Posted on 04/12/2006 2:27:54 PM PDT by YaYa123
I watched Martha Raddish tonight on ABC evening news. She had a long report on the mobile labs, clearly intimating the president kneww he was lying when he said they were used for WMD. It was a damning report....until the last sentence. Martha's CYA disclaimer:
"The report went to the Defense Intelligence Agency and was not vetted for some time, but is is unclear why others didn't know about it or whether the president was told about it."
Clearly ABC is not going to apologize, and Martha's admission that maybe the President hadn't gotten the word the trailers weren't labs, is all we'll get.
you mean, CNN? they have Wolf Blitzer's Situation Room show. today hosted by fill in red head named Collins. Here's her interview with David Ensor, CNN Reporter.
"""COLLINS: And for more now, we want to go ahead and bring in CNN National Security Correspondent David Ensor.
David, I think people might not have a really clear understanding of how long it takes for information like this to actually reach the highest rank of the president. Can you explain it a little bit for us?
DAVID ENSOR, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Well, something like this is a field report, Heidi, done by a group of people, they were actually not government employees, but they had been asked by CIA and others to -- in the Pentagon -- to go look at these labs. So, this kind of a report is a raw field report.
It would not have gone to the president's desk. He's not an intelligence officer. He's a consumer of intelligence. It would go to the CIA, or to the appropriate place in the government, where they would analyze it, compare it with other intelligence they had, and only when they were satisfied that they could draw some kind of meaningful conclusion, they would then pass that on to policymakers, possibly including the president.
So, it's really not fair in a way to accuse him of saying the wrong thing in this particular case. I mean, after all, in October of that year, many months later, David Kay, who was assigned by the CIA to look into these weapons, was still saying they could be bio weapons labs. February, the following year, George Tenet, the then still director of Central Intelligence, was saying in a speech that he wasn't sure. So to blame the president for saying it back in May, may not be fair.
COLLINS: But the fact that you said, you know, they take all the information and, of course, analyze it, and if it's deemed necessary, it then gets to the president, because it did not get to the president, does that say anything conclusive?
ENSOR: Not really. And, in fact, there was another report that came the day before -- the day after this one did that was from Pentagon and Central Intelligence people, and, in fact, I was briefed on it. This was May 28th, I believe, 2003, which said that they believed these probably were biological weapons labs. So, there was a lot of disagreement and ferment within the government over this.
The predominant view at the time, and the president correctly stated it, was that they probably were labs. That view was overcome, eventually.
So, all you have here is a story where, well, the first word that some people thought it wasn't, that they weren't labs, did come earlier. But it didn't come to the White House. So, you know...
COLLINS: Understood.
ENSOR: ... it's a murky story.
COLLINS: It is a murky story at this point. All right. Thank you so much, National Security Correspondent David Ensor.""""
 |
| Two cases of arguments complete with form, content and conclusion. CASE #1 A. Five hundred reports of evidence say that Iraq had WMD. B. A mere six reports indicate Iraq didn't. C. Administration believes Iraq had WMD. Media conclusion: Iraq clearly doesn't have WMD. Administration is lying. CASE #2 |
My # 23 CNN transcript is great fun when you realize it's CNN reporter/analyst David Ensor refuting ABC and The Washington Post for falsely accusing the President of intentionally misleading statemenet about those mobile labs being used for WMD.
A friend of mine was with David Kay and the ISG when they were actively looking for WMD. He tells me that over and over, they were told ( by the experts in the group ) that the trailers and bunkers they searched were sites of bio and chem WMD.
They had many hairy situations and everyone up and down the line believed , based on preliminary testing and empirical evidence that they had discovered Saddam's sites.
He is still convinced, based on his own observations and those of the experts-that they did in fact , find evidence of Saddam's WMD programs.
Poor Nedra, she's a little behind on the story, isn't she?
Or is she just gonna keep on posting it?
Have a look at the pictures of the trailers. There is no reason to put fermentation vessels (the kind that can easily mass produce bacterium like anthrax) on a railcar.
This is just disinformation by the Iraq Survey Group and the US military to discourage other nations from trying the same tactic. I understand that the CIA and the US military did not want Powell to present this information at the UN just because it would give people an insight into biological weapons production that they might not have thought of.
But the simple fact is that Saddam DID NOT use the railcars to produce anthrax and hit our troops with it. But he COULD HAVE. He had weaponized anthrax in storage and it would have only taken a week at most to produce a significant amount of anthrax that could have been used on our troops or in the city of New York.
The MSM reporters do not have the scientific knowledge to report on this issue. If they do, they are just part of the left-wing coalition against Bush.
please add a link to the yahoo news article so I can verify it and add to the new Washington Post article thread. Thanks.
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.