KM at November 17, 2005 01:20 PMNice job, er. And here is another report from someone who really did know his stuff, Greg Thielmann, retired director of the INR (State Department Intelligence):
There is also a problem of cloaking areas of controversy in ambiguity. And to me the classic example of this is the aluminum tubes issue. The 27-page classified summary of the October National Intelligence Estimate, reported to the Congress and to the nation, if anyone was listening, that most analysts said that the intercepted aluminum tubes that Iraq was trying to acquire was for Iraq's nuclear weapons program to make centrifuges that would enrich uranium. And then almost parenthetically it noted that some analysts thought it was not; it was for other purposes. What the estimate meant to say, or to give you some sensitive information so you can break the code in the future, was that the larger agencies, CIA and DIA, supported this interpretation. Smaller agencies, like INR and the Department of Energy (DOE), did not. Well, there is no poll of intelligence analysts on these issues. We can't say "most analysts" and "some analysts." The relevant questions are, which analysts knew the subject, what was their opinion? And on issues like this there is a long and comprehensive and thorough vetting of the cases to be made, the evidence available, and it was somewhat disingenuous not to let the public know that the agencies like DOE, that knew the most about using aluminum for centrifuge enrichments, happened to be in that "some analysts" category.
So when they wrote the NIE, who did they listen to? The people who had the least knowledge of the actual area.
Posted by Mary at November 20, 2005 12:19 AM