Blame the CIA? Top 30 Bush - Iraq Lies Debunked BEFORE The Invasion

[CVX]

Since the release of a blistering report by a U.S. Senate committee blaming the CIA for miserable intelligence leading to our pre-emptive invasion of Iraq, the White House and its apologists have had a field day pointing their fingers anywhere and everywhere except where it most certainly belongs...at the White House.

After the incomprehensible incompetence and abhorrent, deceptive tactics used by both the Bush and Blair administrations, you would think that they would let sleeping dogs lie.

Full story at:
http://www.politicalstrategy.org/archives/000181.php

[gr8geezer]

Thank you for posting that link.

It is my belief that the FBI and CIA are no more inefficient than most other agencies, but have been unfairly singled out by the White House in an effort to deflect the blame for the "intelligence failures".

[anastrophe]

i strongly disagree. the FBI has a long and infamous history of bungling investigations, poisoning the chain of evidence, losing evidence, evidence tampering, gross incompetence, gross arrogance, and recklessness. and that's before lunchtime! truly, the FBI is one of the most dangerous federal agencies that has ever existed. The CIA, in a post-coldwar era, has not adapted fast enough to the completely different threat posed by the "muslim" religious fanaticism in the mideast, and was caught with its pants down with 9/11.

add to that the abhorrent unwillingness of the two organizations to work together for the last, oh, 50 years, and you have disaster.

who is to blame for 9/11? blaming the cia, blaming the fbi, blaming bush - all are bullshit. who is to blame? the terrorists who did it. period.

hindsight is 20/20.

[CVX]

Originally Posted by anastrophe

i strongly disagree. the FBI has a long and infamous history of bungling investigations, poisoning the chain of evidence, losing evidence, evidence tampering, gross incompetence, gross arrogance, and recklessness. and that's before lunchtime! truly, the FBI is one of the most dangerous federal agencies that has ever existed. The CIA, in a post-coldwar era, has not adapted fast enough to the completely different threat posed by the "muslim" religious fanaticism in the mideast, and was caught with its pants down with 9/11.

add to that the abhorrent unwillingness of the two organizations to work together for the last, oh, 50 years, and you have disaster.

who is to blame for 9/11? blaming the cia, blaming the fbi, blaming bush - all are bullshit. who is to blame? the terrorists who did it. period.

hindsight is 20/20.

Anastrophe, you really turned the tables on me on this one. I thought you were going down another path, but you switched-back!

I agree with you. It is really easy to point the blame everywhere but at the real source: The Terrorists.

I also agree with your assessment with the CIA and FBI. However, there is a lot of good being done behind the scenes that you or I never ever hear about.

The dubious FBI performance over the past several high profile cases is embarrassing. I wonder if they don't have the proper oversight? They are also the agency that seems to have an inordinate amount of trouble with getting their things stolen.

It seems that it is almost every week that you read about an FBI agent's guns or laptop computers getting stolen from their cars or wherever. I find that amazing.

[gmc]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_depth/...ry/default.stm


http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/index.php?id=159


Don't know what you make of michael moore but you can read the 9/11 commission report yourself and draw your own concluscions.

After the incomprehensible incompetence and abhorrent, deceptive tactics used by both the Bush and Blair administrations, you would think that they would let sleeping dogs lie.

Don't know about the US but this isn't going away in the UK. TB would dearly love people to stop talking about Iraq. There is a motion tabled at the labour party conference calling for an immediate withdrawal of British Troops. He could be in for a very rough ride indeed.

[Bill Sikes]

Originally Posted by CVX

It seems that it is almost every week that you read about an FBI agent's guns or laptop computers getting stolen from their cars or wherever. I find that amazing.

I find it absolutely amazing that anyone, in any organisation, is allowed to
store any sensitive information *at all*, about anything, on a laptop.

I also find it incomprehensible that any branch of the Services uses Microsoft
software in critical capacities - not that the software isn't up to the job, but
because of the number of cracks against these products.

[anastrophe]

Originally Posted by Bill Sikes

I find it absolutely amazing that anyone, in any organisation, is allowed to
store any sensitive information *at all*, about anything, on a laptop.

I also find it incomprehensible that any branch of the Services uses Microsoft
software in critical capacities - not that the software isn't up to the job, but
because of the number of cracks against these products.

it's trivial to reliably secure the data on a laptop. it takes an investment of $60 for PGP desktop software, which allows you to create encrypted volumes on the disk. the great part about it is that you can create a volume, using say 256bit twofish encryption, tie it to your PGP identity with 2048bit cypher, and within the volume, create *another* volume, using 256bit AES encryption, tied to a randomly created username and passphrase.

the most powerful computer that might exist ten years from now *might* be able to crack that with 100 years of processing time.

[Bill Sikes]

Originally Posted by anastrophe

it's trivial to reliably secure the data on a laptop. it takes an investment of $60 for PGP desktop software, which allows you to create encrypted volumes on the disk. the great part about it is that you can create a volume, using say 256bit twofish encryption, tie it to your PGP identity with 2048bit cypher, and within the volume, create *another* volume, using 256bit AES encryption, tied to a randomly created username and passphrase.

It's easy to do anything, in theory. It's not trivial to reliably secure data, though, and it's not done.

Originally Posted by anastrophe

the most powerful computer that might exist ten years from now *might* be able to crack that with 100 years of processing time.

They were saying things like that a couple of years ago about stuff which has now been cracked.

[anastrophe]

Originally Posted by Bill Sikes

It's easy to do anything, in theory. It's not trivial to reliably secure data, though, and it's not done.

sooo....you're saying i'm lying? i've done this myself. it works. it's easy. it's secure. and the software only costs $60. what part of what i wrote was false?

i'd have no problem handing over my laptop to the FBI, CIA, or NSA.

They were saying things like that a couple of years ago about stuff which has now been cracked.

cracking a single 256bit encrypted item is only currently possible using distributed computing, wherein hundred of thousands of personal computers work on the problem. such an encryption can be cracked with a few years of running. cracking a 2048bit passphrase is currently impossible in any practical view. then cracking the second 256bit encrypted volume inside starts you back at the beginning once you've succeeded with the first two.

and no, they were not saying things like what i originally wrote a couple of years ago. they were saying that it would take one then-current computer hundreds of years to crack it, which was and is true. they did not figure in distributed computing. and of course, distributed computing is useless for actually decrypting something that has been encrypted for reasons other than attempting to prove the thesis - good luck getting hundreds of thousands of people to allow their computers to be used to actually try to break into the data on behalf a government agency. so eliminating distributed computing, the very thing that was cracked can't currently be cracked by even the most powerful current computers or even clusters of them.

so i stand by my claim that a 256bit encryption tied to a 2048bit cypher that must be broken first before going after the second 256bit encryption is not going to be possible unless you harness the power of every computer on earth that will exist in ten years, dedicate all their resources to solving the problem, and leave them all running for a hundred years.

okay, i'll back off a little from that. in five years, using every computer on earth, dedicating all their resources to the problem, they'll be able to crack it in two months. how's that?

again, good luck harnessing those resources. of course, in five years, it'll be that much easier to do a 1024bit/4096bit/1024bit scheme. best of luck to you going after that. the sun will have gone supernova by the time you're finished.

better get started now!

[anastrophe]

to provide some real-world info to back up my statements:

distributed.net is the organization that has been doing distributed decryption tests. in october 1997, after 250 days of work, a 56bit RC5 encryption algorithm was brute force decoded. this was with 26,000 PC's of that 'era'.

in july of 2002, after 1,757 days of work (4.81 years, continuous), a 64bit RC5 encryption algorithm was brute force decoded. this was using (over the course of the entire project) 331,000 PC's of that 'era' (equivalent to 46,000 2GHz AMD Athlon XP machines).

ongoing at this time, begun december 2002, is the decryption of a 72bit RC5 encryption. there are 10,000 PC's currently active on the project. it's been running for just under two years. 118 billion keys are being tested per second. there are 8 octillion total keys to be searched. the project is currently 0.145% complete.

my description is of a 256bit encryption, tied to a 2048bit encryption, with a 256bit encryption inside.