tricityherald.com / Opinions / Columnists

reprint or license Print E-Mail

Sunday, Jun. 21, 2009

Facts reveal arguments' flaws

By David J. Lemak, In Focus

Mark Mansperger's In Focus column on June 7 should have dropped the "bad dream" metaphor and more properly started with "once upon a time."

As with so many on the left these days, he presents his emotional opinions as facts. This is rather frightening coming from someone supposedly schooled in academic research.

Even a modicum of simple research reveals the following flaws in his arguments.

First, that the 9/11 attack occurred eight months after President Bush took office implies that they were crafted in that short time period. Even a cursory reading of the Executive Summary of the 9/11 Commission shows that the threat of such an attack goes back to 1993, and that the intelligence included in briefings to both Presidents Clinton and Bush was that an imminent attack would come overseas, not on our shores.

Also, recall that President Bush left the leadership of the CIA intact from the Clinton administration, with George Tenet remaining as head. The culpability for lack of anticipation runs long and wide: "We do not believe leaders understood the gravity of the threat. The terrorist danger … was not a major topic of policy debate among the public, the media or in Congress," the report found.

It also emphasized the lack of information sharing between agencies, especially the FBI and CIA, as a contributing factor.

Clearly, the facts contained in the 9/11 Commission Report point to a failure in the intelligence community going back eight years from the attack, not the speculation of sole culpability on the Bush administration.

Second, the decision to invade Iraq was not driven by any one factor such as weapons of mass destruction or a possible nuclear capability, but rather by 10 years of Saddam Hussein's refusal to comply with United Nations resolutions and demands for inspections.

Mansperger claims that "Cheney seems to have frequently visited CIA headquarters to twist analysts arms in justifying administration policies, such as their desire to invade Iraq."

Like Nancy Pelosi, he offers no evidence that the CIA "lied" in this case. On the contrary, the WMD Commission Report, March 31, 2005 concluded: "In sum, there was no "politicization" of the intelligence product on Iraq. Poor tradecraft, exacerbated by poor management, contributed to the erroneous assessments of Iraq's WMD programs."

Third, he then engages in further speculation that Cheney singled handedly "directed prisoners at Guantanamo Bay to be tortured (waterboarded) to fabricate evidence that there was a link between Saddam and al-Qaida."

Again, he offers not a speck of evidence. We know from the release of documents by the Obama administration that only three terrorists were waterboarded, and then only to gain actionable intelligence with regard to further attacks (the memos the administration won't release).

This had nothing to do with links between Saddam and al-Qaida.

Then, to suggest that a "high percentage" of Gitmo prisoners were "uninvolved in terrorism" is ludicrous, again without evidence, and contrary to what the administration is doing with regard to further trials of several categories of detainees.

The column ends with yet another malicious attack on Vice President Cheney's character, a theme common throughout. On this issue, for Mansperger to disparage Cheney for his lack of military service is equivalent to attacking President Obama for not being an economist, but enacting policies which arguably are changing the very nature of our economic system.

Mansperger is a trained academic and should know that reason and empirical evidence are the handmaidens of valid conclusions.

* David J. Lemak is professor of management at WSU Tri-Cities with a background in business and public administration.

@Nyx.AuthorDisplayName@ wrote on @Nyx.PostedAtTime@:

@Nyx.CommentBody@

@Nyx.Recommender@ @Nyx.AbuseReporter@