Your link, a response by Guillermo Christenson, is interesting.
I only have one question...who the hell is Guillermo Christenson?

Paul Pillar is a known entity. His position, and expertise, is well known and heavily documented. I never heard of the other guy.

I suppose if you are willing to believe every article, by any person, in response to things they may or may not know about, well, I can see how all this confuses you.

This is along the same lines as the Retired Generals who served in Iraq, who came out against how rummy was handeling the whole thing. Fox produced their usual "foxperts" (people who are presented as experts on fox, who actually have no direct knowledge of what they speak), who said that those Generals who had actually had their boots on the ground in Iraq, were just disgruntled workers, and the fox-faithful ate it up.
Now we all know that those Generals know more of what was really going on than some idiot talking heads on fox. But, the more those "foxperts" and the neocons repeated the White House talking points, the more the sheeple believed that they were right.