Uh-oh:
Report accuses Bush of misrepresenting Iraq intel
By PAMELA HESS, Associated Press Writer
58 minutes ago
WASHINGTON - A new Senate report gives a fresh shot of adrenaline to the election-year debate over the Iraq war. President Bush and his top officials deliberately misrepresented secret intelligence to make the case to invade Iraq, according to the Senate Intelligence Committee
.
The panel put a new spin on old charges, comparing claims made in five speeches by top Bush administration officials with intelligence reports. The committee says officials wrongly linked Saddam Hussein to the Sept. 11 attacks and al-Qaida; claimed Iraq would give terrorist groups chemical, biological or nuclear weapons, and said Iraq was developing drone aircraft to spread chemical or biological agents over the United States.
None was borne out by intelligence.
(Yeah, well, whaddya gonna do. Nobody goes to jail for lying to get us into an endless war we never needed to fight. That’s the law, as this administration understands it.)
The presumptive Democratic nominee for president, Sen. Barack Obama, has staked his campaign on his consistent opposition to the Iraq war. The presumptive Republican nominee, Sen. John McCain, has trumpeted his unflagging support for the war, if not how it was waged.
(I’d like to "unflag" him. He’s made a lifelong commitment to America, and at the end of that it turns out that he wants to commit to kind of America that will fight an unjust war. And that’s what passes for patriotism this days with John McCain?)
The report released Thursday follows, by years, an earlier committee effort that assessed the quality of pre-war intelligence on Iraq and found it severely lacking.
(How so?)
This report is known as "phase II" and spawned a nasty partisan fight in the committee.
(You mean the GOP members wouldn’t admit that the case for war was based on orchestrated lies and bullshit by a conservative Republican administration? You’re kidding me!)
..."These reports are about holding the government accountable and making sure these mistakes never happen again," said the committee's chairman, Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va.
("Mistakes?" What "mistakes?" This report doesn’t "list mistakes," it documents "a plan," Senator Rockefeller. "Deciding to deceive America" is not the same as making "a series of unfortunate mistakes," Senator; that is like saying that "the Soprano crime family" was the result of a series of "miscalculations.")
According to Rockefeller, the problem was the Bush administration concealed information that would have undermined the case for war. "We might have avoided this catastrophe," he said.
(That finding is going to shock a lot of people, Senator. Are you sure you want to go out on a limb like that?)
Bush's press secretary, Dana Perino, said the problem was flawed intelligence heading into the war. "We had the intelligence that we had, fully vetted, but it was wrong. And we certainly regret that," she said.
(What exactly is the point of "fully vetting" false intelligence? Isn’t the point of "fully vetting" intelligence to make sure that it is true? How can intelligence ever have been considered "fully vetted" if it is later shown to be entirely false? These conundrums would be real chin-strokers for a logician with the powers of Aristotle and Bertrand Russell, but apparently Dana Perino has no problem with them.)
...A second report issued by the committee Thursday says Pentagon officials concealed from U.S. intelligence agencies potentially useful tips from Iranian agents in 2001, including that Tehran allegedly sent hit teams to Afghanistan to kill Americans.
(I thought that the Pentagon and the U.S. intelligence agencies were on the same side. Jeez, it's tough to keep track of who's on who's side, in this administration. This is going to confuse the shit out of McCain, like that whole Sunni/Shi’ite thing...)
The report focuses on the series of meetings in Rome held over three days in December 2001. The U.S. was fighting in Afghanistan and working on initial planning for the Iraq war.
Then-Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley authorized the meetings. Two Pentagon employees, one of whom worked for then-Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Doug Feith, went to Rome to meet with two Iranians — one a current member of the security service, the second a former member. Manucher Ghorbanifar, an Iranian middleman already dismissed by the CIA as untrustworthy, also attended, as did a representative from an unspecified foreign government's intelligence service. Michael Ledeen, a former Pentagon official and an analyst with the conservative American Enterprise Institute, arranged the meeting and attended.
(Okay, so let’s see. You’re saying that Stephen Hadley, Doug Feith, Ghorbanifar, and a guy from the American Enterprise Institute attended this meeting to plan the Iraq war in 2001? And still you conclude there’s something fishy going on here, with all those "names you can trust?" How can you say that, when the only guy missing from this line-up was the Jon Lovitz Pathological Liar character?)
The report said Hadley failed to fully inform then-CIA Director George Tenet and then-Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage about the meeting. But Hadley and the Pentagon were within their rights to conduct the meeting, the report said.
..."Any time the CIA wanted to find out what was going on all they had to do was ask," (said Ledeen of the American Enterprise Institute.)
(Oh, now I get it! It was the CIA’s fault! All of this could been settled by one simple phone call from the CIA to the Pentagon:)
Ring-ring-ring...
"Hello, Pentagon speaking."
"Yes, this is the CIA."
"CIA, my man! Word up!"
"Yes, sorry to bother you, this is our weekly phone call to you guys to find out whether anybody over there is planning any new foreign wars, pre-emptive strikes, invasions of Iraq, stuff like that. I hate to bug you guys, but the Director insists that we make these silly calls—"
"No no no, it’s no trouble at all. Let’s see—umm—well, by George, look at that! We are planning to make war in Iraq, this week. We’ve got it penciled in for...2003, it looks like, here... Yup, Doug Feith and Steve Hadley and a guy from the American Enterprise Institute are drawing up the plans right now in Rome, with an unreliable Iranian informer. Shoot, it’s a good thing you did call this week."
"Boy, I’ll say it is! We thought these calls to find out what you guys were conspiring to do were a useless pain in the ass. I’ll never question the Director’s judgment again. Do you have anything else you’re concealing from us? Any intelligence, stuff like that?"
"Oh, jeez, that’s such a broad question—"
"Oh, come on, we’re the CIA, the White House doesn’t tell us anything it’s planning—"
"Well...I tell you what. You call back same time tomorrow and I’ll see if there’s something I can leak to you, on background."
"Jeez, we’d sure appreciate it."
"Don’t mention it, we do the same thing all the time for talk radio. But in future, it would help if you had some specific conspiracy in mind when you called to ask us what we’re up to."
"Okay. But it’s hard to guess what you guys are thinking all the time—"
"I know, I know (chuckles.) But don’t worry, we’ll always tell you if you guess right."
You see? That’s all the CIA had to do—to stay in the loop on this "war" thing. Or they could have called the White House--that's where Hadley worked, you know.
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