Quote:
|
Originally Posted by Cool Hand
I am not familiar enough with the intelligence Rice had available to her or with her knowledge of materials that can be used in making nuclear weapons. I have no idea whether her statement that the tubes could only be for nuclear weapons was reasonable or sincere at the time based on her knowledge. I suspect you have no conclusive proof one way or the other either.
|
Actually, there is. (Unless we have moving goalposts for "conclusive evidence").
Rice made this claim on September 8, 2002, to CNN.
Over a year earlier, May 9, 2001, the Department of Energy had completed its investigation, concluding that the aluminium tubes were a precise match with those known to have been used by Iraq to make pod rockets.
This information was even being discussed outside the intelligence community by the time of Rice's statement.
In short, it was not just false, but known to be false, that the
only use for those tubes was in a centrifuge for purifying nuclear material.
So either Rice didn't know what everyone else knew -- incompetence -- or she knowingly spoke falsely to mislead the public.
Quote:
|
[Before hearing or reading any news accounts stating that the tubes could not be used in the manufacture of nuclear weapons, I would not have had a clue. Would you?
|
Nope. But I would have known (in any normal sense of "know" involving deference to expert opinion) that they could at least have another explanation.
But other explanations, and taking the time and good judgement to explore them, were not on the menu; both judgement and honesty were casualties of the perceived need to hustle the nation along to war.
As for "endemic", it doesn't really matter when the ambiguity crept into the exchange. Either way I simply don't see the relevance of whether the Bushites invented deception to the question of the extent and gravity of their practice of it.