http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6926663.stm

If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf won't act, we will

Accuse Barack Obama of many things - being naive, reckless, inexperienced, etc. - but apparently, being wishy-washy isn't one of his qualities. He speaks fairly boldly and directly. And unlike Edwards and Clinton, he's been against the Iraq war from the beginning, too. One could argue he's already shown better foreign policy judgment than Clinton.

Andrew

Read some reactions to Obama's speech from some so-called "experts" on terrorism. Pretty interesting:

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/the-trail/2007/08/01/weighing_in_on_obama.html?hp id=topnews

Andrew

Where is Herb and DJ on this???

Doesn,t obama know the bush adminstration got bin laden. Surely all that huffing and puffing after 9/11 wasnlt for naught. Or have I beenwatching too much FOX News?

Well.....pretty soon you'll be reading it in the Faux Street Journal as well!

Define "Actionable Intelligence". We had actionable intelligence that Saddam had WMD.

"We"?

Wow! I think you just blew your cover. I had no idea that you had a second career!

The problem is having the wisdom and judgment to know how to evaluate the intelligence you have. As we found out after the fact, there were doubts about the WMD intelligence in the US government before the 2003 Iraq invasion, but the doubters were marginalized, shouted down, or simply ignored. Warning signs were ignored.

For example, as recounted in Bob Woodward's book "State of Denial," the head of the US military team in charge of securing all the WMD sites in Iraq had trouble before the invasion getting hard intelligence about which sites really had the weapons and where they were exactly. Trying to go up the chain of command, he could not get better information, making it difficult for his team to prepare. These kinds of things should have set off loud alarm bells.

But the mindset of the Bush government was "we're going to war," and the intelligence was just being used to justify it. Presumably, a more rational-minded president like Obama would actually weigh the intelligence before making the decision to attack, not decide to attack first then backup the decision with selective use of intelligence.

Andrew

Herb??
DJ???
Any neo-CONer??
33DD???

"We had actionable intelligence that Saddam had WMD."

The "actionable intelliegence" Bush had at the time had one CLEAR choice of action: keep looking. NOT "massive amounts" and "we know where they are". Liar, liar, pants on fire Mr. President. heh.

EXTREME righties????

There are no extreme righties here, only intelligent middle of the road, common sense conservatives.

Hear, hear.

Herb

DJ said>>>
only intelligent middle of the road, common sense conservatives.

BrianL and I thank you for those kind words.

Trixter, if you're a conservative, then I'm a liberal.

Herb

Deane writes:
There are no extreme righties here, only intelligent middle of the road, common sense conservatives.

Congratulations, Deane: the self-righteous statement of the year.

Andrew

Oh, come on now. Everyone else around here acts the part too. He's just reading his lines aloud.

Herb said>>
Trixter, if you're a conservative, then I'm a liberal.

You and Rosie are on the same page???

I call bullshit.

We have extremes on many fronts here. Take one issue: Abortion.

Go back through and read the threads. It's as extreme as it gets!

Heck, go back to the homosexuality thread. It's there too. Extremes on many fronts.

We do this. It's no biggie. If we didn't feel a little passion, and enjoy each other (which I do), we wouldn't be here right?

Let's at least have the backbone to be honest about it.

EXTREME views are hardly ever honest on BOTH sides.