| Topic: |
Politics > Politics-USA |
| User: |
"Tom Jefferson" |
| Date: |
29 Oct 2003 07:17:14 PM |
| Object: |
In their desire for war the Bush admin *often* ignored the truth. |
From the article:
In their public advocacy for war, Bush administration officials often went
beyond what the CIA told them.
For example, the NIE contained caveats on nuclear activities, unmanned
aerial vehicles, and Iraq's doctrine for using WMD that administration
officials rarely acknowledged.
Twice in the fall of 2002, the CIA prevented White House officials from
making the claim that Iraq tried to buy uranium in Africa. But the
allegation made it into the president's State of the Union and other
officials' public remarks. It was only withdrawn this summer.
Vice President ***** Cheney has sometimes alluded to a link between Saddam
Hussein and Sept. 11 terrorist attacks that intelligence agencies have never
substantiated.
A former top State Department intelligence official, Greg Thielmann, told
CBS News' 60 Minutes II that contrary to what Secretary of State Colin
Powell told the United Nations, Iraq didn't pose an imminent threat to
anyone: “I think it didn't even constitute an imminent threat to its
neighbors at the time we went to war.”
President Bush has referred to the suspected biological weapons factories as
actual "weapons" even though the CIA said the trailers contained no weapons
material. On May 30, he told Polish television: "We've found the weapons of
mass destruction."
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/10/29/iraq/main580692.shtml
=================================
Panel: Iraq Threat Was Overstated
WASHINGTON, Oct. 24, 2003
(CBS/AP) A Senate panel is preparing a report that will sharply criticize
intelligence agencies for overstating the weapons of mass destruction threat
allegedly posed by Iraq, a newspaper reports.
But the CIA says the panel is drawing conclusions prematurely, since the
weapons hunt is continuing in Iraq.
The Washington Post says the report by the Senate Intelligence Committee
will fault intelligence agencies, especially the CIA, for using too much
disputed, circumstantial or single-source data in preparing its estimates of
Iraq's alleged weapons programs.
However, the report may not be out until the end of the year, and committee
members are still divided over how much blame to assign to the CIA, the
White House or the Pentagon.
The newspaper quotes the chairman of the committee, Sen. Pat Roberts,
R-Kan., saying: "the executive was ill-served by the intelligence community"
and calling the intelligence at times "sloppy."
Sen. Roberts later issued a statement Friday saying the Post had
mischaracterized the findings.
"The article gives the impression that the Committee has completed its
review of pre-war intelligence on Iraq. It also implies that there is a
completed Committee report. The Committee has not finished its review of the
intelligence and has not reached any final conclusions or finished a
report,'' Roberts said in the statement.
Some of the panel's criticisms concern the National Intelligence Estimate on
Iraq, issued last October, which declared that "Iraq has continued it
weapons of mass destruction programs" and that "Baghdad has chemical and
biological weapons."
One senior intelligence expert told The Post the NIE was "hastily done in
three weeks."
Bill Harlow, a spokesman for the CIA, defended the NIE, saying it "reflects
10 years of work regarding Iraq's WMD programs. It is based on many sources
and disciplines, both ours and those of partners around the world."
The upcoming Senate report mirrors a similar investigation on the House
side. Last month, the top Republican and top Democrat heading that House
probe complained about CIA methods in a letter to agency director George
Tenet.
According to The Post, the panel's report will steer blame for the
intelligence miscues toward the nation's spy agencies, and away from the
White House. Some critics have accused the Bush administration of misusing
intelligence data.
But Democrats are resisting that shift of focus. They have won a promise
that the panel will question a controversial Pentagon team, the Office of
Special Plans, on how it handled intelligence leading up to the war. That
office has been accused of "mining" CIA data for strands that painted the
most frightening picture possible of Iraq.
"It appears to me there is a clear effort being made to blame everything on
the intelligence community and steer away from anything or anybody that has
to do with the administration," said Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va.
The committee spoke to 100 people who screened data on Iraq's alleged
weapons and ties to terrorist groups. Those allegations were central to the
White House case for war, but seven months after the start of the war, no
weapons have been found.
Since the war ended, the White House has withdrawn a claim that Iraq tried
to buy uranium in Africa, and the only major discovery to date — two
trailers suspected of being mobile biological weapons factories — has come
into doubt.
Earlier this month, Iraq Survey Group leader David Kay said in an interim
report that his search teams had uncovered some evidence of ongoing missile
programs and possible plans to restart biological weapons work. But there
was little evidence of work on nuclear arms or chemical weapons, or any
active biological weapons work.
"It is hard to understand how the committee could come to any conclusions at
this point, particularly while the efforts of Dr. David Kay in Iraq are at
an early stage," Harlow said.
"The committee has yet to take the opportunity to hear a comprehensive
explanation of how and why we reached our conclusions," Harlow said, adding
that Tenet has requested a chance for the CIA's senior leadership to appear
before the committee "to help them understand this important and complex
subject."
Roberts says no analyst the committee interviewed claims to have felt
pressure to change their views, but other panel members point out that
supervisors were always in the room when analysts were interviewed.
In their public advocacy for war, Bush administration officials often went
beyond what the CIA told them.
For example, the NIE contained caveats on nuclear activities, unmanned
aerial vehicles, and Iraq's doctrine for using WMD that administration
officials rarely acknowledged.
Twice in the fall of 2002, the CIA prevented White House officials from
making the claim that Iraq tried to buy uranium in Africa. But the
allegation made it into the president's State of the Union and other
officials' public remarks. It was only withdrawn this summer.
Vice President ***** Cheney has sometimes alluded to a link between Saddam
Hussein and Sept. 11 terrorist attacks that intelligence agencies have never
substantiated.
A former top State Department intelligence official, Greg Thielmann, told
CBS News' 60 Minutes II that contrary to what Secretary of State Colin
Powell told the United Nations, Iraq didn't pose an imminent threat to
anyone: “I think it didn't even constitute an imminent threat to its
neighbors at the time we went to war.”
President Bush has referred to the suspected biological weapons factories as
actual "weapons" even though the CIA said the trailers contained no weapons
material. On May 30, he told Polish television: "We've found the weapons of
mass destruction."
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/10/29/iraq/main580692.shtml
--
Search in Iraq Fails to Find Nuclear Threat
No Evidence Uncovered Of Reconstituted Program
By Barton Gellman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, October 26, 2003
[snip]
According to records made available to The Washington Post and interviews
with arms investigators from the United States, Britain and Australia, it
did not require a comprehensive survey to find the central assertions of the
Bush administration's prewar nuclear case to be insubstantial or untrue.
Although Hussein did not relinquish his nuclear ambitions or technical
records, investigators said, it is now clear he had no active program to
build a weapon, produce its key materials or obtain the technology he needed
for either.
[cont.]
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A17707-2003Oct25?language=printer
--
Bush Defends U.S. Justification for Iraq War
Wed Jul 9, 6:31 PM ET
Asked for the first time about the (Iraq) uranium issue,
Bush said: "There's going to be a lot of attempts to rewrite history."
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=584&ncid=584&e=1&u=/nm/20030
709/pl_nm/iraq_bush_dc
-------------
Bush Takes Responsibility for Uranium Claim in Speech
July 30, 2003, 8:37 PM EDT
Washington -- President George W. Bush for the first time Thursday accepted
personal responsibility for a now-discredited claim about Iraqi
uranium-shopping in his State of the Union speech, saying he was responsible
"for everything I say, of course, absolutely."
http://www.newsday.com/news/local/longisland/politics/ny-usbush0731,0,269352
..story?coll=ny-lipolitics-headlines
.
|
|
| User: "Boner the Cat" |
|
| Title: Re: In their desire for war the Bush admin *often* ignored the truth. |
29 Oct 2003 07:31:43 PM |
|
|
Twice in the fall of 2002, the CIA prevented White House officials from
making the claim that Iraq tried to buy uranium in Africa. But the
allegation made it into the president's State of the Union and other
officials' public remarks. It was only withdrawn this summer.
You are aware that Saddam did purchase over 750 tons of yellowcake from
Africa.??
.
|
|
|
| User: "Tom Jefferson" |
|
| Title: Re: In their desire for war the Bush admin *often* ignored the truth. |
29 Oct 2003 08:04:04 PM |
|
|
"Boner the Cat" <boner33(n-spam)@tampabay.rr.com> wrote in message
news:3SZnb.54901$RP2.6559@twister.tampabay.rr.com...
Twice in the fall of 2002, the CIA prevented White House officials from
making the claim that Iraq tried to buy uranium in Africa. But the
allegation made it into the president's State of the Union and other
officials' public remarks. It was only withdrawn this summer.
You are aware that Saddam did purchase over 750 tons of yellowcake from
Africa.??
Because you say he did?
--
A hard truth appears to have escaped the notice of the public and received
scant attention from the media: Bush is the first president in American
history to use deceptive propaganda as his main means of communications in
selling his policies. His pattern of deception continues unabated and in
direct conflict with the notion of the public's informed consent that is
central to American democracy.
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/opinion/6378746.htm
.
|
|
|
|
| User: "Jim Vadek" |
|
| Title: Re: In their desire for war the Bush admin *often* ignored the truth. |
29 Oct 2003 08:42:38 PM |
|
|
"Boner the Cat" <boner33(n-spam)@tampabay.rr.com> wrote in message
news:3SZnb.54901$RP2.6559@twister.tampabay.rr.com...
Twice in the fall of 2002, the CIA prevented White House officials from
making the claim that Iraq tried to buy uranium in Africa. But the
allegation made it into the president's State of the Union and other
officials' public remarks. It was only withdrawn this summer.
You are aware that Saddam did purchase over 750 tons of yellowcake from
Africa.??
Yes, and we found WMD's in Iraq too...
.
|
|
|
|
| User: "Sid9" |
|
| Title: Re: In their desire for war the Bush admin *often* ignored the truth. |
30 Oct 2003 09:22:08 AM |
|
|
Are you using Flush Limbo's left over pills?
-
-
-
-
"Boner the Cat" <boner33(n-spam)@tampabay.rr.com> wrote in message
news:3SZnb.54901$RP2.6559@twister.tampabay.rr.com...
Twice in the fall of 2002, the CIA prevented White House officials from
making the claim that Iraq tried to buy uranium in Africa. But the
allegation made it into the president's State of the Union and other
officials' public remarks. It was only withdrawn this summer.
You are aware that Saddam did purchase over 750 tons of yellowcake from
Africa.??
Are you using Flush Limbo's left over pills?
.
|
|
|
|
| User: "Stanley F. Nelson" |
|
| Title: Re: In their desire for war the Bush admin *often* ignored the truth. |
30 Oct 2003 08:00:55 AM |
|
|
Our war in Iraq never had anything to do with "truth." It was and is only
about getting Bush elected in 2004. If the Iraq mess isn't helping to do
that, then we can be very sure of being in another active war someplace as
the 2004 election approaches, for no reason other than to try to make Bush
look like a "wartime president," which is an utter impossibility. He cannot
look like anything other than what he is -- a spoiled rich kid, a dried out
drunk, in something he can never understand. We need a president. Bush
certainly is not one.
Stanley F. Nelson
Dallas.
.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Related Articles |
|
|
