re: Unintended consequences
Do historians blame Truman for any of those cases when Intel got it wrong?
Truman didn't start a war because of faulty intelligence. As you say, he was merely "surprised". And did Truman try to shift the blame to underlings? Or did he heed his own maxim and take responsibility? Seeing Bush blame "the intelligence community" was a new low. What a weasel.
There was a period of about 5 years when there were no UN inspections in Iraq. That left Saddam a lot of time to do stuff. If, and this is a big if, he sent WMD materials out of Iraq, he could've done that any time during those years.
Well, darn, Larry, then why the utter conviction that WMD were in Iraq right before the war? One minute you and Tom are arguing that all the intelligence reports of present-day WMD in Iraq couldn't be wrong, now you're arguing that they might have been utterly wrong. How is this a better excuse?
This little piece of history doesn't prove that the Saddam and Osama were cooperating but it does show that such cooperation is within the realm of the possible.
Well, what can I say but "so?"? Again, this is about evidence, not supposition and plausibility. I found Powell's attempt at the UN to make a connection between Al Qaeda and Iraq so half-hearted as to be insulting, as if he really didn't care. "These are not allegations, these are facts" my ass.