Posted on 07/21/2003 2:17:52 PM PDT by rface
Does the president not read? Does his national security staff, led by Condoleezza Rice, keep him in the dark about the most pressing issues of the day? Or is this administration blatantly lying to the American people to secure its ideological ends?
Those questions arise because of the White House admission that the charge that Iraq tried to buy uranium from Niger was excised from a speech by President George W. Bush in October 2002 after the CIA and Department of State insisted it was unfounded. Bizarrely, however, three months later without any additional evidence emerging that outrageous lie was inserted into the State of the Union speech to justify the president’s case for bypassing the United Nations Security Council, for chasing U.N. inspectors out of Iraq and for invading and occupying an oil-rich country.
Two weekends ago, administration sources disclosed that CIA Director George Tenet intervened in October to warn White House officials, including deputy adviser Stephen Hadley, not to use the Niger information because it was based on a single source. That source proved to be a forged document with glaring inconsistencies.
Bush’s top security aides, led by Hadley’s boss, Rice, went along with the CIA, and Bush’s October speech was edited to eliminate the false charge that Iraq was seeking to acquire uranium from Niger to create a nuclear weapon.
We now know that before Bush’s January speech, Robert Joseph, the National Security Council individual who reports to Rice on nuclear proliferation, was fully briefed by CIA analyst Alan Foley that the Niger connection was no stronger than it had been in October. It is inconceivable that in reviewing draft after draft of the State of the Union speech, NSC staffers Hadley and Joseph failed to tell Rice that Bush was about to spread a big lie to justify going to war.
On national security, the buck doesn’t stop with Tenet, the current fall guy. The buck stops with Bush and his national security adviser, who is charged with funneling intelligence data to the president. That included cluing in the president that the CIA’s concerns were backed by the state department’s conclusion that "the claims of Iraqi pursuit of natural uranium in Africa are highly dubious."
For her part, Rice has tried to fend off controversy by claiming ignorance. On "Meet the Press" in June, Rice claimed, "We did not know at the time no one knew at the time, in our circles maybe someone knew down in the bowels of the agency, but no one in our circles knew that there were doubts and suspicions that this might be a forgery."
Rice recently admitted that she had known the state department intelligence unit "was the one that within the overall intelligence estimate had objected to that sentence" and that Secretary of State Colin Powell had refused to use the Niger document in his presentation to the United Nations because of what she described as longstanding concerns about its credibility. But Rice also knew the case for bypassing U.N. inspections and invading Iraq required demonstrating an imminent threat. The terrifying charge that Iraq was hell-bent on developing nuclear weapons would do the trick nicely.
However, with the discrediting of the Niger buy and the equally dubious citation of a purchase of aluminum tubes which turned out to be inappropriate for the production of enriched uranium one can imagine the disappointment at the White House. There was no evidence for painting Saddam Hussein as a nuclear threat.
The proper reaction should have been to support the U.N. inspectors in doing their work in an efficient and timely fashion. We now know, and perhaps the White House knew then, that the inspectors eventually would come up empty-handed because no weapons of mass destruction program existed not even a stray vial of chemical and biological weapons has been discovered. However, that would have obviated the administration’s key rationale for an invasion, so lies substituted for facts that didn’t exist.
And there, dear readers, exists the firm basis for bringing a charge of impeachment against the president who employed lies to lead us into war.
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Robert Scheer is a columnist with Creators Syndicate.
"15) Institutionalization of racial and religious profiling and authorization of domestic spying by federal law enforcement on persons based on their engagement in noncriminal religious and political activity."
Institutionalizing? Also, name one non- muslim that perpetrated the 9/11 attacks.
Define Peace.
The good news is he is no longer in power.
Anyone want to deny that that is good news?
Oh, it's Robert Scheer. Business as usual.
I think the Rats just want to get back at the Republicans for Clinton.
I say go for the twofer and get rid of Mineta at transportation at the same time.
I was thinking it was the Gillinger-BBC "sexed up" report that fed some Dim's dastardly idea, to be used against President Bush's during his visit to Africa. Our Senators and Congressmen and women saw the data on Iraq and a majority voted in support of the war. They didn't object in January when he actually gave the speech. Why now?
You're right. This train needs to be derailed. The Democrats have begun to seem Al-Qaeda like in their "campaign" methods. Do a lot of sneaky underground work and then, using the media to ignite the fuse they prepared, they EXPLODE the so-called story right in the faces of the American people. Continuing with this Al-Qadea modus operandi, they have managed to network with the British media. The French, Germans and Russians cheer them on from the sidelines. A tape is made, not by Usama bin Laden or Saddam Hussein, but Terry MacAuliffe or James Carville.
(Notes to self: Okay. I like it, even if you didn't complete the analogy. Go with it. So what if you've let your imagination run wild.) DEMOCRATS ARE USING TERRORIST TACTICS! There's a red carpet just waiting for Hillary (and her co-dictator, Bill). It's a coup for two!
This guy has a real job writing?...
FMCDH
If you have the time to do all that on Scheer, how about doing something along the same lines on the infrequent columns that Clifford May has produced for NRO. I think you'll find a similar thematic pattern, twisted about 180-degrees, imbues his writing.
The American public deserves to know the truth, from whatever source. Unfortunately, partisanship and ideology (to a lesser extent, religion) have kept it from happening.
Scheer is an ideological leftist. He would not give Bush credit for anything good even if he was doing it "for the children" or with Ted Kennedy's blessing.
On the other hand, why are conservatives so slow to pick up on the fact that much of the agitation for a war against Iraq was based on nothing more than rumor and speculation? This is coming out more and more daily, and not just with the purported attempts to purchase uranium. Do we need to have leftists such as Scheer take the lead on these things?
I hope not. Honest conservatives, and most of them are, will go further toward getting the public's approval by pointing out the mistakes and misstatements of this and previous administrations than they will by stonewalling. You can only stonewall when there's one or two "official" stories to stonewall with. Here there's a dozen or more. (Those who parroted the administration line must be dizzy by now from the ever-changing "main reason we are going to war.")
Worse, why are conservatives unwilling to admit that the precedent G W Bush has set in launching a "pre-emptive war" could eventually put our nation in an extremely precarious position wrt our erstwhile allies, not to mention the threat from millions of revenge-seeking fanatics who populate the Arab world?
My way has not been tried since about the middle of the Nineteenth Century. It was fairly successful then and could be again, but the interventionists among us -- the same folks, by and large, who distrust markets, free elections, competition unless it's regulated by the government -- have a solid lock on the media, the government and nearly every large corporation.
It will take something more devastating than the attacks of 9/11 to relax their grip, if that's even possible.
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