The debate continues to rage over whether the Bush Administration
LIED about the intelligence that lead us into the Iraq war. Well, maybe it just depends on your definition of the word lie. But, one thing is perfectly clear to those of us in the "reality" based community, what the Administration told us in the run up to the war was NOT the truth.
The hard part is proving it. We are beginning to get the little pieces of information about what the White House knew and when they knew it regard Iraq's WMD programs. This weekend's much ballyhooed L. A. Times piece is the latest (and among the best) examples of the Neo-Con Chickenhawk's attempts to hype dubious intelligence WITHOUT revealing the flaws of the sources behind it. The issue now is whether we can place the warnings about dubious and flawed intelligence into the hands of top Administration officials BEFORE the war. We know what the spies knew, but not when Bush and his minions knew it.
For those of you who missed it, here's a snippet of the warning German intelligence passed on to the United States about "Curveball," the now-discredited source of reports that Iraq had mobile bio-weapons labs. From Sunday's (11/20) Times:
The German intelligence officials responsible for one of the most important informants on Saddam Hussein's suspected weapons of mass destruction say that the Bush administration and the CIA repeatedly exaggerated his claims during the run-up to the war in Iraq.
.....
According to the Germans, President Bush mischaracterized Curveball's information when he warned before the war that Iraq had at least seven mobile factories brewing biological poisons. Then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell also misstated Curveball's accounts in his prewar presentation to the United Nations on Feb. 5, 2003, the Germans said.
The article is a damning indictment of the way U.S. INTELLIGENCE used information gleaned from other agencies around the globe. The Times article and previous reports make it abundantly clear that the Central Intelligence Agency and the Defense Intelligence Agency exaggerated ANY claim that supported the Administrations contention that Saddam had an illicit weapons program, while ignoring any evidence to the contrary. They were repeatedly warned that Curveball was NOT reliable, yet they passed on his claims about Iraqi WMD's to the White House. What the Times and other articles do NOT conclusively establish is WHETHER the doubts about the intelligence made it to the Bush Administration. That's where the White House Iraq Group (WHIG) comes in.
This cabal of top White House officials was charged with SELLING Americans on the war. You may already know many of the names involved in WHIG, but it is worth reviewing exactly HOW high up this goes.
From the Knight-Ridder news service:
The White House launched its public campaign to build support for a U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in August 2002.
Top aides led by White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card and known as the White House Iraq Group directed the effort, according to current and former U.S. officials who requested anonymity because of the ongoing investigation (Plamegate).
The group included I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Cheney's chief of staff, and Karl Rove, Bush's chief political adviser, who are at the center of the Plame probe.
Other members were then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and her deputy and now successor, Stephen J. Hadley, White House communications strategists Karen Hughes, Mary Matalin and James R. Wilkerson and legislative liaison Nicholas E. Calio.
You'll recall that in SELLING the war to YOU, the Bush Administration NEVER expressed any doubts about Iraq's WMD programs. They repeatedly cited SOLID SOURCES, EYEWITNESSES, FOREIGN INTELLIGENCE AGENCIES. We now know that none of these sources was SOLID, the eyewitnesses were KNOWN liars and the foreign intelligence agencies told their American counterparts that their information was UNVERIFIED and NOT RELIABLE! What we have to establish is that members of the White House Iraq Group KNEW the problems with this intelligence.
This should be the heart of the so-called Phase II investigation into the Administration's handling of the flawed intelligence. The Senate Intell Committee, chaired by Kansas Republican Pat Roberts, was supposed to be working on this, but it turns out that Roberts and his fellow Republicans don't want a real investigation (SHOCKING!). They want to only look at the public statements of Administration officials and see if there was ANY intelligence information to support it. What a crock!
According to Roberts and company, if I told the CIA that "Saddam has a billion gallons of a super secret DEATH GEL," and Bush used it in a speech, that would be okay, even though the CIA knows that I have never been to Iraq and have no way of knowing whether Saddam had death gel. That would be an acceptable form of intelligence for the Administration to repeat as far as Roberts is concerned. WTF!!!!
The investigation has to look at whether WHIG members were aware of doubts about the intelligence. It is simply a matter of the Senate looking at the reports from the CIA and DIA that WHIG used to come up with its sales pitch.
My belief is that WHIG members we fully aware of the dubious nature of the information it was peddling, but just didn't care. The "smoking gun/mushroom cloud" claim and the "mobile weapons labs" claim and the "unmanned drones that can spray deadly biological agents" claim ALL sound better if they are NOT followed by the phrase "but we really don't think those things are true."
Go back and check the statements of the top pitchmen for Bush Co. Is there any sign of doubt? Any concession that they weren't sure? Some sense that their claims contained even a margin of error? Hell no! They had a war to sell, oil to steal and a presidential election to win.
In this case, the smoking gun will not be a mushroom cloud, but a briefing document that proves top administration officials, including the President, knew that their WMD intelligence wasn't supported by the facts.