Posted on 03/11/2006 9:22:21 AM PST by kimosabe31
On February 16, President George W. Bush assembled a small group of congressional Republicans for a briefing on Iraq. Vice President Dick Cheney and National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley were there, and U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad participated via teleconference from Baghdad. As the meeting was beginning, Mike Pence spoke up. The Indiana Republican, a leader of conservatives in the House, was seated next to Bush."Yesterday, Mr. President, the war had its best night on the network news since the war ended," Pence said."Is this the tapes thing?" Bush asked, referring to two ABC News reports that included excerpts of recordings Saddam Hussein made of meetings with his war cabinet in the years before the U.S. invasion. Bush had not seen the newscasts but had been briefed on them.
Pence framed his response as a question, quoting Abraham Lincoln: "One of your Republican predecessors said, 'Give the people the facts and the Republic will be saved.' There are 3,000 hours of Saddam tapes and millions of pages of other documents that we captured after the war. When will the American public get to see this information?
"Bush replied that he wanted the documents released. He turned to Hadley and asked for an update. Hadley explained that John Negroponte, Bush's Director of National Intelligence, "owns the documents" and that DNI lawyers were deciding how they might be handled.
Bush extended his arms in exasperation and worried aloud that people who see the documents in 10 years will wonder why they weren't released sooner. "If I knew then what I know now," Bush said in the voice of a war skeptic, "I would have been more supportive of the war.
"Bush told Hadley to expedite the release of the Iraq documents. "This stuff ought to be out. Put this stuff out."
(Excerpt) Read more at weeklystandard.com ...
If you can't figure out who they are referring to by the use of the word 'their' from the part of the sentence that you clipped off, then I can't help you.
I'm done with this.
I despair over any of this actually seeing the light of day.
Very much agreed.
What the hell is with Bush anyway ? He's THE BOSS.He needs to tell his his intelligence chief , release the tapes or you are sh*t canned from your job PERIOD.
My mistake. There is more to that quote.
Now, you didn't answer my questions.
What exactly do you think the caper is?
We're talking about John Negroponte, a conservative hero. If the guy really was acting against national interests and if the guy really wanted to be deceptive why wouldn't he have just given the "national security" explanation the first time around?
Who is the original classifier of the tapes? Wasn't it John Negroponte? Isn't that what is being referred to has "owning" the tapes?
Yes, I'm sure he's referring to our European allies (France, Germany, Belgium, The Netherlands, etc.) I think there's two big reasons why more evidence of WMD and WMD programs in Iraq has not been released: 1) Saddam did a good clean-up job before the invasion and he destroyed a lot of WMD material and research/production equipment, and 2) Much of the research and production equipment for Iraq's WMD programs was purchased from our wonderful European allies, especially France and Germany. Much of the construction work on underground weapons labs was also done by European companies. So even if we just bring the media down to look at Saddam's former weapons labs below Baghdad (with most lab equipment probably removed by Saddam's people), the press is still going to be asking "who did the construction work on this lab?" The answer is an embarassment to some of our allies.
As recent events have demonstrated, we need our European allies with us in a united effort to stop the Iranian nuclear weapons program. So there is certainly a strong strategic justification for covering for our European allies and not embarassing them any more than necessary. But at the same time, as the war has continued on for three years the cost to us in blood and treasure has increased to big numbers. So I think our policy is out of balance right now in favor of keeping the NATO alliance together and not embarassing our allies. The Bush administration is sliding in the approval polls largely because it has not released sufficient evidence to justify a long and costly war. I'll say it again--our policy is out of balance. We must release more evidence to justify the war in Iraq, but do so in a way that minimizes damage to the NATO alliance. That means avoiding explicit mention of France, Germany, Belgium, etc. in audio tapes and Iraqi government documents, and avoiding pictures of chemical weapons equipment and nuclear lab equipment that contain the corporate brand names of European companies.
I think Negroponte needs to take some time to carefully select the evidence to release: select evidence that provides the maximum justification for the war, while avoiding specific embarassment to our European allies whenever possible. Just put a little black square over the corporate brand names of European companies and explicitly state that our intention is to show what Iraq was doing without specifically embarassing our allies. Don't do anything sneaky like Photoshopping the pictures to remove brand names; just black them out and maintain the integrity of the evidence against msm attacks. The msm is going to hate the release of this evidence because many of them have been foolishly claiming that Iraq had no WMD programs for years. This is going to ruffle some feathers in the msm to say the least, so we need unassailable evidence with no covert trickery to protect our allies. This isn't an emergency, but we need to get this evidence out to the public in the next two months. This is a democracy, and the people need to know why we took out Saddam's brutal regime.
While I'm at it, I suppose I may as well include Iran in this - we (FR) all know Iran wants to create chaos, whether it be economic chaos or another form, and it likewise is no great stretch of the imagination to suppose that Russia, China, Hezbollah, Hamas, al Qaeda, and the various Sheehans and Bennishes would like Iran to succeed in creating that chaos so that the world can be rebuilt in their particular image of the way they want things to be, and so - intentionally or not - they're likely to conspire against America's well being, each for their own selfish (and in the cases of the various Sheehans and Bennishes, narcissistic) ends.
Looks like danged near everybody and their brother are against us. It's like we're swimming upstream against the current. We just have to keep on fighting them.
Why doesn't Bush sign an executive order releasing the documents?
It turns out, the full quoted statement was in this thread's article.
Anyway...
While you're at it, I would suggest you check out one of those Negroponte, Wiki links from your google search.
Look under the heading, "Ambassador to Honduras(1981 - 1985)". Be careful to consider that Wiki has a leftward bias.
Read about Ronald Reagan's ambassador to Honduras. Negroponte was Reagan's Contra man. He was the key man in Reagans successful Cental America policy. The left absolutely hates him.
He also played a similar role in S. Vietnam although ultimately Nixon failed in Vietnam.
As I said before, I want to see more than some cheap gothchas from two quotes before I dump on this Freedom loving patriot.
The supreme court has ruled that the decision resides with the executive branch. This is what tripped up some of the Dems in trying to go after Cheny for telling Libby to release some classified info. The VP can unclassify anything he wants if he has the Presidents approval. The President may unclassify anything he wants. He just has to be prepared to take the heat. There are no laws broken if he does it.
Yes, the president certainly can unclassify anything that he wants. If these documents remain classified for the moment, it's a pretty safe bet that the president has been talked into this position by Negroponte.
As presented, the above quote is vague. I would like to see the full context. For instance, who is being referred to by the word "their"?
Hello...you asked the question.
I'm done with you.
I agree with you, and I would add that I think 'speaking it' as it is now, is a part of that process. Sometimes, one doesn't need to tell all to get results. And, sometimes, holding back a little isn't a bad thing...keeping a little ammo in your pocket sort of thing, rather than firing it all at once.
Hello...you asked the question. I'm done with you.
As I said in my previous post, the answer to my question, the full quoted text, was in this thread's article after all.
What part of that don't you get??
Let's see, the other day you were citing Iranian press releases and basing your opinions on the truthful nature of those. Now you fall for this, that there's some John Negroponte caper with these documents.
You come to all sorts of conclusions about John Negroponte (Ronald Reagan's top guy in Central America) based a gotcha from two thin statements. Yes, take your spam and your cheap deformation and go elsewhere.
I feel your pain - I've been trying to get through the book "Unholy Alliance" by David Horowitz, but reading it makes me want to go out and... well, um, let's just say it's causing me to become less 'tolerant' of the Liberal Left's idiocy ;^)
Facts known are growing more numerous, and from reputable sources, but they now include:
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.