The Tenet Fiasco - Discussion Thread

self

[Amelia]

I don't understand why people are so eager to assume President Bush is a liar, or a buffoon, or someone who can't pay attention. Maybe this is just as simple as it looks on its face.

If you'll notice, many of those people are either Democrats, or they are far-far-rightwingers who are very frustrated because no one conservative enough to make them happy is likely to win a national race in the U.S.*

*If you'll notice, many of those people are very nasty to, dismissive of, or condescending to most of the other people in the U.S.A., then they wonder why no one joins their cause - it must just be because they see the truth and everyone else is too ignorant, selfish, materialistic, or whatever to see it, right?

[UnklGene]

"Tenet," anyone?

[cyncooper]

Speaking of the NSC...we haven't heard too much about this from them, and the NSC and State would have seen this before Bush.

That is false.

Condi Rice gave a lengthy interview on this subject yesterday morning. Before Tenet's statement. In addition she has made other statements on this topic during the week.

On what do you base your assertion?

[Scenic Sounds]

I'm sorry. If it's any consolation, my mother says that I'm the reason she's going gray, and my dad says that he needs tranquilizers after a conversation with me.

ROFL. I would have never guessed! ;-)

[William McKinley]

It was Cheney who pursued the uranium-sale angle and bought the story nevertheless when his investigator had warned him off and the people at CIA and State didn't want to sign off on it.

Mind if I ask you to pull the string on this one a little bit? Trace back where this comes from- that Cheney pursued it and that his investigator warned him off.

Was the source of this information Scheer? Was it Wilson? Was it someone directly related to not just liberal but far-left political movements?

[cyncooper]

And I'm still waiting to see how you buttress your opening sentence, since several of us have demonstrated it is also false:

George Tenet's admission last night that it was his mistake that caused President Bush to use faulty intelligence in his State of The Union address is interesting at the same time as it is convienent.

Please explain what the faulty intelligence was, since Britain has emphasized that they 1) stand by their intelligence and 2) it is not based on forged documents.

BTW, as of today, our own government thinks the story is still true but has not assembled enough documentation on their own to state it to the degree of certainty they wish.

(I think I already pointed that out, but see it's being ignored.)

[Mind-numbed Robot]

He's the CEO. Head of the exec branch of govt. The buck stops with the president, whoever it is. The people like Tenet work for him.

Even if you are technically correct it is still unrealistic. A salesman may embarrass his company and, yes, the CEO is technically responsible. Yet, to think that the CEO can monitor all that happens in his company is unrealistic. Perhaps it is idealistic but it is still unrealistic. (Yeah, I know the drill. The CEO hires the VP of Sales who hires the Sales Manager who hire the District Manager who hires the Branch Manager who hires the Salesman, so, see it really is the CEO's responsibility. Ain't realistic. Only good for the blame game.)

The point here is that the left is trying to destroy Bush with this little gotcha, just as they did with Trent Lott and tried to do to Santorum. It is a oft-used tactic of theirs and for us, conservative Bush supporters, to sit back and say, "Well, they do have a point. It really is his responsibility to know all the details of everything." just plays into their hands. I ain't going along for the ride.

[huck von finn]

Wait a minute...State obviously did know about it. Tenet refers to this in his statement when he says Powell refused to use the Niger uranium bit in his speech before the U.N.!

[UnklGene]

I remember reading it too. It was by the noted communist propagandist Robert Scheer in the L.A. Times. There was no substantiation- it was sourced about as well as Doug Thompson's Wilkinson piece.

Ahh Cathryn, you light up a party and leave. Bill McKinley compares you to Robert (gasp!) Scheer. Lord "Haw-Haw" will show up shortly. ;)

[DaughterOfAnIwoJimaVet]

Great post.

[DaughterOfAnIwoJimaVet]

LOL - that is very easy to believe. : )

[cyncooper]

Sort of a cop out isn't it when we checked it out ourselves.

The DNC ads are absolutely deceptive to omit the entirety of President Bush's representation that British intelligence has found, etc.

Your comment seems to indicate we "checked it out" and found nothing. That is not true. We have several fragments of information supporting the story, but not enough that the CIA felt comfortable-yet-confirming it to the level of a presidential address.

They are saying to this very day they think the story is in fact true.

[Scenic Sounds]

The point here is that the left is trying to destroy Bush with this little gotcha, just as they did with Trent Lott and tried to do to Santorum.

Good point! This is big-league politics here and we should expect the other side to hit and to hit hard!

[Lauratealeaf]

From Joseph C. Wilson 4th's editorial in the New York Times

The next morning, I met with Ambassador Owens-Kirkpatrick at the embassy. For reasons that are understandable, the embassy staff has always kept a close eye on Niger's uranium business. I was not surprised, then, when the ambassador told me that she knew about the allegations of uranium sales to Iraq — and that she felt she had already debunked them in her reports to Washington. Nevertheless, she and I agreed that my time would be best spent interviewing people who had been in government when the deal supposedly took place, which was before her arrival.

I spent the next eight days drinking sweet mint tea and meeting with dozens of people: current government officials, former government officials, people associated with the country's uranium business. It did not take long to conclude that it was highly doubtful that any such transaction had ever taken place.

So, we are to take the word of this man who, after drinking mint tea with Barbro and others decided that there was just no proof of a buy of uranium by Iraq. He didn't say that the Iraqis were not trying to buy the uranium.

That is a different story. I also note that Barbro Owens Kirkpatrick was adamant that she had already done an investigation of her own. This woman was appointed by Clinton as Ambassador to Niger in 1999 and was born in Finland. I am wondering what she is up to now as she is no longer the Ambassador to Niger.

[Diverdogz]

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=16283


Not Business as Usual: Cheney and the CIA

By Ray McGovern, AlterNet
June 30, 2003

As though this were normal! I mean the repeated visits Vice President Dick Cheney made to the CIA before the war in Iraq. The visits were, in fact, unprecedented. During my 27-year career at the Central Intelligence Agency, no vice president ever came to us for a working visit.


During the '80s, it was my privilege to brief Vice President George H.W. Bush and other very senior policy makers every other morning. I went either to the vice president's office or (on weekends) to his home. I am sure it never occurred to him to come to CIA headquarters.


The morning briefings gave us an excellent window on what was uppermost in the minds of those senior officials and helped us refine our tasks of collection and analysis. Thus, there was never any need for policy makers to visit us. And the very thought of a vice president dropping by to help us with our analysis is extraordinary. We preferred to do that work without the pressure that inevitably comes from policy makers at the table.


Cheney got into the operational side of intelligence as well. Reports in late 2001 that Iraq had tried to acquire uranium from Niger stirred such intense interest that his office let it be known he wanted them checked out. So, with the CIA as facilitator, a retired U.S. ambassador was dispatched to Niger in February 2002 to investigate. He found nothing to substantiate the report and lots to call it into question. There the matter rested – until last summer, after the Bush administration made the decision for war in Iraq.


Cheney, in a speech on Aug. 26, 2002, claimed that Saddam Hussein had "resumed his effort to acquire nuclear weapons."


At the time, CIA analysts were involved in a knockdown, drag-out argument with the Pentagon on this very point. Most of the nuclear engineers at the CIA, and virtually all scientists at U.S. government laboratories and the International Atomic Energy Agency, found no reliable evidence that Iraq had restarted its nuclear weapons program.


But the vice president had spoken. Sad to say, those in charge of the draft National Intelligence Estimate took their cue and stated, falsely, that "most analysts assess Iraq is reconstituting its nuclear weapons program."


Smoke was blown about aluminum tubes sought by Iraq that, it turns out, were for conventional weapons programs. The rest amounted to circumstantial things like Hussein's frequent meetings with nuclear scientists and Iraq's foot-dragging in providing information to U.N. inspectors.


Not much heed was paid to the fact that Hussein's son-in-law, who supervised Iraq's nuclear program before he defected in 1995, had told interrogators that Iraq's nuclear facilities – except for the blueprints – had been destroyed in 1991 at his order. (Documents given to the United States this week confirm that. The Iraqi scientists who provided them added that, even though the blueprints would have given Iraq a head start, no order was given to restart the program; and even had such an order been given, Iraq would still have been years away from producing a nuclear weapon.)


In sum, the evidence presented in last September's intelligence estimate fell far short of what was required to support Cheney's claim that Iraq was on the road to a nuclear weapon. Something scarier had to be produced, and quickly, if Congress was to be persuaded to authorize war. And so the decision was made to dust off the uranium-from-Niger canard.


The White House calculated – correctly – that before anyone would make an issue of the fact that this key piece of "intelligence" was based on a forgery, Congress would vote yes. The war could then be waged and won. In recent weeks, administration officials have begun spreading the word that Cheney was never told the Iraq-Niger story was based on a forgery. I asked a senior official who recently served at the National Security Council if he thought that was possible. He pointed out that rigorous NSC procedures call for a very specific response to all vice-presidential questions and added that "the fact that Cheney's office had originally asked that the Iraq-Niger report be checked out makes it inconceivable that his office would not have been informed of the results."


Did the president himself know that the information used to secure congressional approval for war was based on a forgery? We don't know. But which would be worse – that he knew or that he didn't?


Ray McGovern, a CIA analyst from 1964 to 1990, regularly reported to the vice president of the United States and senior policymakers on the President's Daily Brief from 1981 to 1985. He now is co-director of the Servant Leadership School, an inner-city outreach ministry in Washington.

[cyncooper]

Yet another good point.

No, it is not a good point, but a flawed (unlike President Bush's sentence) point.

[Cathryn Crawford]

No, it is not a good point, but a flawed (unlike President Bush's sentence) point.

How is it flawed?

[huck von finn]

I have a lot of questions about both the NSC and the State Department. Tenet says that Powell knew--Powell chose not to use the questionable uranium information in his speech. And what Tenet says about the NSC is all but damning. Isn't Condi the head of the NSC? What is going on here?

[DaughterOfAnIwoJimaVet]

Even if you are technically correct it is still unrealistic. A salesman may embarrass his company and, yes, the CEO is technically responsible. Yet, to think that the CEO can monitor all that happens in his company is unrealistic. Perhaps it is idealistic but it is still unrealistic.

Thank you for making this point. I tried to earlier but I abandoned my effort - your analogy is a good one.

[VRWC For Truth]

All this blather is about dragging down Bush and elevating the Stainmaster. It's a DNC talking points memo trial balloned by the 'Rat bootlicking DC press corps.