Many of you may be aware of this already but I thought it would be worth it to post a pretty succinct and clear example of the Bush administration playing fast and loose with the truth before the war.
On page 94 of the Senate Select Committee Report (PDF) we find this:
"A September 13,2002 New York Times article which discussed the IC debate about the aluminum tubes, noted that an administration official said, ". . .the best technical experts and nuclear scientists at laboratories like Oak Ridge supported the CIA assessments. The contractors told Committee staff, however, that before September 16,2002, they had not seen any of the intelligence data on the Iraqi tubes. DOE officials, including the Director of the Oak Ridge Field Intelligence Element, told Committee staff that the vast majority of scientists and nuclear experts at the DOE and the National Labs did not agree with the CIA'S analysis."
It won't surprise you that the article was written by Judith Miller.
Miller's article (I found it on Lexis-Nexus so no link) opens:
"Seeking to buttress the case for military action against Iraq, the Bush administration published a brief paper yesterday outling what it says are efforts by Sadaam HUssein to develop chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, and the missiles to deliver them.
Some senior Democratic lawmakers have complained that the Central Intelligence Agency has yet to deliver an updated National Intelligence Estimate documenting Iraq's military programs. They have also asserted that some of intelligence that the administration has provided about Iraq's weapons activities is skethcy and out of date."
First off, does this sound like the Dems were working off the same page as the White House? Does this sound like the Dems were getting the same intelligence as the White House? The article continues:
"In both the speech and the paper, the White House asserted that Iraq's efforts to buy specially configured aluminum tubes was evidence that President Hussein was still trying to make nuclear fuel for a bomb.
Senior offials acknowledged yesterday that there have been debates among intelligence experts about Iraq's intentions about trying to buy such tubes but added that the dominant view in the administration was that the tubes were intended for use in gas centrifuges to enrich uranium."
Miller cites the CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency as the agencies supporting this claim (the Senate Select report concluded, however, that the DIA did none of its own intelligence gathering and, essentially, simply agreed with the CIAs assesment). Miller goes on to report that senior administration officials told her "some experts" at the DOE and the State Dept. had oppossing views but that these views were the minority view among "intelligence experts ... and top technical experts and nuclear scientists." Quoting from the article: "`This is a footnote, not a split,' a senior administration official said. We now know that this is a gross misrepresentation of the disagreement over the alimunum tubes.
I thought some of you might want to consider using the section from the Senate report as a clear and specific example of the administration's tactics before the war in whatever debates you may have with various Bush dead enders out there. Throw in the other anonymous quotes from Miller's original article and the picture becomes crystal clear. Note, also that in the original article Miller quotes no one from the Dem side and doesn't bother to contact any of the scientists at Oak Ridge herself.