April 18, 2006
Evelyn Pringle
Now that we've spent millions of tax dollars on the CIA leak investigation, here’s a new bit of information that adds a whole new twist to the saga.
According to a recent article by ace investigative reporter, Jason Leopold, Dick Cheney met with Bush in early June 2003, and told him that CIA agent Valerie Plame was the wife of Iraq war critic Joe Wilson and that she was responsible for sending Joe on a fact-finding mission to check out reports about Iraq's attempt to purchase uranium from Africa.
And the chat wasn't limited to Bush and Cheney. “Other White House officials who also attended the meeting with Cheney and President Bush,” Jason reports, “included former White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card, then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, her former deputy Stephen Hadley, and Deputy White House Chief of Staff Karl Rove.”
Furthermore, Jason says, during the second half of June 2003, Rove, Card, and other officials from Cheney's office kept Bush apprised on the progress of the campaign to discredit Wilson, in emails and internal White House memos, no less, some of which were only recently turned over to the special prosecutor's office, Jason says.
No wonder Libby is so ticked off. Cheney and Bush got the ball rolling and the whole gang was involved in the planning and execution of the plot, yet Scooters the one on the outside looking in and facing a possible 30-year prison term.
So, the big question is, how many members of the Wilson-Plame-assassination-squad have been interviewed by the FBI, how many have testified under oath before the grand jury, and most importantly for Bush and Cheney, how many have been able to stick to the same story.
Jason says that 36 administration officials have been interviewed which means 36 people would have to stay on message and repeat the same talking points. This would take a miracle.
Also, according to Jason’s sources, during Bush's interview with the special prosecutor, he did not fess up to the fact that he was aware of the campaign to discredit Wilson and said he did not know who had leaked Valerie’s name to the media.
On June 24, 2004, Bush was interviewed for about 70 minutes. The only other member of the Bush team in the room during the meeting was Jim Sharp, the private lawyer that Bush hired, according to White House press secretary, Scott McClellan.
"The leaking of classified information is a very serious matter," McClellan told reporters at the time. "No one wants to get to the bottom of this matter more than the president of the United States," he said.
I like that line, "no one wants to get to the bottom of this matter" more than Bush.
Yea sure. In a book released around the same time as Bush's interview, Joe Wilson, pointed the finger at Scooter Libby as the leaker, and the White House not only adamantly denied the claim, it accused Wilson of trying to bolster John Kerry's campaign.
If its any consolation to Fitzgerald, the President's memory was no better on September 30, 2003, a year before his interview, when talking to reporters at the University of Chicago. Bush never once mentioned the little group-think sessions in the White House to them either.
Instead, he just kept repeating the same talking points until he sounded like a drunk three sheets to the wind. But then who knows, maybe he was.
In reading Bush's statements, its important to understand that the sole issue raised by reporters was the question of who leaked Valerie's identify to the media, nothing about classified documents or anything else. So every comment refers to that issue only.
When a reporter asked, “Do you think that the Justice Department can conduct an impartial investigation, considering the political ramifications of the CIA leak, and why wouldn't a special counsel be better?”
Bush completely skirted the question, and swung into his well-rehearsed talking points.
"Let me just say something about leaks in Washington," he said. "There are too many leaks of classified information in Washington," he told reporters.
"There's leaks at the executive branch," he said, "there's leaks in the legislative branch."
"There's just too many leaks," Bush stated. "And if there is a leak out of my administration," he said, "I want to know who it is."
But apparently here lies the catch-all legal loop-hole phrase. "And if the person has violated law,” Bush said, “the person will be taken care of.”
"I have told our administration, people in my administration to be fully cooperative," he assured reporters.
In light of Jason‘s findings above, this particular comment has me concerned that maybe Dick Cheney, Andy Card, Condi Rice, Stephen Hadley, and Karl Rove are all deaf.
"I want to know the truth," the President proclaimed.
I found this statement extremely comical, coming from a pathological liar who cheated his way into the White House to begin with and then rigged the next election to get a second term.
That said, Bush put on an Oscar-winning performance for the reporters in Chicago when he was practically begging for anyone with information about the CIA leak to come forward.
"If anybody has got any information inside our administration or outside our administration," he said, "it would be helpful if they came forward with the information so we can find out whether or not these allegations are true and get on about the business."
When a reporter started to ask whether he had talked to Karl Rove and whether he had confidence in Karl....
The President cut him off and went right back to the talking points. "Listen," he stuttered, "I know of nobody -- I don't know of anybody in my administration who leaked classified information."
"If somebody did leak classified information," he continued, "I'd like to know it, and we'll take the appropriate action."
"And this investigation is a good thing," he lied through his teeth and said.
"And again I repeat," he said, like a broken record, "you know, Washington is a town where there's all kinds of allegations."
"You've heard much of the allegations," the President said. "And if people have got solid information," Bush pleaded again, "please come forward with it."
"And that would be people inside the information who are the so-called anonymous sources," he stuttered on, "or people outside the information -- outside the administration."
The guy almost sounds sincere when he says he wants to wrap the situation up quickly.
"And we can clarify this thing very quickly," Bush said, "if people who have got solid evidence would come forward and speak out."
"And I would hope they would," he added. "And then we'll get to the bottom of this and move on."
He obviously was up all night rehearsing because he went right back to the mantra a third time about how, "leaks of classified information are a bad thing."
How there's "too much leaking in Washington," and on and on like a drunken slob.
"I've spoken out consistently against them," he said, "and I want to know who the leakers are."
I think Jason Leopold should go talk to Bush. The poor guy's been begging for somebody to come forward with this information for 3 years.
Showing posts with label Rice. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Rice. Show all posts
Sunday, August 1, 2010
Saturday, July 31, 2010
Which Soldier Will Be The Last To Die For Bush?
Evelyn Pringle March 31, 2006
The war in Iraq is a mistake. No it's worse than a mistake. Lets quit pussy-footing around and call it like it is. The war in Iraq is a grand profiteering scheme gone awry and Americans need to take off their blinders and face the truth.
As the cost of the war leaves a deeper black hole of debt for our great-grandchildren, people need to ask themselves whether the hundreds of billions spent thus far have helped anyone other than reconstruction companies and defense contractors. It takes no thought, the answer is no.
And after that, to paraphrase a powerful John Kerry comment from the Viet Nam era, Americans need think about which soldier will be the last to die for this mistake.
Day in and day out, Bush is on TV saying we will not withdraw from Iraq. How much longer will Americans put up with this bumbling idiot?
The rumblings for impeachment are getting louder and for good reason. The British memo released this week on Bush's conversation with Tony Blair in January 2003, not only proves that Bush planned to take the country to war using whatever lies he deemed necessary, it also proves that there was no plan for post-war Iraq.
Bush is throwing good money after bad like a compulsive gambler, as our troops get sucked deeper and deeper into a bloody quagmire. The situation in Iraq has elevated beyond a disaster and all Bush wants to do is sink more tax dollars into the same failed policies that brought us to this point.
Over the past 6 months, we have heard a lot of accusations about "revisionist history" from Bush and his minions in answer to those who dare to question whether there ever was a real threat from Iraq.
However, there is an abundance of evidence that administration officials sought to portray Iraq as a deadly threat to the American people in the run-up to war. But as we now know, there is a great difference between the hand-picked intelligence that was presented to Congress and the American people when compared to what was actually in Iraq.
Americans were fed a fairy tale about fighting a war of liberation that would be short, cheap, and bloodless. The Bush administration was like a pied piper as it lead the nation into the Iraq disaster.
In hindsight, what is particularly troublesome is how naively the nation followed.
Looking back, there were countless examples of provocative rhetoric as they lead the country to war in Iraq. In his 2002 State of the Union Address, Bush coined the phrase "Axis of Evil," while pointing at Iraq, Iran, and North Korea.
In October 2002, the White House Press Secretary said regime change in Iraq could be accomplished with "the cost of one bullet."
On March 17, in his final speech to the American people before the invasion, Bush took one last opportunity to bolster his case for war. The centerpiece of his argument was the same message he brought to the UN months before, and the same message he hammered home at every opportunity in the intervening months, namely that Saddam had failed to destroy the WMDs and presented an imminent danger to the American people.
"Intelligence gathered by this and other governments," he said, "leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised."
In a public address on March 19, 2003, Bush told the world: "Our nation enters this conflict reluctantly -- yet, our purpose is sure. The people of the United States and our friends and allies will not live at the mercy of an outlaw regime that threatens the peace with weapons of mass murder."
Three years have passed, and the US has yet to find a single shred of evidence to confirm the official reason that our country was sent to war; namely, that Iraq's WMDs constituted a grave threat to the US.
On January 28, 2003, Bush said in his State of the Union Address: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."
We now know that the CIA said that claim was false as early as March 2002 and that the International Atomic Energy Agency had also discredited the allegation. But they just went ahead and used it anyways.
On February 5, Colin Powell told the United Nations Security Council: "Our conservative estimate is that Iraq today has a stockpile of between 100 and 500 tons of chemical weapons agent. That is enough to fill 16,000 battlefield rockets."
In a radio address on February 8, 2003, Bush told the nation: "We have sources that tell us that Saddam Hussein recently authorized Iraqi field commanders to use chemical weapons – the very weapons the dictator tells us he does not have."
The fact is, after 3 years, we have not found any of these items, nor have we found those thousands of rockets loaded with chemical weapons.
On March 30, 2003, Rumsfeld said in an interview on This Week, of the search for WMDs: "We know where they are. They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south, and north somewhat."
However, Baghdad fell on April 9, 2003, and Tikrit on April 14, 2003, and the intelligence Rumsfeld spoke of has not led to any WMDs.
Whether or not intelligence reports were bent, stretched, or fabricated to make Iraq look like an imminent threat, it is clear that the administration's rhetoric played upon the fear of the American people about future terrorism attacks.
But, under close scrutiny, most of the statements had nothing to do with intelligence; the were merely designed to prey on public fear. Through smoke and mirrors, the face of bin Laden was morphed into that of Saddam. Bush himself blurred the image in his January 28, 2003, State of the Union Address when he said:
"Imagine those 19 hijackers with other weapons and other plans – this time armed by Saddam Hussein. It would take one vial, one canister, one crate slipped into this country to bring a day of horror like none we have ever known."
Not only did the administration warn about more hijackers carrying deadly chemicals, it even went so far as to say that in the time it would take for UN inspectors to find 'smoking gun' evidence of Saddam's illegal weapons, the US was at risk of a nuclear attack.
Condoleeza Rice by the Los Angeles Times, was quoted as saying on September 9, 2002: "We don't want the 'smoking gun' to be a mushroom cloud."
Talk about fabrication, where did the term mushroom cloud come from? What was this statement based on?
On September 26, 2002, just two weeks before Congress voted on a resolution, Bush himself pushed the case that Iraq was plotting to attack the US. After meeting with members of Congress that day, Bush said:
"The danger to our country is grave. The danger to our country is growing. The Iraqi regime possesses biological and chemical weapons.... The regime is seeking a nuclear bomb, and with fissile material, could build one within a year."
These are his words. Bush said Saddam is "seeking a nuclear bomb." Has he ever produced any evidence to back up this allegation? No. And, his rhetoric continued that day in the Rose Garden, where he said:
"The dangers we face will only worsen from month to month and from year to year. To ignore these threats is to encourage them. And when they have fully materialized it may be too late to protect ourselves and our friends and our allies. By then the Iraqi dictator would have the means to terrorize and dominate the region. Each passing day could be the one on which the Iraqi regime gives anthrax or VX – nerve gas – or some day a nuclear weapon to a terrorist ally."
And yet, 3 years later, we have not seen a shred of evidence to support this claim of grave dangers, chemical weapons, links to al Qaeda, or nuclear weapons.
Four days before a vote on the resolution, on October 7, 2002, Bush ramped up the scare tactics and stated: "We know that Iraq and the al Qaeda terrorist network share a common enemy – the United States of America. We know that Iraq and al Qaeda have had high-level contacts that go back a decade."
Bush then went even further by saying: "We've learned that Iraq has trained al Qaeda members in bomb-making and poisons and deadly gasses.... Alliance with terrorists could allow the Iraqi regime to attack America without leaving any fingerprints."
During his speech at the Cincinnati Museum Center, he also elaborated on Iraq's nuclear program and said:
"The evidence indicates that Iraq is reconstituting its nuclear weapons program. Saddam Hussein has held numerous meetings with Iraqi nuclear scientists, a group he calls his 'nuclear mujahideen' - his nuclear holy warriors.... If the Iraqi regime is able to produce, buy, or steal an amount of highly enriched uranium a little larger than a single softball, it could have a nuclear weapon in less than a year."
This is the kind of outrageous rhetoric that was given to the American people to justify war with Iraq. This is the same kind of hyped fabricated evidence that was given to Congress to sway its vote on October 11, 2002.
And most importantly these are examples of the same kind charges that the Bush administration now tries to say were never made, like we're deluded idiots.
Saddam is no longer in power. But in reality, so what? The Iraqis are worse off. They still don't even have the basic necessities of life like clean water, sanitation provisions, and electricity. They've had to watch family members imprisoned, tortured, and killed for 3 years without Saddam in charge.
And our soldiers are still dying in record numbers. Not a day goes by that there is not another attack on the troops who are saddled with trying to restore order to a country on the brink of anarchy.
Bush told the American people that we were compelled to go to war to secure our country from a grave threat. Are we safer today than we were on March 18, 2003?
For the first time in history, the US went to war because of intelligence reports claiming that a country posed a grave threat to our nation. We should accept nothing less than a full-scale, wide-open Congressional investigation into the issue of pre-war intelligence on the threat from Iraq.
It is in the compelling national interest to examine what we were told about the threat from Iraq to determine once and for all whether the intelligence was faulty or distorted.
The purpose of such an investigation is not to engage in "revisionist history." It is to get at the truth. The American people have valid questions that deserve to be answered.
The war in Iraq is a mistake. No it's worse than a mistake. Lets quit pussy-footing around and call it like it is. The war in Iraq is a grand profiteering scheme gone awry and Americans need to take off their blinders and face the truth.
As the cost of the war leaves a deeper black hole of debt for our great-grandchildren, people need to ask themselves whether the hundreds of billions spent thus far have helped anyone other than reconstruction companies and defense contractors. It takes no thought, the answer is no.
And after that, to paraphrase a powerful John Kerry comment from the Viet Nam era, Americans need think about which soldier will be the last to die for this mistake.
Day in and day out, Bush is on TV saying we will not withdraw from Iraq. How much longer will Americans put up with this bumbling idiot?
The rumblings for impeachment are getting louder and for good reason. The British memo released this week on Bush's conversation with Tony Blair in January 2003, not only proves that Bush planned to take the country to war using whatever lies he deemed necessary, it also proves that there was no plan for post-war Iraq.
Bush is throwing good money after bad like a compulsive gambler, as our troops get sucked deeper and deeper into a bloody quagmire. The situation in Iraq has elevated beyond a disaster and all Bush wants to do is sink more tax dollars into the same failed policies that brought us to this point.
Over the past 6 months, we have heard a lot of accusations about "revisionist history" from Bush and his minions in answer to those who dare to question whether there ever was a real threat from Iraq.
However, there is an abundance of evidence that administration officials sought to portray Iraq as a deadly threat to the American people in the run-up to war. But as we now know, there is a great difference between the hand-picked intelligence that was presented to Congress and the American people when compared to what was actually in Iraq.
Americans were fed a fairy tale about fighting a war of liberation that would be short, cheap, and bloodless. The Bush administration was like a pied piper as it lead the nation into the Iraq disaster.
In hindsight, what is particularly troublesome is how naively the nation followed.
Looking back, there were countless examples of provocative rhetoric as they lead the country to war in Iraq. In his 2002 State of the Union Address, Bush coined the phrase "Axis of Evil," while pointing at Iraq, Iran, and North Korea.
In October 2002, the White House Press Secretary said regime change in Iraq could be accomplished with "the cost of one bullet."
On March 17, in his final speech to the American people before the invasion, Bush took one last opportunity to bolster his case for war. The centerpiece of his argument was the same message he brought to the UN months before, and the same message he hammered home at every opportunity in the intervening months, namely that Saddam had failed to destroy the WMDs and presented an imminent danger to the American people.
"Intelligence gathered by this and other governments," he said, "leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised."
In a public address on March 19, 2003, Bush told the world: "Our nation enters this conflict reluctantly -- yet, our purpose is sure. The people of the United States and our friends and allies will not live at the mercy of an outlaw regime that threatens the peace with weapons of mass murder."
Three years have passed, and the US has yet to find a single shred of evidence to confirm the official reason that our country was sent to war; namely, that Iraq's WMDs constituted a grave threat to the US.
On January 28, 2003, Bush said in his State of the Union Address: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."
We now know that the CIA said that claim was false as early as March 2002 and that the International Atomic Energy Agency had also discredited the allegation. But they just went ahead and used it anyways.
On February 5, Colin Powell told the United Nations Security Council: "Our conservative estimate is that Iraq today has a stockpile of between 100 and 500 tons of chemical weapons agent. That is enough to fill 16,000 battlefield rockets."
In a radio address on February 8, 2003, Bush told the nation: "We have sources that tell us that Saddam Hussein recently authorized Iraqi field commanders to use chemical weapons – the very weapons the dictator tells us he does not have."
The fact is, after 3 years, we have not found any of these items, nor have we found those thousands of rockets loaded with chemical weapons.
On March 30, 2003, Rumsfeld said in an interview on This Week, of the search for WMDs: "We know where they are. They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south, and north somewhat."
However, Baghdad fell on April 9, 2003, and Tikrit on April 14, 2003, and the intelligence Rumsfeld spoke of has not led to any WMDs.
Whether or not intelligence reports were bent, stretched, or fabricated to make Iraq look like an imminent threat, it is clear that the administration's rhetoric played upon the fear of the American people about future terrorism attacks.
But, under close scrutiny, most of the statements had nothing to do with intelligence; the were merely designed to prey on public fear. Through smoke and mirrors, the face of bin Laden was morphed into that of Saddam. Bush himself blurred the image in his January 28, 2003, State of the Union Address when he said:
"Imagine those 19 hijackers with other weapons and other plans – this time armed by Saddam Hussein. It would take one vial, one canister, one crate slipped into this country to bring a day of horror like none we have ever known."
Not only did the administration warn about more hijackers carrying deadly chemicals, it even went so far as to say that in the time it would take for UN inspectors to find 'smoking gun' evidence of Saddam's illegal weapons, the US was at risk of a nuclear attack.
Condoleeza Rice by the Los Angeles Times, was quoted as saying on September 9, 2002: "We don't want the 'smoking gun' to be a mushroom cloud."
Talk about fabrication, where did the term mushroom cloud come from? What was this statement based on?
On September 26, 2002, just two weeks before Congress voted on a resolution, Bush himself pushed the case that Iraq was plotting to attack the US. After meeting with members of Congress that day, Bush said:
"The danger to our country is grave. The danger to our country is growing. The Iraqi regime possesses biological and chemical weapons.... The regime is seeking a nuclear bomb, and with fissile material, could build one within a year."
These are his words. Bush said Saddam is "seeking a nuclear bomb." Has he ever produced any evidence to back up this allegation? No. And, his rhetoric continued that day in the Rose Garden, where he said:
"The dangers we face will only worsen from month to month and from year to year. To ignore these threats is to encourage them. And when they have fully materialized it may be too late to protect ourselves and our friends and our allies. By then the Iraqi dictator would have the means to terrorize and dominate the region. Each passing day could be the one on which the Iraqi regime gives anthrax or VX – nerve gas – or some day a nuclear weapon to a terrorist ally."
And yet, 3 years later, we have not seen a shred of evidence to support this claim of grave dangers, chemical weapons, links to al Qaeda, or nuclear weapons.
Four days before a vote on the resolution, on October 7, 2002, Bush ramped up the scare tactics and stated: "We know that Iraq and the al Qaeda terrorist network share a common enemy – the United States of America. We know that Iraq and al Qaeda have had high-level contacts that go back a decade."
Bush then went even further by saying: "We've learned that Iraq has trained al Qaeda members in bomb-making and poisons and deadly gasses.... Alliance with terrorists could allow the Iraqi regime to attack America without leaving any fingerprints."
During his speech at the Cincinnati Museum Center, he also elaborated on Iraq's nuclear program and said:
"The evidence indicates that Iraq is reconstituting its nuclear weapons program. Saddam Hussein has held numerous meetings with Iraqi nuclear scientists, a group he calls his 'nuclear mujahideen' - his nuclear holy warriors.... If the Iraqi regime is able to produce, buy, or steal an amount of highly enriched uranium a little larger than a single softball, it could have a nuclear weapon in less than a year."
This is the kind of outrageous rhetoric that was given to the American people to justify war with Iraq. This is the same kind of hyped fabricated evidence that was given to Congress to sway its vote on October 11, 2002.
And most importantly these are examples of the same kind charges that the Bush administration now tries to say were never made, like we're deluded idiots.
Saddam is no longer in power. But in reality, so what? The Iraqis are worse off. They still don't even have the basic necessities of life like clean water, sanitation provisions, and electricity. They've had to watch family members imprisoned, tortured, and killed for 3 years without Saddam in charge.
And our soldiers are still dying in record numbers. Not a day goes by that there is not another attack on the troops who are saddled with trying to restore order to a country on the brink of anarchy.
Bush told the American people that we were compelled to go to war to secure our country from a grave threat. Are we safer today than we were on March 18, 2003?
For the first time in history, the US went to war because of intelligence reports claiming that a country posed a grave threat to our nation. We should accept nothing less than a full-scale, wide-open Congressional investigation into the issue of pre-war intelligence on the threat from Iraq.
It is in the compelling national interest to examine what we were told about the threat from Iraq to determine once and for all whether the intelligence was faulty or distorted.
The purpose of such an investigation is not to engage in "revisionist history." It is to get at the truth. The American people have valid questions that deserve to be answered.
Friday, July 30, 2010
Bush Team Has Good Reason To Worry
Evelyn Pringle November 15, 2005
In its systematic and concerted effort to portray a link between Saddam and bin Laden, the White House propaganda team was so successful, that a poll conducted in late 2002, showed that over half of the people polled believed that Saddam was connected to 9/11.
While that may have been great news for the home team back then, the problem for Bush today, is that he is never going to get 50% of Americans to erase their memory of all the statements that were made and believe the line that members of the administration never said anything to make people think that Saddam was involved in 9/11.
The truth is that the story about Saddam supporting al Qaeda was a key component in case for war and the administration worked non-stop to promote it even though the basis for the story was debunked early on by intelligence officials.
When making public remarks and speeches indicating a connection between Saddam and al Qaeda, Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Colin Powell, and National Security Advisor Candy Rice consistently failed to mention the fact that intelligence agencies had dismissed it as false.
According to the March 16, 2004, report, “Iraq On The Record: The Bush Administration's Public Statements On Iraq,” from the Committee on Government Reform, together the above 5 top officials “made 61 misleading statements about the strength of the Iraq-al Qaeda alliance in 52 public appearances.”
The new Senate investigation hasn't even got off the ground and already, the future is looking grim for the Bush team. It has now been revealed that US military intelligence specifically warned the administration in February 2002, that the key source of information about Al-Qaeda's ties to Iraq had provided "intentionally misleading" data, in a newly declassified Defense Intelligence Agency document made public this month.
While this is clear evidence that they should have known better, over the following year, top officials continued to make false claims that the Iraqi government was training and supporting members of bin Laden's terrorist group to bolster their rationale for war.
For instance, eight months later, in a speech on November 7, 2002, Bush told the audience: Saddam Hussein is “a threat because he is dealing with Al Qaida. . . . [A] true threat facing our country is that an Al Qaida-type network trained and armed by Saddam could attack America and not leave one fingerprint.”
In his January 28, 2003, State of the Union address, Bush said, “Evidence from intelligence sources, secret communications, and statements by people now in custody reveal that Saddam Hussein aids and protects terrorists, including members of al Qaeda. Secretly, and without fingerprints, he could provide one of his hidden weapons to terrorists, or help them develop their own.”
On January 26, 2003, when speaking at the World Economic Forum, Colin Powell stated, “The more we wait, the more chance there is for this dictator with clear ties to terrorist groups, including al-Qaida, more time for him to pass a weapon, share a technology, or use these weapons again.
In his February 5, 2003 speech at the UN, Powell told the audience: “what I want to bring to your attention today is the potentially much more sinister nexus between Iraq and the al Qaeda terrorist network, a nexus that combines classic terrorist organizations and modern methods of murder."
"Iraq today," Powell said, "harbors a deadly terrorist network headed by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi an associate and collaborator of Usama bin Laden and his al-Qaida lieutenants.”
To intentionally play on the public's emotions, around the second anniversary of 9/11, Dick Cheney told Tim Russert on Meet the Press, that Iraq was "the geographic base of the terrorists who have had us under assault for many years, but most especially on 9/11."
Cheney also told the Heritage Foundation on October 10, 2003, that Saddam Hussein “had an established relationship with al Qaeda.”
The Bush Team Should Be Worried
The administration has good reason to worry about the investigation. Last year, it got a glimpse of the kind of information that will likely come out, on March 9, 2004, during then CIA Director, George Tenet's testimony before the Armed Services Committee, when Democrats revealed that Scooter Libby, had received secret intelligence briefings in August 2002, on Saddam's ties to al-Qaeda, from then Assistant Secretary of Defense, Douglas Feith.
Prior to that hearing, Feith had already said that he never gave any such briefings, which in turn supported the theory that a private secret intelligence group in the White House was set up to manufacture the case for war. Tenet, himself told the committee that he had only first learned of Feith's private briefings "last week."
Feith better not be too comfortable in his retirement because he is definitely going to be spending some time up on the Hill. Virtually everything that went wrong in Iraq, relating to matters that Congress will be investigating, can be traced back to Feith's door. He played a leading role in the run-up to war.
The buck stops with Feith on its way to Cheney and Bush. Who knows, maybe Feith will agree to take the hit and he and Libby can bunk together in prison.
The Policy Counterterrorism Evaluation Group and the Office of Special Plans (OSP), were both established under Feith's authority and will in all likelihood garner particular interest during the investigation.
The OSP, with the help of Ahmed Chalabi and his band of defectors, is believed to have cooked up the most alarming pre-war intelligence and "stovepiped" it to Bush through Rumsfeld and Cheney, without the vetting of any intelligence offical, in order to establish the existence of a link between Saddam and al-Qaeda.
The content of Feith's August 2002, private briefings have been described as a cherry-picked collection of raw, uncorroborated pieces of information, which painted a false picture of a link between Saddam and 9/11
The investigation will surely focus on October 2003, when Feith sent a memo to the Senate Intelligence Committee, citing proof of a definite relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda, and it somehow got published in the November 2003, Weekly Standard, complete with the memo’s classified annex claiming that its list of Iraq–al Qaeda contacts proved “an operational relationship from the early 1990s” and that “there can no longer be any serious argument about whether Saddam Hussein’s Iraq worked with Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda to plot against Americans.”
The Defense Department immediately ran for cover and issued a statement saying that “[t]he classified annex was not an analysis of the substantive issue of the relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda, and it drew no conclusions.”
And on March 9, 2004, when Tenet again testified before the Armed Services Committee, he made sure to tell the committee that the CIA “did not agree with the way the data was characterized in that document.”
The investigation team will no doubt want to interview the neocon's best friend, Ahmed Chalabi, but he has already demonstrated that he could care less if he's accused of deliberately misleading the US in making the case for war, being he got what he wanted.
"We are heroes in error," he told the News Telegraph on February 19, 2004. "As far as we're concerned we've been entirely successful. That tyrant Saddam is gone and the Americans are in Baghdad," he said, "What was said before is not important."
In its systematic and concerted effort to portray a link between Saddam and bin Laden, the White House propaganda team was so successful, that a poll conducted in late 2002, showed that over half of the people polled believed that Saddam was connected to 9/11.
While that may have been great news for the home team back then, the problem for Bush today, is that he is never going to get 50% of Americans to erase their memory of all the statements that were made and believe the line that members of the administration never said anything to make people think that Saddam was involved in 9/11.
The truth is that the story about Saddam supporting al Qaeda was a key component in case for war and the administration worked non-stop to promote it even though the basis for the story was debunked early on by intelligence officials.
When making public remarks and speeches indicating a connection between Saddam and al Qaeda, Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Colin Powell, and National Security Advisor Candy Rice consistently failed to mention the fact that intelligence agencies had dismissed it as false.
According to the March 16, 2004, report, “Iraq On The Record: The Bush Administration's Public Statements On Iraq,” from the Committee on Government Reform, together the above 5 top officials “made 61 misleading statements about the strength of the Iraq-al Qaeda alliance in 52 public appearances.”
The new Senate investigation hasn't even got off the ground and already, the future is looking grim for the Bush team. It has now been revealed that US military intelligence specifically warned the administration in February 2002, that the key source of information about Al-Qaeda's ties to Iraq had provided "intentionally misleading" data, in a newly declassified Defense Intelligence Agency document made public this month.
While this is clear evidence that they should have known better, over the following year, top officials continued to make false claims that the Iraqi government was training and supporting members of bin Laden's terrorist group to bolster their rationale for war.
For instance, eight months later, in a speech on November 7, 2002, Bush told the audience: Saddam Hussein is “a threat because he is dealing with Al Qaida. . . . [A] true threat facing our country is that an Al Qaida-type network trained and armed by Saddam could attack America and not leave one fingerprint.”
In his January 28, 2003, State of the Union address, Bush said, “Evidence from intelligence sources, secret communications, and statements by people now in custody reveal that Saddam Hussein aids and protects terrorists, including members of al Qaeda. Secretly, and without fingerprints, he could provide one of his hidden weapons to terrorists, or help them develop their own.”
On January 26, 2003, when speaking at the World Economic Forum, Colin Powell stated, “The more we wait, the more chance there is for this dictator with clear ties to terrorist groups, including al-Qaida, more time for him to pass a weapon, share a technology, or use these weapons again.
In his February 5, 2003 speech at the UN, Powell told the audience: “what I want to bring to your attention today is the potentially much more sinister nexus between Iraq and the al Qaeda terrorist network, a nexus that combines classic terrorist organizations and modern methods of murder."
"Iraq today," Powell said, "harbors a deadly terrorist network headed by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi an associate and collaborator of Usama bin Laden and his al-Qaida lieutenants.”
To intentionally play on the public's emotions, around the second anniversary of 9/11, Dick Cheney told Tim Russert on Meet the Press, that Iraq was "the geographic base of the terrorists who have had us under assault for many years, but most especially on 9/11."
Cheney also told the Heritage Foundation on October 10, 2003, that Saddam Hussein “had an established relationship with al Qaeda.”
The Bush Team Should Be Worried
The administration has good reason to worry about the investigation. Last year, it got a glimpse of the kind of information that will likely come out, on March 9, 2004, during then CIA Director, George Tenet's testimony before the Armed Services Committee, when Democrats revealed that Scooter Libby, had received secret intelligence briefings in August 2002, on Saddam's ties to al-Qaeda, from then Assistant Secretary of Defense, Douglas Feith.
Prior to that hearing, Feith had already said that he never gave any such briefings, which in turn supported the theory that a private secret intelligence group in the White House was set up to manufacture the case for war. Tenet, himself told the committee that he had only first learned of Feith's private briefings "last week."
Feith better not be too comfortable in his retirement because he is definitely going to be spending some time up on the Hill. Virtually everything that went wrong in Iraq, relating to matters that Congress will be investigating, can be traced back to Feith's door. He played a leading role in the run-up to war.
The buck stops with Feith on its way to Cheney and Bush. Who knows, maybe Feith will agree to take the hit and he and Libby can bunk together in prison.
The Policy Counterterrorism Evaluation Group and the Office of Special Plans (OSP), were both established under Feith's authority and will in all likelihood garner particular interest during the investigation.
The OSP, with the help of Ahmed Chalabi and his band of defectors, is believed to have cooked up the most alarming pre-war intelligence and "stovepiped" it to Bush through Rumsfeld and Cheney, without the vetting of any intelligence offical, in order to establish the existence of a link between Saddam and al-Qaeda.
The content of Feith's August 2002, private briefings have been described as a cherry-picked collection of raw, uncorroborated pieces of information, which painted a false picture of a link between Saddam and 9/11
The investigation will surely focus on October 2003, when Feith sent a memo to the Senate Intelligence Committee, citing proof of a definite relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda, and it somehow got published in the November 2003, Weekly Standard, complete with the memo’s classified annex claiming that its list of Iraq–al Qaeda contacts proved “an operational relationship from the early 1990s” and that “there can no longer be any serious argument about whether Saddam Hussein’s Iraq worked with Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda to plot against Americans.”
The Defense Department immediately ran for cover and issued a statement saying that “[t]he classified annex was not an analysis of the substantive issue of the relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda, and it drew no conclusions.”
And on March 9, 2004, when Tenet again testified before the Armed Services Committee, he made sure to tell the committee that the CIA “did not agree with the way the data was characterized in that document.”
The investigation team will no doubt want to interview the neocon's best friend, Ahmed Chalabi, but he has already demonstrated that he could care less if he's accused of deliberately misleading the US in making the case for war, being he got what he wanted.
"We are heroes in error," he told the News Telegraph on February 19, 2004. "As far as we're concerned we've been entirely successful. That tyrant Saddam is gone and the Americans are in Baghdad," he said, "What was said before is not important."
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