RUSSERT: Let me go back to Deutsche’s testimony and share this with you: “The next time military intervention is judged necessary to combat the spread weapons of mass destruction, for example, in North Korea, there will be skepticism about the quality of our intelligence.” Is that fair?
DR. WOLFOWITZ: If people keep treating every intelligence uncertainty as an example of failure, I guess we will have a problem.
Right. This is the "murky" spin. But as everyone knows, the issue is not that intelligence was murky. The issue is that intelligence was distorted. In fact, clear intelligence that didn't make the case for war was rejected, and murky intelligence that did was promoted. YABL, YABL, YABL ...
But I mean, stop and think. If in 2001 or in 2000 or in 1999, we had gone to war in Afghanistan to deal with Osama bin Laden and we had tried to say it’s because he’s planning to kill 3,000 people in New York, people would have said, well, you don’t have any proof of that.
Hmmm... It would be interesting to see some serious analysis, rather than the assertion, that shows going to war in Afghanistan would have prevented 9/11, or another attack like it. This idea seems to be new to Wolfie. I mean, wasn't Atta living in Hamburg at that time? And isn't AQ a decentralized organization? And haven't they managed attacks after Afghanistan?
I think the lesson of September 11th is that you can’t wait until proof after the fact.
And this is the bottom line. What the administration is really claiming is the right to go to war, whenever they want, with whoever they like, for whatever reason they want, and without telling the American people why.
Clearly, the Republic can't survive such an arrogation of executive power. So people will have a choice to make....