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Do you recall what precipitated the invasion of Iraq?

by IncRnd 9y ago

roywiggins 9y ago
There was no report signed off by the CIA, DNI, and DHS that concluded with high confidence that the Iraq government had WMDs. The WMD intelligence, such as it was, came from raw reports pulled directly from the lower levels of the CIA bypassing the ordinary processes. The report on Russian hacking pulled from conclusions drawn by the entire US intelligence community. Also, did you read the Mueller indictment of a dozen Russian hackers? It goes into some detail on the kinds of information that the IC has about it. The thing is- the IC makes mistakes. But a single disaster of a conclusion like the WMD debacle cannot be used to discredit every single subsequent conclusion, otherwise we could never prosecute anyone on terror charges ever again. Pointing at the WMD fuckup and using that to disprove every conclusion you don't like means you aren't actually engaging in the substance. If tomorrow they conclude something you agree with and I don't, will you take me seriously when I say "but Iraq tho"? Probably not.
- IncRnd 9y ago
  I wasn't saying, "but Iraq" to discredit every subsequent conclusion. You will be hard pressed to find that in my comment. I mentioned that to help temper the people who are apparently engaging in confirmation bias, accepting statements without evidence when it seems to align with their beliefs.
- IncRnd 9y ago
  You also make another interesting point, even if it wasn't your intent. Mueller's indictment of hackers was in a legal system that would throw out the indictment if it were not logically and legally sound. The followup to that is, why wasn't there a presentation of the actual data that formed the conclusions of the IC the in the other cases that you mention? If you look at them, carefully, they have also been discredited since their presentations. The conclusions should be: 1) people are people with their own agendas and designs, and 2) appealing to authority isn't critical or independent thinking.

Do you recall what precipitated the invasion of Iraq?

by IncRnd 9y ago

Do you recall what precipitated the invasion of Iraq?

There was no report signed off by the CIA, DNI, and DHS that concluded with high confidence that the Iraq government had WMDs. The WMD intelligence, such as it was, came from raw reports pulled directly from the lower levels of the CIA bypassing the ordinary processes. The report on Russian hacking pulled from conclusions drawn by the entire US intelligence community. Also, did you read the Mueller indictment of a dozen Russian hackers? It goes into some detail on the kinds of information that the IC has about it. The thing is- the IC makes mistakes. But a single disaster of a conclusion like the WMD debacle cannot be used to discredit every single subsequent conclusion, otherwise we could never prosecute anyone on terror charges ever again. Pointing at the WMD fuckup and using that to disprove every conclusion you don't like means you aren't actually engaging in the substance. If tomorrow they conclude something you agree with and I don't, will you take me seriously when I say "but Iraq tho"? Probably not.

IncRnd 9y ago
I wasn't saying, "but Iraq" to discredit every subsequent conclusion. You will be hard pressed to find that in my comment. I mentioned that to help temper the people who are apparently engaging in confirmation bias, accepting statements without evidence when it seems to align with their beliefs.
IncRnd 9y ago
You also make another interesting point, even if it wasn't your intent. Mueller's indictment of hackers was in a legal system that would throw out the indictment if it were not logically and legally sound. The followup to that is, why wasn't there a presentation of the actual data that formed the conclusions of the IC the in the other cases that you mention? If you look at them, carefully, they have also been discredited since their presentations. The conclusions should be: 1) people are people with their own agendas and designs, and 2) appealing to authority isn't critical or independent thinking.