posted on June 29, 2003 03:47:13 PM new
MEDIA ADVISORY:
Media Silent on Clark's 9/11 Comments:
Gen. says White House pushed Saddam link without evidence
June 20, 2003
Sunday morning talk shows like ABC's This Week or Fox News Sunday often
make news for days afterward. Since prominent government officials
dominate the guest lists of the programs, it is not unusual for the Monday
editions of major newspapers to report on interviews done by the Sunday
chat shows.
But the June 15 edition of NBC's Meet the Press was unusual for the buzz
that it didn't generate. Former General Wesley Clark told anchor Tim
Russert that Bush administration officials had engaged in a campaign to
implicate Saddam Hussein in the September 11 attacks-- starting that very
day. Clark said that he'd been called on September 11 and urged to link
Baghdad to the terror attacks, but declined to do so because of a lack of
evidence.
Here is a transcript of the exchange:
---
CLARK: "There was a concerted effort during the fall of 2001, starting
immediately after 9/11, to pin 9/11 and the terrorism problem on Saddam
Hussein."
RUSSERT: "By who? Who did that?"
CLARK: "Well, it came from the White House, it came from people around the
White House. It came from all over. I got a call on 9/11. I was on CNN,
and I got a call at my home saying, 'You got to say this is connected.
This has to be connected to Saddam
Hussein.' I said, 'But--I'm willing to say it, but what's your evidence?'
And I never got any evidence."
---
Clark's assertion corroborates a little-noted CBS Evening News story that
aired on September 4, 2002. As correspondent David Martin reported:
"Barely five hours after American Airlines Flight 77 plowed into the
Pentagon, the secretary of defense was telling his aides to start thinking
about striking Iraq, even though there was no evidence linking Saddam
Hussein to the attacks." According to CBS, a Pentagon aide's notes from
that day quote Rumsfeld asking for the "best info fast" to "judge whether
good enough to hit SH at the same time, not only UBL." (The initials SH
and UBL stand for Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden.) The notes then
quote Rumsfeld as demanding, ominously, that the administration's response
"go massive...sweep it all up, things related and not."
Despite its implications, Martin's report was greeted largely with silence
when it aired. Now, nine months later, media are covering damaging
revelations about the Bush administration's intelligence on Iraq, yet
still seem strangely reluctant to pursue stories suggesting that the
flawed intelligence-- and therefore the war-- may have been a result of
deliberate deception, rather than incompetence. The public deserves a
fuller accounting of this story.
posted on June 29, 2003 04:50:40 PM new
Clark is the one I would like to see run for president. He hasn't said an all out NO yet but time is slipping away for him. I don't think he would have any problems beating ANY of the democrats out there right now. Him and Clinton would make for one hell of a battle for the seat but they both seem determined not to run yet. Sadly they would be the best two for the job.
posted on June 29, 2003 04:56:17 PM new
Actually he said he is considering it. Hell probobly wind up being drafted.
I think him and Sen. John Kerry would have a close election. Im not sure which one id vote for. Both are strong in national security and basically have similar policies. Kerry is strong in economics. I havent heard Wesley Clarks economic plans yet but Im sure they are similar to Kerry's
[ edited by bigcitycollectables on Jun 29, 2003 04:57 PM ]
posted on June 29, 2003 05:25:37 PM new
I've seen Clark touch briefly on economics but not in depth like would be needed. He has a strong head on his shoulders and speaks his mind . I am sure I surprised some on this board saying I'd vote for him over bush since I have backed bush on some things on this board. I would still vote bush over most of the democrats offered at this time but if clark or clinton jumped in then I would in all probability swing my vote that way. I really am not a big fan of kerry myself
posted on June 29, 2003 06:22:02 PM new
I couldn't vote for someone simply because I don't like the other candidate. Thats what has lead to all the negative campaigns that saturate our elections now. No one cares to tell you their views anymore all they want to do is say how "evil" their opponent is. Hell for that matter a GREAT number of people can't tell you thier choices views on important matters or why they are voting for them. All they can say is why they are not voting for someone else. That doesn't lead to solid leadership and people wonder why thier uninformed descisions leads to a candidate that doesn't support the views they like,then they don't change they just stay the course and vote in the next "put your name here" because he is note candidate A. Not saying that anyone in particualr here does that but just an overall view of the state of elections right now.
posted on June 29, 2003 06:40:17 PM new
Actually thats what Fox News wants you to believe. They want you to think that all the democrats do is bash Bush.
If you actually watch their speeches they mostly talk about their vision and policies for the country. That why I choose Kerry.
The reason they bash Bush is becouse just like all other democrats and most Independance they are pissed off at that the Halliburton administration is ruining the country.
[ edited by bigcitycollectables on Jun 29, 2003 06:41 PM ]
posted on June 29, 2003 07:39:16 PM new
actually I don't watch much fox news and I believe what I want and not what anyone tells me I should.I could care less about a parties affiliation as it has ZERO to do with any of my voting habits as I have NEVER voted strictly party lines. I base that on the last contested seat in my home state and many others like it. It was a major play for both parties and loads of money was put in on both sides. I recived nine pamplhets total 5 from one party and 4 from the others. There was ZERO mention of the supported candidates name on any of the pamphlets, just the required small republican or democratic ID that is required. Each pamphlet did nothing but bash the other. All this mail and all the paid news print and radio play and almost NEVER a mention of what either candidate stood for. this race and most like it are not run on issues at all. Harp all you want but that is the very sad fact of the matter. Heck post some of those ideas and speeches, you'd probably get a better result from then then the constant cut and paste barrage of negativity. as far as ANY candidates ( of ANY party) go if all they have to offer is pissing, moaning and whining and have no independent clear view of thier ideas and a better future then don't expect my vote.
And please take me up on the "cut and paste some of your prefered candidates ideas of a better tommorrow."Just try and find some that don't bash today. Maybe you'll pull up something I have not read or heard yet and we can vote the same come november. I can see where you are trying to go I just don't think we are taking the same path to get there.
posted on June 29, 2003 08:48:02 PM new
tomyou...I haven't read every candidate's issues yet. I have spent some time reading Edwards'page, which helen links above. There are obviously criticisms of the Bush administration. If Dr. Edwards were real happy about the current administration I doubt he'd be running to oppose it ..however, I see precious little "pissing, moaning and whining".
___________________________________
What luck for the leaders that men do not think. - Adolph Hitler
posted on June 30, 2003 06:41:52 AM new
thanks for the links helen. I would much rather read those than most others posts on the board. Finally some info worth looking at. I guess my main grip is that you never see (political) links such as these on the boards, it all the same ole crap day after day after day. Look at How evil so and so is and look how bad so and so is. Well people, stop complaining and post your solutions to these problems. good job
[ edited by tomyou on Jun 30, 2003 07:07 AM ]
posted on June 30, 2003 01:27:00 PM new
Scandal lurks in shadow of Iraq evidence
By Diane Carman
Denver Post Columnist
Sunday, June 29, 2003 - It's getting harder to ignore. More and more evidence is emerging to suggest that U.S. intelligence was manipulated to justify going to war with Iraq.
Among the allegations:
U.S. officials cited documents provided by foreign ambassadors - documents that they knew to be forgeries - as proof of the existence of an Iraqi nuclear weapons program.
Aluminum tubes and gas centrifuges that President Bush said were used to "enrich uranium for nuclear weapons" had already been determined by the CIA to be ordinary rocket materials too flimsy to handle nuclear material.
Claims by the administration that Iraq had unmanned aerial vehicles capable of delivering deadly biological agents around the world to the U.S. were known to be false; analysts estimated they didn't have the range even to reach Tel Aviv.
Vice President Dick Cheney had visited CIA headquarters several times in the months before the war to pressure analysts to find evidence that would justify an attack on Iraq.
And evidence that there was no connection between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda was deliberately withheld from Congress and the public in an attempt to mislead everyone about the danger Iraq posed.
Several members of the Senate Intelligence Committee, including Democrats Bob Graham, D-Fla., and Richard Durbin, D-Ill., told The New Republic that they knew that evidence contradicting the Bush administration's claims had been concealed, but they were unable to reveal it because it was classified.
Still, Congress, which spent $80 million to prove that, yes, Bill Clinton did have sexual relations with that woman, has yet to order an investigation.
Rep. Diana DeGette claims to know why.
"It's obvious. It's because the Republicans control Congress and the White House," the Colorado Democrat said.
Last week, she called for a bipartisan investigation to determine if there was a "massive intelligence failure" leading up to the war in Iraq.
Either there never was the irrefutable evidence of weapons of mass destruction and we were deceived, she said, or the deadly weapons exist in Iraq where Hussein is believed to be hiding and our intelligence is not capable of finding them.
Regardless of which scenario Americans prefer to embrace, it's a troubling situation.
We deserve an explanation.
Before the war, DeGette said, "both (Secretary of State) Colin Powell and the president unequivocally said there were biological, chemical and possibly nuclear weapons that were poised to strike and that created an imminent threat."
In fact, when Powell made his dramatic presentation of the purported evidence against Iraq to the United Nations in February, DeGette admitted that she found it disturbing.
The congresswoman, who had voted against the resolution to go to war with Iraq, said Powell raised "very serious questions" about the danger Iraq posed.
She had company. Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell, R-Colo., called it "shocking."
The public responded similarly.
In the days following Powell's U.N. appearance, polls showed opposition to the pre-emptive war evaporating in the U.S.
Seventy percent of Americans believed that Iraq had chemical and biological weapons. Sixty percent thought the country was developing nuclear weapons.
"On that basis, we went out and attacked another country," DeGette said.
It was the rationale we presented to the world for going to war.
"Now, it's becoming more and more clear that evidence of those weapons never existed," DeGette said.
And while it's unclear whether the intelligence was flawed, misinterpreted or simply manipulated to produce a predetermined outcome, DeGette said, it's clear something went wrong.
"There's one thing the American public doesn't like," she said, "and that's being duped."
If Congress succeeds in stonewalling an investigation, the damage to the intelligence agencies will be severe. Once their integrity is undermined, they become objects of contempt and ridicule.
That's why DeGette predicts that despite her Republican colleagues' loyalty to Bush, Congress ultimately will vote for an investigation.
"The public will demand it," she said.
As the weeks and months go by, if evidence of weapons of mass destruction isn't found in Iraq, containing the scandal will be impossible, she said. The truth will have to emerge.
"This is not about a political gotcha situation," DeGette said.
"One reason people like me are trying to be respectful and not make this into a political issue is that it goes so much deeper than that. This goes to the integrity of our intelligence, the integrity of our foreign policy.
posted on June 30, 2003 02:05:35 PM new
Revealed: How the road to war was paved with lies
Intelligence agencies accuse Bush and Blair of distorting and fabricating evidence in rush to war
By Raymond Whitaker
27 April 2003 The case for invading Iraq to remove its weapons of mass destruction was based on selective use of intelligence, exaggeration, use of sources known to be discredited and outright fabrication, The Independent on Sunday can reveal.
A high-level UK source said last night that intelligence agencies on both sides of the Atlantic were furious that briefings they gave political leaders were distorted in the rush to war with Iraq. "They ignored intelligence assessments which said Iraq was not a threat," the source said. Quoting an editorial in a Middle East newspaper which said, "Washington has to prove its case. If it does not, the world will for ever believe that it paved the road to war with lies", he added: "You can draw your own conclusions."
UN inspectors who left Iraq just before the war started were searching for four categories of weapons: nuclear, chemical, biological and missiles capable of flying beyond a range of 93 miles. They found ample evidence that Iraq was not co-operating, but none to support British and American assertions that Saddam Hussein's regime posed an imminent threat to the world.
Some American officials have all but conceded that the weapons of mass destruction campaign was simply a means to an end -- a "global show of American power and democracy: as ABC News in the US put it. "We were not lying," it was told by one official. "But it was just a matter of emphasis."
American and British teams claim they are scouring Iraq in search of definitive evidence but none has so bar been found, even though the sites considered more promising have been searched, as senior figures such as Tariq Aziz, the former Deputy Prime Minister, intelligence chiefs and the man believed to be in charge of Iraq's chemical weapons programme are in custody.
posted on June 30, 2003 02:12:07 PM new
Who Lost the WMD?
As the weapons hunt intensifies, so does the finger pointing. A preview of the coming battle
By MASSIMO CALABRESI AND TIMOTHY J. BURGER
ERIC DRAPER/THE WHITE HOUSE/AP
QUESTION TIME: Bush huddles with Bremer and Franks in Doha, Qatar
Sunday, Jun. 29, 2003
Meeting last month at a sweltering U.S. base outside Doha, Qatar, with his top Iraq commanders, President Bush skipped quickly past the niceties and went straight to his chief political obsession: Where are the weapons of mass destruction? Turning to his Baghdad proconsul, Paul Bremer, Bush asked, "Are you in charge of finding WMD?" Bremer said no, he was not. Bush then put the same question to his military commander, General Tommy Franks. But Franks said it wasn't his job either. A little exasperated, Bush asked, So who is in charge of finding WMD? After aides conferred for a moment, someone volunteered the name of Stephen Cambone, a little-known deputy to Donald Rumsfeld, back in Washington. Pause. "Who?" Bush asked.
It seems as if just about everyone has questions these days about the missing WMD. Did U.S. intelligence officials—or their civilian bosses—overstate the evidence of weapons before the war? And if some intelligence officials expressed skepticism about WMD, who ignored them? For the past several weeks, the usually lockstep Bush Administration has done its best to maintain a unified front in the face of these queries. Whenever asked, Administration officials have replied that the weapons will turn up eventually. But as the search drags on through its third largely futile month, the blame game in Washington has gone into high gear. And as Bush's allies and enemies alike on Capitol Hill begin to pick apart some 19 volumes of prewar intelligence and examine them one document at a time, the cohesive Bush team is starting to come apart. "This is a cloud hanging over their credibility, their word," Republican Senate Intelligence Committee member Chuck Hagel told abc News. Here are key questions Congress wants answered:
What Was Cheney's Role?
Lawmakers who once saluted every Bush claim and command are beginning to express doubts. Two congressional panels are opening new rounds of investigations into the Administration's prewar claims about WMD. One of their immediate inquiries, sources tell Time, involves Vice President Dick Cheney's role in reviewing the intelligence before the bombing started. Cheney made repeated visits to the CIA in the prelude to the war, going over intelligence assessments with the analysts who produced them. Some Democrats say Cheney's visits may have amounted to pressure on the normally cautious agency. Cheney's defenders insist that his visits merely showed the importance of the issue and that an honest analyst wouldn't feel pressure to twist intelligence. The House intelligence committee (and possibly its Senate counterpart, sources say) plans to question the CIA analysts who briefed Cheney, and that could lead to calling Cheney's hard-line aides and perhaps the Veep himself to testify.
Is Powell Trying To Have It Both Ways?
Secretary of State Colin Powell, who staked his reputation on his February declaration at the U.N. about Saddam Hussein's arms program, is also feeling the heat. Powell's aides fanned out after that performance to say the Secretary had gone to the CIA and scrubbed every piece of intelligence to make certain it was solid. But since then, little of Powell's presentation has been proved by evidence on the ground, and last week his aides were on the defensive over a memo from the State Department's intelligence bureau that questioned whether two Iraqi trailers discovered in April were mobile bioweapons labs, as Powell has asserted. Questionable intelligence that made it into Powell's February speech leaves him particularly vulnerable. Expect a push by Democrats, and perhaps some Republicans, to seek Powell's testimony too.
Will Tenet Be Left Holding the Bag?
CIA Director George Tenet is faring a bit better. The House committee's top Democrat, Jane Harman, noted last week that "caveats and qualifiers" Tenet raised in prewar intelligence about Iraq's weapons were "rarely included" in Administration arguments for war. After the awkward Q&A in Doha, Bush put Tenet in charge of the WMD hunt. Tenet in turn hired a former U.N. weapons inspector, David Kay, to run the search, but Tenet and Kay have a lot of ground to make up fast. Tenet, sources say, recently conceded to the House panel that the CIA should have done more to warn that finding WMD could be a drawn-out process. Tenet got a reprieve last week when an Iraqi scientist who had hidden parts and documents for nuclear-weapons production in his backyard for 12 years came forward. Tenet's usually behind-the-scenes CIA suddenly became very public in trumpeting the importance of the discovery, if only to remind people how hard illicit weapons would be to find. But Tenet's hot zone isn't Baghdad; it's Capitol Hill. He canceled testimony before the Senate committee last week, citing a schedule conflict. If he doesn't find any weapons, he needs to find a way not to be blamed.
Bush officials believe that time and history are on their side. They argue that now that Saddam is gone, Americans don't care very much about finding WMD. They also say it is only a matter of time before more evidence of weapons materials and programs emerges. And when that occurs, they contend, all their opponents will look as silly as they did when they argued that the war was going badly in its second week. "The Dems are looking for an issue, but I think they're making a mistake," says a senior Administration official.
Democrats do sense a possibly potent campaign theme, but they run the risk of appearing to politicize a sensitive national-security issue as they try to prove the Administration has a credibility gap. But Democrats are not alone in feeling as though they may have been sandbagged on the evidence before the war began. Sources say g.o.p. Senate Intelligence Committee members Olympia Snowe and Hagel have privately questioned the Administration's handling of prewar intelligence. The Republican-held House voted last week to order the CIA to report back on "lessons learned" from the buildup to war in Iraq. The House and Senate intelligence-committee leaders have agreed to coordinate their probes loosely to avoid unnecessary duplication of effort. In a rare move, the House panel quietly voted on June 12 to grant all 435 Representatives access to the Iraq intelligence, although a Capitol Hill source said fewer than 10 members outside the committee had reviewed the material.
Administration officials have a further concern about where all these questions are leading. They fear that any problem with the prewar intelligence could undermine Bush's ability to continue his muscular campaign against terrorism overseas. The Administration has argued that to counter new kinds of threats posed by terrorists, rogue states and WMD, it has to be able to act pre-emptively. But pre-emption requires excellent intelligence, and the whole doctrine is undermined if the intelligence is wrong—or confected. "Intelligence takes on an even more important role than in the past because you can't wait until you see an enemy army massing anymore," says former Clinton Deputy National Security Adviser James Steinberg. But if WMD don't turn up and the Administration wants to act elsewhere, it may find that the enemy massing against it is public opinion at home.
..however, I see precious little "pissing, moaning and whining".
