No it was the Bush administration that acted on the CIA report about WMDs. All 4 of those facts I stated about the CIA all well known but you call them BS. Incredible.
If you're referring to the list of events beginning with Mossadegh, the real facts behind those events weren't really known to the public for as much as two or more decades after they occurred. It was only through the effort and pressure brought to bear for occasional document declassifications that we know what we know now. Iran Contra was probably different in that regard, because the public became aware of the essentials when it was headlined in the news. But even that story goes back to the transition between Carter and Reagan.
So I want to explain my position of partial ignorance regarding the Bush years and the WMDs. I am pleading ignorance, which at the moment I accept as needing no emergency effort to correction.
You don't need to believe it; I have a few witnesses who know it -- some who might say "I remember it a little differently." But when some of those friends don't know a few others, and both groups acknowledged basically the same thing, I have to conclude for myself with confidence.
I predicted everything for eight years and beginning the next morning on the night of September 10, 2001, but no less in mid-November, 2000. How did I do that? I don't know. I was reading a lot of government reports, declassified documents, books about those documents and certain events, books that used some facts and some documents to promote misleading conclusions. That's all I can say about it.
Then, in late 2002, I wrote a letter to a well-known GOP Senator from a western state. I urged him to follow an example of Senator Robert Byrd and his filibuster: put a leash on your dog in the White House. Apparently, my letter was sufficiently polite and civil that I got back a 4-page stationery reply listing the thousands and thousands of WMDs capable of destroying thousands of planets like Earth. It was signed in blue ink, but I know it was an auto-pen.
And I laughed at it! I laughed! I couldn't say that I knew with 100% confidence or no risk of being wrong that the Senator had just made an Ass of himself to me. I was only wishing there had been someone there to make a $1,000 bet on my convictions.
Then, I found the link between Texas oil and my local newspaper in California. But even in 1999, I made my decision against Bush in 1999 on the day he announced he would not run for President, because Wash DC was a cesspool. I could've tempered that decision or even changed it, but the discovery path of my hypotheses over time kept coming up "TRUE" in all windows of the slot machine.
Some point after the curious media handling of Ted Kennedy's 2004 attack on Bush and his war at the National Press Club, I was so sure of my general understanding of the landscape that I stopped looking for more facts.
I read in the news or saw an interview that summarized a key player's book and memoir. The gist of it had the Bush White House, through its influence in the Defense Department, providing either the misleading information, choice of sources, or just pressure on CIA to make those assessments we call Lies now.
I didn't read his book.
So I plead ignorance. Of course, after observation about Palin, her state, its subsidy to citizens from certain "revenues," my view of the world didn't need revision. No problem: we got a community-organizer and law professor over an oil shill or an oil baby.
Your republican candidates of 2016 had quite a handful with connections to oil, the location of oil, the headquarters of oil companies -- from Jindhal to Bush to Cruz and Perry, Esso in New Jersey (who would that be?) -- and then the Wild Card.
Ah, the word just came up again on the news-feed behind my desk. Tillerson! Perry! And, Ladies and Gen'l'men -- there you are.
Somebody think I should read another book? Sure -- post the Amazon link. I'll make an initial assessment as to whether it's a waste of time, worth reading a synopsis, or whatever wider attention I might give.
Oil -- Wall Street. Defense -- Wall Street. Big Pharma -- Wall Street and Oil. Donald Trump with his "own money" -- Wall Street, Wall Street, Russian lenders, Big Oil, Defense and "foreign holdings."
If they even wanted to make an effort for being honest, the GOP could start by changing their name to the Plutocrat Party.
But it's amazing they thought it so useful to whine about "special interests" and the gridlock in Washington. With this sort of "unwarranted influence, sought or unsought" I'd want to see some damn gridlock.