This is exactly what happened when both the US intelligence community and media decided that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction in the 00's. All the sources traced back to a handful of Iraqi dissidents who had made the story up to encourage American intervention.
It's evidence that US intelligence community sources can be unreliable. That's directly related to this story because Bloomberg claims that many of their sources are from that community.
It's kind of weird to cite George Tenet in your claim since he's the one who famously told Bush they had a "slam dunk case" to convince the American people there was justification to invade Iraq.
1.The intelligence flaw is a high order lie in order to mislead public to believe the war is launched by wrong information. It's not. The intelligence flaw is irrelevant or is intentional. The war is predetermined and flaw intelligence has nothing to do with real cause of the war other than a cover afterwards.
2.The narrative that the Bush Administration launch Iraq war with flaw intelligence is another lie that the majority of public who support the war were not responsible because they were misled by their leaders. The war is launched by not only Bush administration but also UK. The main stream media were not orchestrated by government like a totalitarianism regime can do. For example, CNN interviewed a famous Iraq nuclear scientist again and again to sell the impression to the public that Iraq DO have nuclear weapon. CNN independently promote the war which happened to match the government agenda. US/UK are democratic countries. Both countries collectively(meaning enough portion of the people ) decide to over thrown Iraq regime
"the US intelligence community ... decided that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction"
I hope you realize this was all an invention of the US intelligence community — they knew all along it was bullshit. It's well documented at this point.
The other bullshit that has never been substantiated is the narrative that Saddam was working in collusion with Bin Laden. Despite the latter being quite vocal about his derision of Saddam's secularism and suppression of the Shia. But ask any average American today and "of course" they were in cahoots.
In that case the government led the charade, from claims of 'nuc-u-lar weapons' (as Bush pronounced it) to the claims of buying Yellowcake from Niger, the government led it and the media just went along.
In this case the media is doing it themselves from the start.
Far too often people mistake correct guesses with having actual knowledge. If I had a dollar for every time I've heard somebody be "100% certain" of something I'd probably have a lot of money by now, although I don't know for sure.
The aluminum tube claim was pretty obviously bogus. The tubes were narrow in diameter, variably finished (often rough inside), thin walled, and would result in laughably inefficient uranium hexaflouride centrifuges. It just didn’t make any sense to anyone with even a casual understanding of enrichment methods.
They also made perfect sense for missiles/rockets.
The chemical weapon claims were believable. I mean, didn’t we help Iraq manufacture chemical weapons during the Iran/Iraq war? Wasn’t that long-suspected belief later confirmed?
So, yes. I knew at the time, and I said so. I wouldn’t fundamentally have had much of a problem with invading Iraq (one could have that argument), but the justification, timing, and prioritization didn’t really make sense. Watching Powell pitch that goat rodeo was pretty sad.
You might find this a good read about knowing the iraq wmd story was a lie in advance. From someone who predicted it, they explain their reasoning. It's rather convincing.
It was very well known that G. W. Bush was itching for an excuse to finish what his old man started.
See the PNAC documentation, if nothing else. You don't need to be a card-carrying member of the Illuminati to understand the personal and political dynamics that existed between Saddam's administration and Bush 43's, or to foresee what was likely to happen.
You ain't kidding. Talk about trying to rewrite a narrative with bogus claims.
The 2003 Iraq invasion had nothing to do with warnings from informants about state secrets.
The idea very idea that there was any concern about Iraq's capability to wage war is a joke. Iraq was pretty well softened up by no fly zones and sanctions, so as to be sufficiently anemic, and decapitating the incumbent dictator for life (literally) was mostly just sour grapes for him going off script, and besmirching the sanctity of Kuwait.
It was gloves off for Iraq, as soon as the 9/11 hijackings unfolded. Literally next month people were whispering about Iraq, even though Afghanistan was well understood as the official point of origin for the attacks.
> It was gloves off for Iraq, as soon as the 9/11 hijackings unfolded. Literally next month people were whispering about Iraq, even though Afghanistan was well understood as the official point of origin for the attacks.
Not only that, even though Afghanistan played an actual role, the majority of the hijackers were Saudi. People sort of mention that in passing and then go back to pretending it has no relevance.
The point being that, capturing or killing the associated individuals still alive, to be held responsible, meant transgressing the territory of Afghanistan.
Nonetheless, I'd agree that waging war on Afghanistan, The Country would be just as silly as waging war on Saudi Arabia. It's like Canada waging war on both the United States and Italy, for something The Mafia perpetrated.
Meanwhile, war with Iraq was akin to Canada invading Norway for it's whale blubber, because the Norweigan king sunk a fleet of Danish whaling ships ten years prior, and was now suspected of hoarding a cache of illegal harpoons. Thus triggering a cascade of geopolitical events, whereby Canada stepped in to defend Denmark, thus angering a member of the Gambino family, who subsequently demolished the CN tower, for tampering with Denmark's sovereignty. As if to say that had Norway not attacked Denmark, the CN tower would not have been destroyed by a hijacked train derailment.
Bad US intelligence. Secretary of State Colin Powell gave a detailed presentation at the United Nations that was seen around the world. It was all based on faulty sources.
