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Comment by sphinxpy | Hacker News Reader

Israeli intelligence also provided us with evidence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq that helped push a war. Turns out they got it wrong.

https://www.nti.org/gsn/article/israeli-intelligence-based-p...

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The article does not say that they provided us with evidence of weapons of mass destruction at all. It says their internal assessment was based on speculation, not whatever you're trying to imply. Also:

"The committee also found that Israeli intelligence did not intentionally mislead Israeli officials about prewar Iraq’s WMD capabilities, nor was there an attempt to push the United States into invading Iraq, AP reported."

I really like this take on this whole thing:

https://medium.com/@thegrugq/death-by-powerpoint-53472da3cd5

You'd better come up with some pretty convincing evidence for such allegations. There's nothing even related to your assertion in your link, neither in the "source to link" (that does not support anything the link says, which in its turn does support anything you say).

Don't you think EVERYONE should provide independently verifiable evidence for their allegations.

That’s pretty obvious no?

In case you’re implying the parent should also provide evidence: it’s way harder to prove the non-existence of something than the existence. I’m not sure if that’s a universal rule (in math for instance) but it’s certainly in something like a magic teapot behind mars.

Not implying that at all.

I do think the strength of evidence should be somewhat correlated to the weight of claims, Maybe a sidenote to extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. I've expressed similar sentiment here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17738147

"Israel’s intelligence assessments of Iraq’s prewar WMD capabilities were based mainly on speculation, an Israeli parliamentary committee said in a report released yesterday (see GSN, March 24)."

First paragraph clearly states that this was based on speculation.

“Why didn’t we succeed in laying down a broad and deep (intelligence) framework so we could rely on reports and not speculation and assumption? That is the central question,” said inquiry head Yuval Steinitz of the governing Likud Party.

Also included.

https://carnegieendowment.org/2003/12/11/israel-s-intelligen...

"The failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq has led to a close scrutiny of the role of intelligence agencies in both the United States and Britain. As Brigadier General (ret.) Shlomo Brom, points out, Israeli intelligence, which was in full agreement with American and British intelligence estimates, has, however, remained "in the shadows." General Brom, a senior research associate at Tel Aviv University's Jaffe Center, calls for an inquiry into the performance of Israeli intelligence agencies. In an article titled "The War in Iraq: An Intelligence Failure," first published in "Strategic Assessment," General Brom makes three key points: (1) Israeli intelligence agencies failed because they did not realize that Saddam Hussein's main goal was survival; (2) Israeli intelligence tends to adopt the worst-case scenario; (3) Inflated threat assessments exact a heavy price."

I'm not sure if you are unaware or not but there were no WMD's in Iraq. These are facts not allegations. The US, Israel and Britain were primary nations selling the American people a war based on bad intelligence and it can happen just as easily today as it did then.

So in short, you are backing out from your claim that Israeli intelligence provided us with evidence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq that helped push a war? Good, so there’s no argument.

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