
CIA agent: Everything the US thought it knew about Saddam Hussein was wrong - lisper
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4044216/CIA-agent-grilled-Saddam-Hussein-says-thought-knew-man-WRONG.html
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wheelerwj
this article... there's probably a reason it's published by the daily mail on
sunday and self-authored.

This leaves more questions than answers and doesn't really make.a point.

~~~
randall
... because he's hocking a book.

~~~
wheelerwj
i kept looking for the amazon link but i didn't see it.

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rokosbasilisk
Iraq having wmds will probably be looked back as the start of fake news
peddled by the mainstream media outlets.

~~~
drewbuschhorn
That wasn't fake news. Fake news is knowingly spreading news which is either a
hoax or likely to be a hoax.

Reporting information from a credible government source based on facts in
evidence, is simply reporting. The facts supplied to the reporter might be
wrong, or their conclusion might be faulty, but as long as it's based on
evidence and in good faith, it's not 'fake news'.

~~~
gaius
_as long as it 's based on evidence and in good faith, it's not 'fake news'._

Infowars passes that test.

It's the _job_ of the press not to take things at face value. That's why the
US has laws protecting the press, so it can go up against the government. If
they are not doing that then they have stopped being journalists and started
being paid propagandists.

~~~
drewbuschhorn
_sigh_ , if you consider "Soros-funded radicals want civil war" (infowars
front page currently) a good faith statement, then we're working from
different axioms and can't have a real conversation.

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gaius
I believe that _they_ believe it, which means they _are_ acting in good faith.

~~~
drewbuschhorn
I don't believe they believe it, and that means we're at an unarguable impasse
without starting to bring evidence in.

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gaius
You think they're purely in it for the clicks? If so, how is that distinct
from a "real" newspaper (whatever that means these days)?

~~~
drewbuschhorn
I do. I start from the assumption they're reasonable men like me, then compare
their ledes to the evidence proffered in the story, and the strength of the
conclusion.

Infowars fails that test for me, and as a crosscheck, people who have earned
my trust. The New York Times passes that test for me, and people who have
earned my trust.

I'd forgotten we're not supposed to do political arguments on HN (which I
suppose really everything is), so I concede, you win the argument and the
internet points.

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PKop
Maybe some more clarity on the "Russian's hacking DNC" is warranted, in light
of the CIA track record.

~~~
jws
The headline doesn't really match the conclusion. While the interrogations
added and corrected information, in the run up to the Iraq war of 2003 the CIA
analysis was dismissed and a tiny subset cherry picked to create a pretense
for war. It is the nature of intelligence that you will collect a large body
of information, and some of it will be false.

~~~
maxerickson
This article, written prior to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, is pretty damning of
the Bush administration and to some extent separates then CIA Director George
Tenet from the CIA in how intelligence was being handled.

edit. Here's the article: [http://prospect.org/article/pentagon-muzzles-
cia](http://prospect.org/article/pentagon-muzzles-cia)

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goalieca
> Saddam had actually believed 9/11 would bring Iraq and America closer
> because Washington would need his secular government to help fight
> fundamentalism. How woefully wrong he had been

That was an interesting thought if you take the war on terror at face value.
But as he said, he did not listen to what was actually going on and being
said. The war was never about terror.

~~~
mcguire
It was reasonably clear out here at the time that going into Afghanistan
wouldn't deliver a clean, glorious war that would ensure Bush's reelection.

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kelvin0
Hilarious, this is the worse piece of journalism I have seen in a while.

Saddam was a US backed 'bully', and as soon as it no longer suited them they
took him down on false pretenses.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r42oejmpkgw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r42oejmpkgw)

[http://www.globalresearch.ca/gulf-war-documents-meeting-
betw...](http://www.globalresearch.ca/gulf-war-documents-meeting-between-
saddam-hussein-and-ambassador-to-iraq-april-glaspie/31145)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_support_for_Iraq...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_support_for_Iraq_during_the_Iran%E2%80%93Iraq_war)

