Posted on 05/08/2006 1:54:08 AM PDT by Sam Hill
By now we have all heard about the dramatic showdown between Defense Secretary Rumsfeld and the former "CIA analyst" Ray McGovern.
Indeed our one party media has portrayed McGovern as a hero for confronting Rumsfeld over his damnable lies about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.
And McGovern has been everywhere crowing over chastisement of Rumsfeld, such as he did here to Paula Zahn on CNN:
MCGOVERN: And when he used that wonderful non sequitur by looking at the uniformed personnel in the front row and saying: "Well, they went in with protective gear; they certainly thought there were weapons of mass destruction there." Well, my goodness, of course, they did. Because you, Donald Rumsfeld, told them that they were there.
And, you know, it's not polite to say this, but that was a bald-faced lie. And ... he should have owned up to it, if he wants there to be a modicum of trust.
Leave aside the easily discovered fact that Ray McGovern is a America-hating anti-Semitic lunatic. It turns out that McGovern himself believed Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction and that he would use them against the US.
In fact before the war McGovern (like Joe Wilson) used Saddam's WMDs as his argument why we should not invade Iraq.
Here is a memo McGovern and his VIPS group wrote to the President of the United States on the eve of the invasion of Iraq, courtesy of CommonDreams.org:
CIA Veterans Speak Out
Friday, February 7, 2003
MEMORANDUM FOR: The President
FROM: Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity
Secretary Powell's presentation at the UN today requires context. We give him an "A" for assembling and listing the charges against Iraq, but only a "C-" in providing context and perspective.
What seems clear to us is that you need an intelligence briefing, not grand jury testimony. Secretary Powell effectively showed that Iraq is guilty beyond reasonable doubt for not cooperating fully with UN Security Council Resolution 1441. That had already been demonstrated by the chief UN inspectors. For Powell, it was what the Pentagon calls a "cakewalk."
You have said that Iraq is a "grave threat to the United States," and many Americans think you believe it to be an imminent threat. Otherwise why would you be sending hundreds of thousands of troops to the Gulf area? In your major speech in Cincinnati on October 7, 2002, you warned that "the risk is simply too great that Saddam Hussein will use instruments of mass death and destruction, or provide them to a terror network." ...
Terrorism
Your intelligence agencies see it differently. On the same day you spoke in Cincinnati, a letter from the CIA to the Senate Intelligence Committee asserted that the probability is low that Iraq would initiate an attack with such weapons or give them to terrorists... UNLESS:
"Should Saddam conclude that a US-led attack could no longer be deterred, he probably would become much less constrained in adopting terrorist actions."
For now, continued the CIA letter, "Baghdad appears to be drawing a line short of conducting terrorist attacks with conventional or chemical/biological warfare against the United States." With his back against the wall, however, "Saddam might decide that the extreme step of assisting Islamist terrorists in conducting a weapons-of-mass-destruction attack against the United States would be his last chance to exact vengeance by taking a large number of victims with him."
Your Pentagon advisers draw a connection between war with Iraq and terrorism, but for the wrong reasons. The connection takes on much more reality in a post-US invasion scenario. ...
Chemical Weapons
With respect to possible Iraqi use of chemical weapons, it has been the judgment of the US intelligence community for over 12 years that the likelihood of such use would greatly increase during an offensive aimed at getting rid of Saddam Hussein.
Listing the indictment particulars, Secretary Powell said, in an oh-by-the-way tone, that sources had reported that Saddam Hussein recently authorized his field commanders to use such weapons. We find this truly alarming. We do not share the Defense Department's optimism that radio broadcasts and leaflets would induce Iraqi commanders not to obey orders to use such weapons, or that Iraqi generals would remove Saddam Hussein as soon as the first US soldier sets foot in Iraq. Clearly, an invasion would be no cakewalk for American troops, ill equipped as they are to operate in a chemical environment.
Casualties
In his second inaugural, Abraham Lincoln appealed to his fellow citizens to care for those who "have borne the battle." Years before you took office, our country was doing a very poor job of that for the over 200,000 servicemen and women stricken with various Gulf War illnesses. Today's battlefield is likely to be even more sodden with chemicals and is altogether likely to yield tens of thousands more casualties. On October 1, 2002 Congress' General Accounting Office reported "serious problems still persist" with the Pentagon's efforts to protect servicemen and women, including shortfalls in clothing, equipment, and training. Our troops deserve more effective support than broadcasts, leaflets, and faulty equipment for protection against chemical and biological agents.
No one has a corner on the truth; nor do we harbor illusions that our analysis is irrefutable or undeniable. But after watching Secretary Powell today, we are convinced that you would be well served if you widened the discussion beyond violations of Resolution 1441, and beyond the circle of those advisers clearly bent on a war for which we see no compelling reason and from which we believe the unintended consequences are likely to be catastrophic.
/s/
Richard Beske, San Diego
Kathleen McGrath Christison, Santa Fe
William Christison, Santa Fe
Patrick Eddington, Alexandria
Raymond McGovern, Arlington
Steering Group
Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity
Unsurprisingly (given his close coordination with McGovern and other VIPS members by this point), Joe Wilson IV was promoting the same exact line in the editorial pages of the Los Angeles Times at exactly the same time:
John Conyers, Joe Wilson, Cindy Sheehan, Ray McGovern.
A 'Big Cat' With Nothing to Lose
Leaving Hussein no hope will trigger his worst weapons, U.S. envoy in historic '90 meeting warns
By Joseph C. Wilson
LA Times Op-Ed
February 6 2003
Saddam Hussein is a murderous sociopath whose departure from this Earth would be welcomed everywhere...Desert Storm was a just war, sanctioned by the international community and supported by a broad multilateral coalition. Today we are on the verge of another conflict with Iraq, but unlike Desert Storm, the goals are not clear -- despite Secretary of State Colin Powell's eloquent argument for war in his address Wednesday to the United Nations Security Council...
During the Gulf War, we were always acutely aware of the need to be confrontational on the issues at hand but to leave Hussein, a proud and vain man, a way to save face...
There is now no incentive for Hussein to comply with the inspectors or to refrain from using weapons of mass destruction to defend himself if the United States comes after him.
And he will use them; we should be under no illusion about that.
Hussein and Aziz both told me directly that Iraq reserved the right to use every weapon in its arsenal if invaded, just as it had against Iran and later the Kurds.
The fact that thousands of men, women and children had died in these attacks fazed them not one bit. In fact, Aziz could barely be bothered to stop puffing on his Cuban cigar as he made these comments, of so little importance was the use of chemicals to kill people.
It is probably too late to change Hussein's assessment, and that will make any ensuing battle for Iraq that much more dangerous for our troops and for the Iraqis who find themselves in the battlefield.
The assertion that Hussein might share weapons of mass destruction with a terrorist group, however, is counterintuitive to everything I and others know about him. The Iraqi leader is above all a consummate survivalist.
He acts as if he expects the people around him to die for him, but he has long known that every terrorist act, and particularly a sophisticated one, raises the question of his involvement and invites blame. He has nothing to gain and everything to lose. In his mind he is Iraq, Iraq is Hussein, and as long as he survives, Iraq survives.
After then-Secretary of State Jim Baker made it clear to Aziz on the eve of the Gulf War that the United States would destroy Iraq if weapons of mass destruction were used, Hussein did not use them. He is not stupid, and for him living is better than dying in vain.
Now, however, if he feels his death is inevitable, he may well arm extremist groups in an attempt to have a last, posthumous laugh.
Along with our drive toward war, it should also be made clear to Hussein that -- in the little time remaining -- he still has a choice.
We should do everything possible to avoid the understandable temptation to send American troops to fight a war of "liberation" that can be waged only by the Iraqis themselves. The projection of power need not equate with the projection of force.
Both Ray McGovern and Joe Wilson were arguing that the US should not invade Iraq because Saddam would use his weapons of mass destruction against our troops and give them to other terrorist nations.
Of course now McGovern and Wilson both claim that they and everyone else knew Saddam had no WMDs. They now both claim that Rumsfeld and the rest of the administration were lying and ignoring the massive intelligence to the contrary.
But isn't it peculiar that they believed Saddam had WMDs just a month before the war began? And why are they now trying to demonize those who held the same beliefs they did?
Just as McGovern said about Rumsfeld. "He should have owned up to it, if he wants there to be a modicum of trust."
Except, unlike Rumsfeld, McGovern is a lunatic that nobody should trust.
I'm placing the same bet: $oreA$$'s hate America "non profits."
Someone/something is funding these well fed and clothed haters of GW and America.
You're right --- they're pros --- very similar to organized union thugs.
"This "analyst" IS NOT a good man with a different opinion, rather he is a God-damned liar, operating out of pure malice and rage and concerned only with his own ends."
All of these Solons were so confident that Saddam didn't have WMDs not a one of them put it in print until AFTER the US had been in Iraq for a couple of months and said they hadn't found any.
Before that, as I said above, they were using Saddam's WMDs to keep us out of Iraq.
As for McGovern's ability to distinguish between truth and lies, all you have to do is read his ever-varying biographies.
The man is a pathological liar.
I wouldn't be surprised if he wasn't kicked out of the CIA. It's a little odd to "retire" after 27 years.
Maybe he got out on a "Section 8." Maybe he was wearing his "stole" to work.
"Hopefully, some day we will see who has been funding these vile creatures.
My bet is on George $oreA$$ via one of his hate America so called non profits."
Of course Soros had a hand in backing McGovern and the rest of the America-haters.
You probably know about the "Bush Lied" documentary that was made in 2003, then expanded and distributed just in time for the election:
Here is a list of some of the cast members:
Uncovered: The Whole Truth About the Iraq War (2003)
David Albright
Robert Baer
Milton Bearden
Rand Beers
Bill Christison
David Corn
Philip Coyle
John Dean
Patrick Eddington
Chas Freeman
Graham Fuller
Mel Goodman
John Brady Kiesling
Karen Kwiatkowski
Patrick Lang
David MacMichael
Ray McGovern
Scott Ritter
Clare Short
Stansfield Turner
Henry Waxman
Thomas E. White
Joseph Wilson
Mary Ann Wright
Peter Zimmerman
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0388495/fullcredits
It is the usual suspects. And why not? It was slapped together after the producer Greewald got in touch with Ray McGovern and the VIPS.
From Salon:
Now playing in 2,600 home theaters: Bush's lies about Iraq"Early one morning in June, film director Robert Greenwald settled into the study of his Los Angeles home with the day's newspaper. Midway through an article was a seemingly innocuous quote from a Bush administration official assuring the country that weapons of mass destruction programs would be found in Iraq.
Greenwald says he got a knot in his stomach. The administration wasn't talking about finding actual weapons anymore. Now the rhetoric was about weapons programs, which might mean little more than sheets of paper. "I had no faith or confidence that the media would catch them on their moving of their goal," he says. "Suddenly, I could see the headline in a month where they're going to announce victory because they found I flashed back on all those news conferences where they said Iraq is a danger and invoked Armageddon.
"I felt I could do a service by nailing them on this complete change in why they went to war," Greenwald says. "Two or three days later I read about this group of former CIA experts from different branches who were coming out against [the administration]. I thought, 'Wow, this is interesting.' So I put the two instincts together." Thus the documentary "Uncovered: The Whole Truth About the Iraq War" was born. Within a few months, it was completed."
http://dir.salon.com/story/news/feature/2003/12/09/uncovered/index.html
"Uncovered" was funded by Soro-funded Moveon.org. It was first released in November 2003 via thousands of house parties organized by MoveOn.org.
Moveon then gave Greenwald enough money to expand his original work to feature length and got this blatant propaganda a distribution deal so that it could be shown in hundreds of movie houses across America during the 2004 campaign.
Take a look at Sam's post about Ray McGovern.
Thanks Sam for this very interesting post.
Where would the lefties, who hate a strong American, our military, our president and republicans be without George $oreA$$ financing their wet dreams and turning them into movies, books and other left wing trash?
On the same day you spoke in Cincinnati, a letter from the CIA to the Senate Intelligence Committee asserted that the probability is low that Iraq would initiate an attack with such weapons or give them to terrorists... UNLESS:
"Should Saddam conclude that a US-led attack could no longer be deterred, he probably would become much less constrained in adopting terrorist actions."
For now, continued the CIA letter, "Baghdad appears to be drawing a line short of conducting terrorist attacks with conventional or chemical/biological warfare against the United States." With his back against the wall, however, "Saddam might decide that the extreme step of assisting Islamist terrorists in conducting a weapons-of-mass-destruction attack against the United States would be his last chance to exact vengeance by taking a large number of victims with him."
This is a letter from the CIA to the Senate Intelligence Committee on the eve of a war. Don't you think it was classified? And yet McGovern is quoting it apparently verbatim.
If so, how did McGovern get his mitts on it? And shouldn't he and whoever leaked it to him be prosecuted?
Never mind for the moment that it shows McGovern believed Saddam had WMDs. It shows that his campaign to get intel officers to leak him secrets was at work even before the war.
My contribution....all should get this book:
Unholy Alliance : Radical Islam and the American Left
Vastly Illuminating, September 25, 2004
| Reviewer: | Kat Bakhu (Albuquerque, NM United States) - See all my reviews |
They're well financed and organized. Reminds me of Hillary's mentor, Saul Alinsky.
"They're well financed and organized."
It's pretty weird that for so many of these people like McGovern, hating America is their full-time job.
McGovern is also a crackpot street preacher, but I suspect that doesn't pay the rent.
McGovern, like so many of these fulltime protestors is on somebody's payroll. Or several somebodies.
And you can bet they don't have America's best interests at heart.
You're absolutely right on all counts.
I'll wager Burkle's money is part of the financing.
McGovern is Mother Moonbat Sheehan in drag, LOL!
See #49.
LOL! :)
Folks, this post began as a look back on Wilson’s antics in 2003 based on his comments at the EPIC conference in June and a UVA speech in October 2003. It turned quickly into wild speculation about the Niger Forgeries and a plausible CIA role. As I was reviewing this material a year later with a much greater understanding of the players and events things Wilson said took on new meanings and hint at a scenario that weaves all we know into a cogent explanation. The post began here with the retrospective:
A good read out today on Plame from Clarice Feldman over at American Thinker. Clarice notes the comments of Wilson at the EPIC conference where he blew his own cover. To add to Clarice’s piece, I point folks to three posts I did on the EPIC gathering (McGovern’s talk, Wilson’s talk and their joint Q&A session) from the available audio(here, here and here).
It is interesting to see is Wilson’s dire predictions for Iraq three years later. The easy ones he got right were things like saying the Shia will rule southern Iraq. He had a lot if Duh! moments that day. The most pathetic one is his prediction the US would cut and run from Iraq and Israel .
What is interesting in the last audio tape is Wilson’s verbal repetition of the Rockefeller plan (from my earlier post):
Starting just around 12:30 into this 15 minute segment Wilson points out the administration was careful to only talk about uranium with respect to Africa initially. he says that until the story turned to Niger, and then the Niger angle was denied by state, it was difficult to make the case that the march to war was built on lies. Wilson admits, in his own words, that to attack BushÂ’s policies required the story to be about Niger and not Africa. Why? Well, because the forgery angle only applies to Niger, and the broader Africa angle has more substantiating intel and history.
Wilson also clearly states that people on the inside (CIA and others against the war in Iraq) could easily make the case if they could have been given voice. Which is what Joe Wilson would be doing in a few short days in the NY Times Op-Ed pages.
…
He goes on to say the story will have legs only if the press can make a profit, and to do that they need to make a scandal out of this issue. The guy is apparently telegraphing exactly what his little band of rogue agents planned. He is trying to lead the press and media to follow him in order to make a splash. He says “it would be great” if the press did make a scandal of this issue and he notes people are talking about the “I” word (impeachment).
Got that? Go listen to the audio and here Wilson expose the plan he and McGovern had cooked up. And realize this is before he outed himself in his Op-Ed. Back then he was all giddy about smearing the Bushies and winning the 2004 election.
Another interesting retrospective can be found here - Wilson in his own words from October 2003 at University of VA. Note that this is about the time Fitzg-Magoo was taking over the investigation. Wilson also could have been in Niger when the Iraqi delegation arrived. My original post on Wilson’s trips during this time is here.
Want some fun with this one? Note how Wilson puts himself at the scene of the crime about the forgeries. Recall that this was prior to the Senate investigation when Wilson was still pushing the idea he debunked the forgeries:
I was asked to go because I have a unique set of experiences to bring to the table on this issue. I had served there in the mid 1970Â’s. I had retained many ties and friendships including with the Niger Ambassador to the United States for the subsequent twenty-five years. When I was senior director for Africa at the National Security Council in the mid 1990Â’s, the government that was in place at the time of these purported documents covering the memorandum of agreement for the sale of Uranium from Niger to Iraq, that was the government that was in place when I was in the White House. I had worked very closely with them to try and move what was at the time a militaryÂ’s dictatorship back to the Democratic side of the ledger. So, I knew these guys intimately. They were in Washington all of the time. I was out there both in government and in African government helping them.
It is sometimes forgotten Wilson worked for Niger and/or other African nations when he first went to Niger for Valerie and the CIA in 1999. He had access to the materials to make the forgeries. Another item to note re the forgeries:
I looked at the [Niger] bureaucracy and I found that because of the nature of the agreement and participation, nothing could happen that did not have the signatures of some key ministers in the government.
Emphasis mine. So, were the forgeries to fool Bush who had not even formally announced his run at the Presidency at this time? Of course not. Were the forgeries to set up Al Gore - the nominal winner of the 2000 elections? Possibly. Or were the forgeries meant for the Iraqi delegation to give them the idea they were entering into an agreement? That would make a lot of sense to a CIA effort trying to keep Saddam in the box. The source of those forgeries could still be Valerie’s CIA unit then.
Note Joe’s ‘miss speaking’ in detail about the Niger documents. Somehow he recalls with perfect clarity all sorts of known details, yet he keeps adding in details about documents that the CIA supposedly did not have at the time:
There were two other reports that were done at the same time as mine. One was the Ambassadors on the scene report and one was a report made by a fourth star marine corps general who made his way down to Niger and had taken a look at it. All three of us had concluded the same thing. It did not happen. We have information to the contrary. It cannot be authentic unless it contains three signatures. None of which were on those documents.
OK, if the Niger forgeries were actually created by the CIA for or around Joe’s 1999 trip to give to the Iraqi’s to make them think they had a uranium deal - that would explain why Joe Wilson kept ‘tainting’ his stories about Niger with these forgeries. We have speculated that the 2003 trip was to tell people to lay low since there were two other efforts underway and the IC felt Joe’s trip was redundant. But what if Joe’s trip was to tell the Niger folks who ran the country during the military coup d’etat from May 1999 to January 2000 to keep mum about the forged uranium sale! Well, this post has taken an interesting turn. I think I now see how all this could make sense seemlessly and without grand conspiracy theories until Joe joins the Kerry campaign. I will leave Wilson to pass sentence on himself and the CIA
If they [the Bush administration] lied about this, what else might they have lied about? For two, who is going to believe the President of the United States next time when he goes before the world and when he goes before the American people and when he goes before the Congress of the United States and says we have a real weapons of mass destruction problem here. Who is going to believe him?
Who is going to believe a former ambassador who hides the fact he is working for the opposing party when he lies about Niger Forgeries? Well, Joe I for one believe you when you said you knew about the forgeries in 2002 and knew they were fake. I believe you. And I believe you helped create those forgeries because they might contain the signatures of your Niger buddies from 1999 - don’t they? The forgeries come from the time period of 1999 possibly, and could have been a trick the CIA played on Iraq. I believe you went to Niger in 2002 to remind your cohorts that the CIA wanted the forgeries kept QUIET from the Bush administration’s investigation. And I think you, Val, Ray McGovern and others thought what a perfect use for these forgeries once Iraq was conquered and the forgeries useless to their original mission! Why not bring down a Presidency?
We know the forgeries were in a safe in Valerie’s CIA unit from October of 2002 onward. Wonder if there was a chance they were in the safe in Oct 2000? Or October 1999? What if those documents were in Valerie’s CIA unit’s safe from BEFORE the 2002 trip to Niger?
All rampant speculation of course and I have no proof. But I would think EPIC audio and UVA transcripts would make wonderful additions to Team Libby’s case. And I would expect some deep searching into the CIA information control documents that cover the contents of safes used by certain people in certain units. I would guess when word broke about the Niger forgeries in 2002, some in the CIA might have had to expose something in a controlled manner internally.
We shall see.
Addendum: Has anyone noticed it is impossible to find news reports on Nigers amazing transition from Military Coup d’Etat to democratic controlled government in less than a year from 1999-2000? I have been trying to find articles on who attended the big celebration after the transition which included many Dignataries - and one Joe Wilson. I find it strange that the new government, seated finally in January 2000, was not in the news?
http://strata-sphere.com/blog/index.php/archives/1773
I don't know if you've seen this other thread yet:
When And Where Joe Wilson Changed His Story
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1628902/posts?page=21
But Wilson had already began to re-write history before the EPIC conference.
I believe that on or about May 2nd Wilson had decided to go over to the Democrats. He probably was already talking about it with Rand Beers, who was making the same decision at the time.
I believe that given that the US had found no WMD in Iraq, on top of the Niger "forgeries" that Wilson decided at that time to re-write the story of his Niger trip. (It was all he had.)
So he went 180 from what he had been saying only two months before and what he had told the CIA -- just to jump on the bash Bush and help Kerry bandwagon.
And as soon as he decided to do this he went to speak before Jay Rockefeller and the Senate Democratic Policy Committee.
Which is where he met Kristof. And the rest is history. Or rather histrionics.
Good info!
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