[Cathryn Crawford]

This thread is for civil discussion of the different theories and reasons behind this situation. It is not a place for bashing of posters with different opinions.

[Support Free Republic]

See that good looking dude on the left? He's got FAR BETTER THINGS to do than conduct Freepathons! Come on, let's get this thing over with.

[Cathryn Crawford]

Your opinions welcomed.

[chance33_98]

Real simple answer - Bureaucracy. And if Bush did lie, so what? I learned that from the dems. Lying is ok, and no one cares. Clinton could lie under oath, and the dembots told us it didn't matter, as long as everyone was happy and the job got done. Well, the job got done. Saddam is out.

When a dem lies people shrug it off and say politicians lie all the time. I don't think Bush did lie (ie he didn't know) because he had no reason to, there were enough reasons to go after saddam without that - reasons posted below by democrats - only 4 from my usual aresenal:

Gore repeats that Saddam MUST GO - June 2000

The Democrats' Case Against Saddam Hussein (Dems nailed, yet again)
Al Gore followed suit on Monday, albeit in much stronger terms, expressing concern that "[the President] is demanding in this high political season that Congress speedily affirm that he has the necessary authority to proceed immediately against Iraq." Gore went on to add, "no international law can prevent the United States from taking actions to protect its vital interests, when it is manifestly clear that there is a choice to be made between law and survival. I believe, however, that such choice is not presented in the case of Iraq" [speech, 9/23/02].

Saddam Abused His Last Chance, Clinton -clear and present danger to safety of people everywhere 1998

What the democrats want you to forget

[robertpaulsen]

I thought the origin of this information was from British Intelligence, not the CIA. Also, I thought that the CIA attempted to convince their British counterparts that they were wrong (ie, the CIA didn't want to accept this info as factual), but the British insisted.

Why the CIA changed their minds to the point it made its way into the State of the Union, I don't know. You can't get to the top of the CIA and be that stupid -- to think that no one will ever find out?

[Porterville]

Bush is holding his cards to his vest just wait for WMDs. Tennet is a Clinton crony, so anything is possible.

[Sabertooth]

If Bush can truly claim to know absolutely nothing, then don't we have a serious problem - wouldn't that imply that Bush is either incompetent or is simply not paying attention?

Nah, he's not claiming to know absolutely nothing. Any President is going to have to rely a lot on intelligence summaries. From what I understand, the CIAs reservations on the Al Qaeda - African uranium connection were buried in footnotes.

I just don't think this is that big a deal.

However, if you want to talk about whether Bush should have purged Tenet and other Clintonites from the CIA some time ago, that's a fair question. Tenet does appear to have reciprocated Bush's loyalty in this matter, though.

[PhiKapMom]

Why did you put up this thread when there are plenty of threads running on here starting with the Thompson bogus source with a lot of good information and discussion?

[William McKinley]

On the face of it, perhaps. But Bush is the President. He has to take final responsibility, doesn't he?

If Bush can truly claim to know absolutely nothing, then don't we have a serious problem - wouldn't that imply that Bush is either incompetent or is simply not paying attention?

All of these questions proceed from an assumption that I am unwilling to make- namely that the statement in the SOTU was significant to anyone. I have seen no evidence of it.

I saw no one, after the SOTU speech, crooning to the media that "I support going to war with Iraq because they tried to buy uranium from Niger".

Instead, I recall the Congress voting to authorize the use of force, several weeks prior to the SOTU speech.

As you know, I have serious concerns about the state of our intelligence. But taking responsibility for something that was 100% accurate (Britian had said what Bush said they said, and to this day they are standing by what they said- she Straw's comments today --they are on my blog if you missed them), that while accurate may have been somewhat less than compelling if the entire context was known, about a single point in a significantly larger mosaic, seems to be more deserving of a response of "when are you guys going to actually act like you are serious about our country and not just a bunch of partisan hacks?"

If we are to focus on the Niger/uranium thing, though, I am one thousand times more interested in, and concerned by, how it came to be that Wilson, a diplomat, came to be sent to perform an intelligence verification operation, when he had no expertise in uranium, no experience in field operations, and no experience in detection of forged documents. And why this guy, who didn't even see the documents he is claiming to know are false, is being given such credence. And why just about everyone involved in screaming "there is a coverup here", such as Wilson, turn out to be long time Democrat partisans and far-left activists.

You want a scandal and a Watergate? Let's find out who arranged for Wilson to go to Niger.

[timpad]

Here's my best (yet still evolving) take on this one. Intelligence information says exactly what the beholder wishes it to say. If you want the Iraqis to have been trying to acquire yellowcake from Nigeria, a report that references weak information and dubious sources will seem quite solid.

I believe Dubya and the team fell into a trap that trained intelligence professionals work their entire careers to overcome. When looking at this type of information, you have to be extremely careful not to let your hopes and fears enter into it. If you do, your call is clouded

That being said, this is an opportunity for the team to stand this whole Lefty-driven controversy on its head. Come out and admit you were wrong. Admit that your pre-conceived notions worked you on this one. Explain that with this lesson learned, you thereafter proceeded with extreme caution. That's why nobody in the Administration has been crowing about the various and sundry WMD discoveries and aren't going to until the story is in.

[huck von finn]

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

Hmm. I didn't read it that way. What I gleaned from the statement was that Tenet was saying, rather, that his mistake was that his people did not finally insist upon taking it out. They had nothing to do with putting it in. So his mistake could not then logically cause Bush to use the faulty information--it only allowed Bush to use it.

[cyncooper]

President Bush did not convey faulty information. He said British intelligence sources found Iraq was seeking to purchase uranium from Africa. That is a fact that Britain stands by to this day.

Straw defends UK dossier uranium claims

The controversy centers around whether President Bush ought to cite foreign intelligence when our own agency cannot confirm to the level required for a president to publicly comment on.

I say President Bush owed the American people this information.

Tenet never says the information is not true, only that they did not have sufficient information to meet that high threshold.

[sd-joe]

"On the face of it, perhaps. But Bush is the President. He has to take final responsibility, doesn't he? If Bush can truly claim to know absolutely nothing, then don't we have a serious problem - wouldn't that imply that Bush is either incompetent or is simply not paying attention?"

Pres Bush has to take responsibility for the overall working of the government. That means that if a part of the government is not working or messed up, it is up to the President to fix it or replace it.

Obviously the President can not personally know every little detail of the millions of details that occur in the government. This is just not possible. He has to appoint people he believes he can trust, and then trust the information that he gets from them. If one or more of them prove that they can not be trusted, then the President should replace them.

The press is making a very big deal out of this one very minor statement because a large part of the press wants to tear down the President, and they have not found anything else to effectively attack him on.

[Mind-numbed Robot]

This is a tempest in a teapot, blown all out of proportion for political purposes by the left on both sides of the pond. In his speech he stated that this information was from the British. That was only one of many reasons listed for outing Saddam. As are all speeches dealing with intelligence information, this was passed through the CIA for vetting. It passed. To now try to turn this into some lie Bush purposely told is laughable. To say that Bush, as top man, is responsible for all the government does is also unrealistic. Tenet, of whom I am not a fan, took the fall as head of the CIA but it was a gesture of leadership rather than a frank admission. He did clear Bush in the process, however.

So much of this has been discussed for so long it is discouraging that some of you still act like junior high school kids coming straight from a DNC indoctrination session. Too bad you made flaming out of bounds, as I am all primed.

[Libertina]

I personally have never known for sure why George Bush didn't get rid of Tenet, Norman Minetta and others when he took office...Clinton appointees who would do him no good anyway... perhaps the getting along thing. (As if that has ever stopped the rats from pulling fast ones.)

I heard yesterday that the bogus paper (re: purchasing uranium in Africa)was only one of SEVERAL sources the Brits had. They still stick by their guns and say the general information is true. (They also refuse to share these other intelligence sources.) Why doesn't the President and CIA refer to this information? It's as if they won't fight. Perhaps they just want the outcry to stop so they ignore it...

But Tenet probably should resign for this and hopefully the administration will start getting rid of some of the holdovers. The State department seems to be awash in them, always proceeding down their own path with no adherance to anything the current President says is policy.

But this is a bad day to get my take on President Bush. I am absolutely livid with him, Jennifer Dunn, and Senator Istook for giving 500 MILLION $ to the RATS in WA state so they could REVIVE a dying boondoggle of a transportion project- Light Rail. The conservatives have been shafted but good. The project supporters, PATTY -daycare centers in Irag - MURRAY and Baghdad Jim McDermitt are in heaven. Can anyone explain this to me? Did I misread the title of the party I voted for? Now they are interfereing in State politics FOR the democraps? As I said on the WA forum, I need an aspirin. Today, I've given up. I have NO representative government here in WA, and it's getting WORSE with "help" like this, thank you very much. I am disgusted. :(

[Consort]

The Clintons seeded the CIA, State Department, and every other government agency with Leftist/Socialist career civil servants, appointees, Senior Executive Service, etc. It will take at least a generation to clean it out — if the Democrats are kept out of power. That's the job of the voters.

[ex-snook]

How this forgery originated and who passed it on to the President cannot be ignored. There is a history. Clinton bombed an Aspirin factory because of faulty intelligence. To my knowledge no heads were rolled by Clinton. Why?

Bush may or may not have know it was a forgery. If he didn't know, he was victimized by some 'dupe the stupe' operation done by, as Rice calls them 'the bowels of government'. If we did know, someone must have him by the balls.

This is no longer about Saddam and the war. Unimpeded passing forged documents to the President and getting him to use them is no way to run the country. Bush is in charge or he isn't. Use some ex-lax on those bowels.

[YaYa123]

Let's be honest. The flap over Niger-Saddam-uranium is a red herring. It's given Democrats their first chance to attack the leadership of Commander In Chief Bush, their first chance to attack the integrity of President Bush. Man oh man, they are positively drooling with delight...a Terry McAuliffe wet dream.

The Nation editor, Katrina vanden Heuvel, is the only one who spews out the real plan: Convince the American people President Bush intentionally lied to them. On Hardball vanden Heuvel said; President Bush intentionally deceived the American people into supporting war. And she said; American soldiers are dying because of that deception.

Mainstream Democrats aren't that outrageous, but of course, that's the subliminal message they hope voters will take away from this lengthy dissection of one sentence in President Bush's State of the Union speech. A sentence that meant nothing at the time, and means even less 6 months later.

But thank goodness, Americans aren't stupid. If they remember the State of the Union speech at all, they remember President Bush courageously speaking to the world, to our enemies, and to hostile Democrat Senators who were thwarting him at every turn.

President Bush laundry listed the reasons why we had to take out Saddam Hussein. We might not have known whether Saddam got his uranium from Africa or Russia, but no one doubted Saddam Hussein intended to make nuclear weapons to use against us. No one doubted it then or now. That nuclear materials have been found hidden in a Baghdad rose garden proves the intent. Specific details of how Saddam planned to amass his Weapons of Mass Destruction wouldn't be bothering Democrats if Bill Clinton were president and he had made that speech.

Americans recognize this attack on one sentence, for what it is. An unwarranted, over-zealous, partisan attack on the president. When mainstream Democrat presidential contenders show their true colors, and openly join the vanden Heuvel chorus, President Bush's re-election will be secured.

[ApesForEvolution]

Bush takes responsibility for Tenet's agency's error, Tenet takes the hit, the statement had NO impact on the stated purposes of Iraqi regime change and this all goes away in short order.

To avoid the appearance of impropriety, Bush relieves Tenet of his duties and puts in a more competent person.

It all smacks of 'cover-up', but almost all of the cards are on the table now. There could be an Ace lurking though.

[quebecois]

The analysis of this situation is simple: The neocons had ulterior motives in pushing for the invasion of Iraq. They slanted all of the intelligence data that made its way to Bush in order to get him to come to the desired conclusion. Now that the spotlight is on the neocons and their distortions, they are trying to cover their tracks by having Tenet and the CIA fall on their swords and take the blame.

As to what they have offered Tenet (or threatened him with), I have no idea...that is one of those back-door sleazy things that we peasants never actually find out.

[LS]

Tenet should NEVER have said anything because Bush's claim was, and is, true. The Brits RE-CONFIRM that they had a second source for the uranium claim. It was true, they truthfully passed it on to Bush, he honestly used it. END OF STORY. Why can't anyone get this right?