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I'm actually curious precisely what CIA justification you're referring to. What I'm aware of are [1] and [2]. [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/

• willcipriano 6y ago
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niger_uranium_forgeries https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niger_uranium_forgeries Folks inside the CIA knew that the yellow cake uranium was a lie and at best, did not make any of this knowledge public as the justification for war was coming together. That silence resulted in the loss of at least one hundred and fifty thousand human beings needlessly and a war that has lasted decades.
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  • dataflow 6y ago
    Huh, you went from > I have witnessed the CIA justify those wars to > the CIA knew that the yellow cake uranium was a lie and at best, did not make any of this knowledge public ? Isn't that a bit of a... large jump? Also, do/should intelligence agencies generally come out and make public announcements of intelligence at all? I mean, maybe you can argue they should do that (for the public good), but unless they already do this in similar situations (or are normally instructed to), to show they actually acted in bad faith is going to need a lot more than arguing they didn't explicitly go out of their way to do so. Btw, here's what I'm reading they apparently reported: https://fas.org/irp/cia/product/iraq-wmd.html https://fas.org/irp/cia/product/iraq-wmd.html > Moderate Confidence: Iraq does not yet have a nuclear weapon or sufficient material to make one but is likely to have a weapon by 2007 to 2009. (See INR alternative view, page 84). > We cannot confirm whether Iraq succeeded in acquiring uranium ore and/or yellowcake from these sources. [...] Intelligence information on whether nuclear-related phosphate mining and/or processing has been reestablished is inconclusive, however. (To be clear: none of this is to suggest I'm a fan of the entities involved...)
    • willcipriano 6y ago
      On the "I have witnessed the CIA justify those wars" comment we have started what 4 wars since Iraq? Every drone strike is justified with intelligence. I can find some YouTube clips later of CIA directors justifying war in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria if you don't believe me. > Also, do/should intelligence agencies generally come out and make public announcements of intelligence at all? They did so pretty frequently during the Trump administration. Whistleblowers spoke up when someone came in claiming to want to end the war on terror, they didn't feel the need to do so in 2001 when that war was getting started.
      • fit2rule 6y ago
        >Every drone strike is justified with intelligence. No.
    • dnautics 6y ago
      Not defending the cia, but the yellow cake thing was not a lie of commission (arguably a lie of omission): it was very much true in the strictest senses - hussein did have yellow cake and we did not know for sure where it was and he blocked inspectors that he was supposed to let in. but utterly overblown and misrepresented: yellow cake is not that dangerous by itself, hussein had stopped trying to enrich it - and we probably knew that - and it turned out to be exactly where it was last known to be to be under the UN inspections regime. As they say, technically correct, the best kind of correct.
  • mandmandam 6y ago
    >That silence resulted in the loss of at least one hundred and fifty thousand human beings needlessly Just gonna point out that non-Americans are human beings as well, and millions have died - directly as a result of this silence. The fact that Biden played a key part in enforcing this silence at various stages is particularly galling, and it's beyond fucked-up that he isn't held to account for it.
    • willcipriano 6y ago
      >Just gonna point out that non-Americans are human beings as well, and millions have died - directly as a result of this silence. 150k is the most conservative estimate I could find for Iraq. US and Iraqi deaths included. Some estimates are in the millions but I try to be as generous as possible to the other side of a argument I am making.
      • sudosysgen 6y ago
        Iraq is not the only country where the Intelligence agencies were up to no good. But no, using American claims from sources linked to people justifying war about fatilities goes beyond being charitable.
      • modo_mario 6y ago
        >150k is the most conservative estimate I could find for Iraq. It is the lowest I could find. It also has quite a list of criticisms attached to it. The Iraq body count project counts more just from reported deaths alone. I wouldn't be surprised if the ORB study showing in excess of 1.2 million is closest to the truth. especially since it ended in 2006 i think and it's not like people stopped dying since then.
• monocasa 6y ago
  The NIE that the CIA wrote up was declassified. It makes it very clear that they believe with "high confidence" (a very specific term in intelligence which means "we're pretty damn sure, normally enough to start a war over") that Iraq was continuing to make active progress on their nuclear weapons program and delivery systems in contrast to their UN sanctions. There's been a bunch of opinions since then that they were actually just misrepresented, but their own words from 2002 speak for themselves, IMO. https://www.scribd.com/doc/259216899/Iraq-October-2002-NIE-on-WMDs-unedacted-version https://www.scribd.com/doc/259216899/Iraq-October-2002-NIE-o...
  • dataflow 6y ago
    Ah! It took me a while to get what's going on (I didn't know what INR was!), but I think I finally see what you're saying. I assume you're talking about page 9 [1]. For anyone else interested, here are the relevant quotes I can find: > Iraq is continuing. and in some areas expanding, its chemical, biological, nuclear and missile programs contrary to UN resolutions. > If left unchecked, [Iraq] probably will have a nuclear weapon during this decade. (See INR alternative view at the end of these Key Judgments.) > [State/INR Alternative View] The activities we have detected do not, however, add up to a compelling case that Iraq is currently pursuing what INR would consider to be an integrated and comprehensive approach to acquire nuclear weapons. Iraq may be doing so, but INR considers the available evidence inadequate to support such a judgment. So basically the CIA is saying: - The INR (separate agency) doesn't believe this is enough to start a war over. - The other agencies (presumably including CIA) do. However, their justifications in the bullet points seem to rely on a fair bit of speculation about motivations behind things, not as much actual concrete evidence as you'd hope. Whereas the INR evaluated the same evidence and said they aren't confident enough in this yet. OK, so I'm with you here so far. Now the question to me is: did the CIA really lie here, or did they (and other agencies) really fail at their job? If it was a lie, are we using that to mean a falsehood, or does it refer to omission of critical information that they were reasonably confident about? On the face of it, it looks like they really just failed spectacularly, not that there was malice per se, but I don't have more details. (Though I guess that means we should listen more to the INR in the future?) [1] https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB129/nie.pdf#page=13 https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB129/nie.pdf#page=13