Posted on 07/17/2004 5:29:08 AM PDT by Begin
Poor Karl Rove. He spends close to two years meticulously staging photo ops and carefully crafting sound bites to create the image of President Bush as a take-charge, man-the-controls, land-the-jet-on-the-deck-of-the-aircraft carrier, "Bring 'em on" kind of leader. But now the latest revelations about the Misstatement of the Union fiasco are threatening to bring back the old notion of W as a bumbling, detached figurehead-in-chief.
And it's the president's own people who are painting this unflattering portrait.
Take George Tenet: While robotically impaling himself on his sword, the CIA director took great pains to point out that he thought so little of the Niger/Saddam uranium connection that he and his deputies refused to bring it up in congressional briefings as far back as fall 2002. It just didn't meet his standards.
Same with Colin Powell. The secretary went on at great length about the intense vetting process - "four days and three nights" locked up with the leaders of the CIA, working "until midnight, 1 o'clock every morning," going over "every single thing we knew about all of the various issues with respect to weapons of mass destruction" - that went into deciding what information would be used in his United Nations presentation. A presentation that ultimately did not include the Niger allegation because it was not, in Powell's words, "standing the test of time."
So here's the picture we're left with: When faced with using explosive but highly questionable charges in vital presentations leading up to a possible preemptive war, both Powell and Tenet gave the information they were handed a thorough going over before ultimately rejecting it. But not the commander in chief. Apparently, he just took whatever he was handed and happily offered it up to the world. And then when the uranium hit the fan, our stand-up-guy president decided that the buck actually stops with George Tenet.
As the Niger controversy is turning into a political firestorm, the question should be: What didn't the president know - and why didn't he know it? And why does he know less and less every day?
After all, it's becoming clearer by the day that just about everyone else involved knew that the president was using a bogus charge to alarm the nation about Saddam's nuclear threat. Whatever the opposite of "top secret" is, this was it.
The U.S. ambassador to Niger, Barbro Owens-Kirkpatrick, knew: She had sent reports to Washington debunking the allegations. Joe Wilson, the envoy sent to Niger by the CIA, knew: His fact-finding trip quickly confirmed the ambassador's findings. The CIA knew: The agency tried unsuccessfully in September 2002 to convince the Brits to take the false charge out of an intelligence report. The State Department knew: Its Bureau of Intelligence and Research labeled it "highly dubious." Tenet and Powell knew: They refused to use it.
The president's speechwriters knew: They were told to remove a reference to the Niger uranium in a speech the president delivered in Cincinnati on Oct. 7 - three months before his State of the Union. And the National Security Council knew: NSC staff played a key role in the decision to fudge the truth by having the president source the uranium story to British intelligence.
The bottom line is: This radioactive canard had been thoroughly discredited many, many times over, but the administration fanatics so badly wanted it to be true they just refused to let it die the death it deserved. The lie was like one of those slasher movie psychos that refuse to stay buried no matter how many times you smash a hatchet into their skull. It had more sequels than "Friday the 13th" and "Halloween" combined.
With the events of the last week, George Bush has come across as very presidential indeed. Like his dad, he's been out of the loop; like Bill Clinton he's become a world-class word weasel; and like Richard Nixon he's shown a massive propensity for secrecy and dissembling.
Not exactly the role models Karl Rove had in mind.
Contact Arianna Huffington at arianna@ariannaonline.com.
Please do a Marlane Detrick (I vant to be alone) and disafreakingpear!
Thank You---Timy
This woman gags me so, I just can't see how see still has a platform from which to speak her idiocy.
Her ridiculous behaviour during the CA recall showed the world she is nothing more than a publicity seeking lamebrain.
Don't confuse her with facts.
Goofy title makes it sound like bashing Bush over this issue is a canard and it will blow up in Dems' faces. Thanks Arianna!
bump to TRY to read later
I don't usually read or listen to this arrianna woman.
May be a repost from '03. But an interesting one. Guess she had her ducks all lined up, back when. A couple seem to have flown away, however. Oops.
LOL. She certainly is a lamebrain...perfect name for her.
Too bad I didn't notice the date........so now I'm a lamebrain too!!
Yes, I should have made that clearer when I posted this article.
NOT!
A bunch of us didn't notice. We're just not fully functioning on a Saturday morning.
Wow. Thank you all for noticing the date for me! I was just about to print out the article and the repies. What a was of paper and ink for me on a fixed income!
Might want to email her and ask for the URL of the correction. Or join her forum and ask there.
arianna@ariannaonline.com
http://ariannaonline.com/forums/index.php
This just in. Arianna is still an a$$.
The Saturday morning excuse!!! LOLOL
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