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 ...
Executive Order?
"Negroponte and his staff have repeatedly expressed concern that releasing this information might embarrass our allies."
ping
Exactly...either he coughs up the documents...unaltered...or he's FIRED.
All Him or Cheney have to do is kick one or two people to the curb and the rest will say "Yes Sir!".
Slovenly comfortable bureaucrats need shaking up here, too. They are doing a good job with DOD and CIA and State. A lot of ass-sitters waiting for the next election have been discharged.
He can either let the documents out and let the truth speak for itself, or he can continue to let his Administration keep them sealed up in bureacratic Never-never Land indefinitely while Muslims, Democrats, Liberals, and America's enemies (but, I repeat myself) continue to lie and distort their way to strategically undermining public support for the war, which will lead directly to American defeat.
This is not the time to play the bureaucrat's favorite game of hide-the-information because the information-I-control-is-more-power-in-my-rice-bowl!
I heard El Rushbo discuss this the other day;
It's probably all about diplomacy.
They don't want to embarass some of our erstwhile allies in the WOT.
I guess we need these same allies to deal with Iran.
I really doubt if the problem is with Negroponte. The problem is much more likely to be the Intelligence Community as a whole. They instinctively resist letting out information that might have intelligence value. The problem here is that the review process for a scenario where the information is fully vetted before release would take years. I think in this case it will finally dawn on them that the war effort itself will be helped much more by the public review of the tapes than by exploiting their intelligence value.
It's time for Rove to intervene and talk some sense into the dodo birds at CIA.
This sort of thing is not new. We did the same thing during WWII when the Polish officer massacre was pinned on the Nazis when in fact the Soviets were the culprits. We didn't want to split the allies so it was covered up. The Polish Americans obviously wouldn't be too keen on assisting the Soviets, our erstwhile allies.
Yeah, this could be nothing but theater designed to create a buzz about the documents before they are released.
Fire Hadley and John Negroponte, Bush's Director of National Intelligence. Explain that I (President Bush) am the President. It's time to get real tough.
"Negroponte and his staff have repeatedly expressed concern that releasing this information might embarrass our allies."
HA!!! Which allies? Seems some in and out of Congress did a pretty good job of that this past week. Prayers for our military in and out of UAE ports!!!
I absolutely agree. The tapes should be released and if the libs choke on them, so much the better.
"Negroponte and his staff have repeatedly expressed concern that releasing this information might embarrass our allies."
I believe the tapes/documents will prove that the french, russians and germans were helping saddam all along. Our allies, what a joke.
Also discussed in the Weekend Preview Thread, since the author is on the Fox News show Journal Editorial Report tonight discussing this issue.
This is a biggie that the MSM is studiously ignoring as hard as they can. Some good comments on the other threads to go along with the stuff here and I'm looking forward to the show tonight.
You're right about that, as unlikely as it may be, if some of those documents contain materiel that could be used by the Military or the various alphabet soup agencies, then that should remain secret. Not the entire document, just the piece that's needed for whatever purpose.
Bingo! And the cover-up continues.
IMO, in a word. Russia.
Russia, France... just to name a few
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