I would point out that people used to say the same thing about Eisenhower in the late 50′s.

It would also help if you would actually return to the original sources and see what Rumsfeld et al actually said. If you read the intelligence assessment you will see that nobody actually thought that Saddam had an active nuclear program. Instead, they took his ongoing search for uranium, as reported by Joe Wilson and other sources, as evidence that Saddam had not given up his pursuit of nuclear weapons as he was required to by the 1991 seize fire agreement with the U.N. The idea that the forged italian documents played a major role in determining the path to war is a well refuted myth. The primary short term concern with Saddam was always primarily chemical and biological weapons. Even a cursory reading of the full statements of the administration leading up to the war shows this clearly.

You ignorance reveals another problem with the effect I describe. Most people develop their understanding of what major political figures argued and believed based on second hand reports often produced by people hostile to the politicians. In the pre-internet era, people did not have easy access to entire transcripts of major speeches so they never developed the habit of double-checking the reports themselves. Most people today have still not acquired the habit.

People also impose their own stereotypes and prejudices on the statements of others. For example, most people seem to think that WMD is synonymous with nukes and that no nukes means no WMDs. Few people understand that an amount of nerve gas equivalent to the weight of a nuclear weapon can kill as many people as the nuke. Most people’s conception of chemical weapons is based on fictional accounts of the us of primitive blistering agents as portrayed in such works as “All’s Quite on the Western Front.” So, when they hear debates about WMDs they assume that the leadership must be worried primarily about nukes. When they later learn something that the leadership knew all along, such that nukes were way down on the threat list, they assume that the leaders made a blunder. They rarely consider that they themselves made a mistake in an area they have not specialized knowledge in.

Truman left office with a 31% approval rating tied with Nixon as the most unpopular president ever when he left office. Most people thought he did a poor job because they did not understand the import of he actions he took when he took them. Yet today, we consider him a brave and wise leader and a great American president. Democratic presidential candidate fall all over themselves trying to compare themselves to him. The politics of the moment massively distort our assessment of how Presidents do their jobs, especially in the case of national security. With the distance of years, the cooling of passions and the revelation of new information, their reputations improve.

With regard to the Nigerian forgeries for example, Donald Rumsfeld said he had no idea that our best piece of evidence that Iraq had a nuclear weapons program was in fact a crude forgery, even after the New York Times had reported that it was fake. Hence, Rumsfeld, too, was operating w/ substantially less knowledge than some of us who read.

Ike intentional held back the American satellite project in order to insure that the Soviets went first. He appears to have chosen the untested Vanguard system over the proven Redstone in order to deliberately slow the U.S. program down so that the Soviets could take the lead. Back in the 50′s, American intelligence stilled worked so Ike actually had a good picture of the state of the Soviet program. He knew Sputnik was definitely going up four days before launch and wasn’t surprised by the event at all. So, really, there was nothing accidental about the Soviets going first.

Remember, the Soviets had not really considered the idea of spy satellites so they viewed Sputnik only through the lens of its propaganda value. There’s no evidence that anyone in the Soviet Union gave serious consideration to the idea until the early 1960′s. I think it is pretty clear that the Ike intentionally created the conditions that led to the outcome he wanted. There was nothing accidental about it.

I’m not sure I’d characterize it that way, since the Free World didn’t have much to do with it. More like an own-goal by the Soviets. That said, I’ll still take it. :)

I remember going back and reading a major metropolitan newspaper for the years 1935-1945, and realizing how very incomplete the first draft of history actually is.

One the best things I ever read was a collection of editorials and essays about U.S. foreign policy from two of three years prior to Pearl Harbor. It really taught me how clueless we are as we blunder through history.

Adlai Stevenson’s reputation as an intellectual resisted purely on his articulation, mostly his writing. As near as I can tell, the man never actually did anything of major import before going into politics. The eastern intelligencia, who then had an iron lock on American education and mass media, like him because he was one of him. They interpreted his loss to Ike as indicative of the general publics stupidity.

It is interesting to see the vast dichotomy between the widely held views of Ike held in and out of academia during the 60′s & 70′s and the views held today. I was in college in the mid-80′s when the transition began to occur. It was really. really apparent to me at the time that the analysis of the previous 30 years was based on vastly incomplete information.

A nice reminder of how little we actually do know for sure. I remember going back and reading a major metropolitan newspaper for the years 1935-1945, and realizing how very incomplete the first draft of history actually is.