After discredited report, fingerpointing abounds inside Bush administration
WASHINGTON (AP) The Bush administration is engaged in frantic fingerpointing as it tries to explain how its handling of faulty intelligence on allegations of Iraqi nuclear smuggling produced so few red flags.
The State Department and CIA both had information as early as March 2002 casting doubt on British claims that Iraq was seeking uranium in Africa.
Yet the White House says neither CIA Director George Tenet nor Secretary of State Colin Powell stopped President Bush from using now-discredited British intelligence as a justification for the war.
A former diplomat hired by the CIA to check into the merits of the allegations has added his own twist. He says Vice President Dick Cheney's office knew in 2002 that the diplomat was unable to substantiate the intelligence.
Whatever the case, the allegation made it into Bush's State of the Union address in January, then was abruptly dropped a month later when it was learned the information came from forged documents.
posted on July 11, 2003 02:32:56 PM new
CNN is taking a poll on the question, "Whom do you blame for the mistake in the president's State of the Union address on Iraq?" Answer choices are, President Bush, British intelligence or the CIA.
So what, big deal, all this proves is that there are 13,966 LEFTIES out there who, instead of WORKING are sitting on their greedy welfare sucking butts surfing for porno and trying to pick up other homos on the internet, so they took time to go vote against the President they know has them in his sights!!.Proves zip, zilch, nada.
___________________________________
What luck for the leaders that men do not think. - Adolph Hitler
posted on July 11, 2003 05:10:25 PM new
LOL! Democrats are trying to turn a bad piece of intelligence into a vast right wing conspiracy? Democrats are getting desperate.
Everyone knows that the CIA has not performing well. Is it Bush's fault? No. The Democrats gutted the CIA in the 90's and that's reason why the CIA is having problems.
posted on July 11, 2003 05:12:16 PM new"So what, big deal, all this proves is that there are 13,966 LEFTIES out there who, instead of WORKING are sitting on their greedy welfare sucking butts surfing for porno and trying to pick up other homos on the internet, so they took time to go vote against the President they know has them in his sights!!.Proves zip, zilch, nada."
Ebayauctionguy says it's still the Democrat's fault. Looks like the Republicans just can't get control of anything. LOL! After Three years they are still Victims. Hahaha!
posted on July 11, 2003 05:25:58 PM new
The republicans arent the enemy. Its the neo cons. The republicans in the house and senate are agaisnt Bush. They say he and his administartion are not republicans.
posted on July 11, 2003 08:51:43 PM new
The point of all this colin; is to circulate facts (propaganda if you like) about your illustrious, low IQ, draft dodgin’, excuse shuflin’, oil intere$ted, education & health minimising, election rig’in, war seek’in, hang'in, murderous etc etc leader.
In an effort to enlighten swinging voters to make a more informed choice and thereby doing away with him, in preference to someone that may even have controversial sexual issues rather than murderous ones.
Not that you would care about killing anyone other than you or yours.
One senior defense official told Knight Ridder that the failure of Pentagon civilians to set specific objectives - short-, medium- and long-term - for Iraq's stabilization and reconstruction after Saddam Hussein's regime fell even left U.S. military commanders uncertain about how many and what kinds of troops would be needed after the war.
In contrast, years before World War II ended, American planners plotted extraordinarily detailed blueprints for administering postwar Germany and Japan, designing everything from rebuilt economies to law enforcement and democratic governments.
Today, American forces face instability in Iraq, where they are losing soldiers almost daily to escalating guerrilla attacks, the cost of occupation is exploding to almost $4 billion a month and withdrawal appears untold years away.
posted on July 12, 2003 06:46:12 AM new
Helens on a roll.!..You go girl!..
I just hope some will take the time to read,and possibly understand what is still at stake.
All the opinion polls are taking a dive,some people have come out of their comas.
SECRETARY OF Defense Donald Rumsfeld stands at the head of the table. He has outmaneuvered all his Cabinet rivals and taken over many of the functions that used to belong to the State Department, the CIA, even the Justice Department. He dominates the Cabinet as no secretary of defense has done since Robert McNamara. He is also articulate, refreshingly if undiplomatically blunt, with a no-nonsense approach that is at times both witty and exactly to the point.
His deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, is often mentioned as the most brilliant person in government. He is perhaps the most influential deputy in modern times, at the top of his game. He has seen his vision of toppling Saddam Hussein fulfilled, and he is an intellectual force behind a whole new way of looking at US foreign policy.
The Iraq campaign, of which they were in charge, has been grossly mishandled. I use the word campaign because the overthrow of Saddam's army and regime was only the opening phase in what has to be, if this country is to maintain any credibility, an open and democratic society in Iraq. This may yet happen, but the current leadership of the Pentagon, through a fatal combination of hubris and incompetence, has so far bungled the job. If there were any accountability in the Bush administration, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz would be asked to resign.
First, the Pentagon civilians ignored advice early on from military men that more troops would be needed for the operation. This miscalculation of necessary troop strength left the lines of supply dangerously unguarded as American troops sped toward Baghdad. Once Baghdad fell, it was painfully obvious that there were not enough troops to maintain order.
Second, what policing was done had to be done by combat troops who are trained to kill, not police, so when demonstrations started, their only response was to shoot into the crowd. Rumsfeld dismissed the horrendous post-combat looting as just something that comes along with freedom - a comment that will remain around his neck like an albatross as the political and security situation in Iraq deteriorates. As the respected International Crisis Group said in a recent report: ''Even senior American civilians in Baghdad express consternation at the near-total absence of advance preparations for dealing with postwar needs.''
The Pentagon seems to have believed that Iraqi army units and policemen would come over to the American side with their forces intact and begin working for the Americans. It seems not to have occurred to them that another scenario might unfold, that the soldiers and police would simply melt away and that chaos would take over. The great failure of Pentagon planning was that there was no Plan B if Plan A failed. After trying to run Iraq on the cheap, Rumsfeld this week doubled his estimates for the cost of maintaining troops in Iraq.
It is not as if the Pentagon was not warned. In the lead-up to war, there were many voices from experienced experts and think tanks warning that the United States would need a substantial military police force to go in right after the troops. All were ignored, just as Robert McNamara ignored all advice about Indochina, only to say years later that he never knew.
Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz presided over what one diplomat calls a ''colossal miscalculation'' that may have more impact on this country than did the miscalculation at the Bay of Pigs four decades ago. All the effort that the armed forces took not to destroy vital civilian infrastructure went for naught because all was destroyed by postcombat looting. Although American soldiers quickly secured the Oil Ministry in Baghdad, nothing was done to protect museums, hospitals, vital offices - even nuclear facilities where radioactive material might have fallen into terrorist hands. Vital records that might have led us to weapons of mass destruction were also destroyed.
The damage done is incalculable, and not just in material terms. The political damage has been worse and will be far more lasting in its consequences. The Pentagon civilian leadership has squandered much of the good will that Iraqis felt after the yoke of the Ba'ath Party was lifted. Policy is in drift. Forces that are inimical to American interests are rushing in to fill that vacuum.
posted on July 12, 2003 08:32:07 PM new
IMPEACH THEM NOW AMERICA, SAVE YOURSELF BEFORE IT'S TOO LATE
Impeachment courage
"Bad Cop," a letter by Carl W. McBrayer (Forum, July 8), was the best-written description of George W. Bush's actions over the past few months in the Iraqi situation that I have read.
George W. Bush has not lead this nation in a diplomatic fashion since he took office. Let's face it, he rode into the White House on his father's coattails and a large bank account. It's a shame that the most powerful office in the world can be bought. There are a lot of qualified people in this country who should hold that office on the merits of their knowledge and charisma.
My hope is that people are understanding what this administration is doing to America's image and economy and are not being swayed by the vote-buying tax refunds that George is so happy to give back some of your own money while increasing the debt another $35 billion. A complete overhaul in the White House is needed immediately.
Unfortunately, we cannot do anything about it until November 2004. Unless someone in Congress would find the courage to start impeachment proceedings for the blatant lies we were told many times over about "Weapons of Mass Destruction."
CIA Director George J. Tenet successfully intervened with White House officials to have a reference to Iraq seeking uranium from Niger removed from a presidential speech last October, three months before a less specific reference to the same intelligence appeared in the State of the Union address, according to senior administration officials.
Tenet argued personally to White House officials, including deputy national security adviser Stephen Hadley, that the allegation should not be used because it came from only a single source, according to one senior official. Another senior official with knowledge of the intelligence said the CIA had doubts about the accuracy of the documents underlying the allegation, which months later turned out to be forged.
The new disclosure suggests how eager the White House was in January to make Iraq's nuclear program a part of its case against Saddam Hussein even in the face of earlier objections by its own CIA director. It also appears to raise questions about the administration's explanation of how the faulty allegations were included in the State of the Union speech.
posted on July 13, 2003 10:58:42 AM new
Its not going to stop there. Just wait till the 9-11 commission gives their report. There are also alot of intellegance officials coming forward saying they were pressured into manipulating intellegance.
posted on July 13, 2003 10:59:47 AM new
It's on the front page of my state newspaper today, that not only did the White House know well before January that the African uranium deal was a hoax, they also knew that the links between Iraq and al-qaeda were somewhere between tenuous and non existent. These are the two most serious claims made for going to war with Iraq and we were lied to about both of them. I don't think the President is going to be able to shake these easily.
___________________________________
What luck for the leaders that men do not think. - Adolph Hitler
posted on July 13, 2003 11:08:29 AM new
I too am curious where the chips will fall. Although Tenet made a statement sort of taking blame he has failed to fall on his sword for his fearful leader. The White House is still trying to cling to some sort of plausible deny-ability similar to the position taken during the Iran Contra scandal.
"Dissembling over peccadillos is pathetic. Dissembling over pre-emptive strikes is pathological, given over 200 Americans dead and 1,000 wounded in Iraq, and untold numbers of dead Iraqis. Our troops are in "a shooting gallery," as Teddy Kennedy put it, and our spy agencies warn that we are on the cusp of a new round of attacks by Saddam snipers."
....In office, they have stonewalled the 9/11 families on the events that preceded the attacks, and the American public on how — and why — they maneuvered the nation into the Iraqi war.
posted on July 13, 2003 07:42:56 PM new Senator Jay Rockefeller, from an interview today on NPR ...
"I cannot believe that Condi Rice...
directly, from Africa, pointed the
finger at George Tenet, when she
had known -- had to have known -- a
year before the State of the Union."
"The entire intelligence community
has been very skeptical about this
from the very beginning," Rockefeller
says. "And she has her own director
of intelligence, she has her own Iraq
and Africa specialists, and it's just
beyond me that she didn't know
about this, and that she has decided
to make George Tenet the fall
person. I think it's dishonorable."
posted on July 13, 2003 08:23:36 PM new
Is he the antichrist ?
If we give a vale of (1_for_a) (2_for_b) (3_for_c) etc…
George = 57
Walker =75
Bush = 50
Sum = 132
1+3+2 =6
Or Even
1X3X2 = 6
Lordy Lordy 6 !!!!; It’s the Devil’s Number !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!: 6
I even used an Excel Work sheet to work it out,,, So its an Empirical Analysis!!!!
Don’t let the devil hide behind a screen of smoke.!!
I mean even look at some that preach praise for him, like Reverend Colin
If it’s Evil: Pluck it Out.
