It seems, from Senator Graham’s report, that the Bush administration stalled on the creation of an NIE report until the Democrats demanded one. Then the full report was provided to the Senate and House committees. The rest of the Congress was only provided with a report that is said to have excluded the contradictory information.
So I am not sure of your point. Are you implying that because 6 or 9 Democratic Senators were able to see the full report, they should have adequately verbally disseminated the information, such that Bush can claim that everyone had the same access to information that he did?
This is not plausible and provides no cover for Bush’s lies that equal access to intel was shared by all.
Is this really the argument you are leading up to? Please tell me it is not.
Y’know, my dad used to talk about this. (These days, we try not to talk about politics at all.) He used to say how both parties wanted what was best for America, but they just saw that in different ways.
And I think that used to be true. However, I am out of reasons to believe it’s true anymore. Right now, the GOP is trying to cut Medicaid and other aid to poor people, while trying to pass new tax cuts, and extend old ones, for the very rich. While barely touching the tons of pork they passed in the energy and transportation bills. While being unwilling to give Katrina victims a break on the new bankruptcy law, and while suspending Davis-Bacon so KBR could bring in lots of cheap immigrant labor for reconstruction, such as it is.
No: these guys are not trying to do what’s best for Americans; they’re trying to enrich the already-rich while taking from everyone else. To use conventional terminology here is to do the equivalent of “Shape of Earth: Views Differ.” Views differ, alright, but there comes a time for the Dems to say, “these people are NOT on the side of average Americans; they’re out to screw you over, and they’ve got the track record to prove it.”
And if they can prove it, which they easily can, it’s the right sort of politics: a political message as prophetic truth. There’s a time for jeremiads, and here we are.
Bush is claiming the Congress had access to the same info he did. Congressmen are saying that Bush had access to info that none of them saw.
My point is that BOTH of these parties are not telling us the full story. Yes, Bush had access to info that not all Congressmen saw. But, some Congressmen did indeed have access to whatever reports they wanted access to-- ie, those House/Senate members of the House/Senate Intel Committees. No, they could not disseminate this info (it’s classified), but they certainly could disseminate their opinions about the whether or not that info warrented the passages of the Iraq Resolution in Oct '02.
So, how many Democrats (or Republicans, for that matter) on these committees did in fact take the time to dig deep into the intelligence report, and what did they do about it? AFAIK, the information about which Congressmen accessed what intel reports is, itself, classified, but their testimony in Congress and their votes are not.
No, this does not absolve Bush from leading us into this war. I’ve never said otherwise. But, it does make one wonder about certain Democratic lawmakers (eg, Dianne Feinstein) who do sit on the apporporiatecommittees, who did vote for the authorization of force resolution, and who are now saying they would’ve voted differently. Maybe, in fact, she didn’t see all the reports. But that would be because she didn’t take the time look, not because they were unavailable to her. She, like many others, got swept up in a rush to war.
(1) See RTFirefly’s post #49 explaining the conditions under which the Congressional folks could view the NIE.
(2) I think that the article I quoted from answers the question quite directly, if without much detail. It states, “But Bush and his aides had access to much more voluminous intelligence information than did lawmakers, who were dependent on the administration to provide the material…But Bush does not share his most sensitive intelligence, such as the President’s Daily Brief, with lawmakers.” I admit that it does not specifically discuss what members of the intelligence committee get to see but the implication I take from it is that they do not see everything that the President does.
And, finally, I will just reiterate (so as not to miss the forest through the trees) that the bar that was being set when they were voting for the resolution in October was not whether there was enough evidence to justify an immediate invasion but whether there was enough evidence to give the President the authority to use force with the idea that he would use this authority to try to force Saddam to submit to inspections to see what he actually had. He did…and the inspections were already showing that our intelligence was garbage and thus that the evidence that we had to believe that Saddam did had these weapons was pure fantasy. Even so, 5 of the 9 Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee voted against the resolution (as did a majority of all of the Democrats in the House). I wish more of them had had the guts to do so…But, I still do think that voting for this resolution was not nearly akin to deciding unequivocally to send the troops in.
I’m not convinced of that, but I’m sure we’ll all get in education in the details of what is and isn’t available in the days to come.
Well, that’s certainly true as far as it goes. But, has there ever been a time when Congress authorized a President to use force and he DIDN’T use it? And I don’t recall any vocal opposition to Bush’s actions by Senators like Kerry and Feinstein in the immediate lead-up to the war (ie, Feb '03 timeframe).
Kinda depends on which resolution you mean. At the time, we were assured that the resolution was not a “war resolution”, but a means to empower The Leader to press his demands for inspections, etc. as means to ensure the Saddam gave up what he didn’t have. We were futher assured, you will recall, that every means short of war would be exhausted. IIRC, we were asked to believe that the resolution should be considered as a means of avoiding war, by making it unnecessary.
Now, we are told that Democrats voted for a resolution to “go to war”, as if those assurances never happened, as if the resolution was a total carte blanche.
Seems to me, an unsophisticated country boy, that one of these two statements must be false, seeing as how they are in direct contradiction to each other.
What elucidator said. Either Bush lied then about what the resolution meant or he is lying now. There is simply no other option.
Well, I don’t remember exactly what they were saying. I know that Kerry did give a floor speech right before (as?) the war began. But, I think the failure of many of the Democrats to be more vocal in their opposition in this timeframe is perhaps a larger failing than voting for the resolution. There were certainly plenty of us here who were vocally arguing against going to war.
Well, frankly, it was a carte blanche. There were no provisions for further approval by Congress. This unsophisticated suburban boy would not have voted for this resolution for that and other reasons, and neither would have my esteemed, though equally unsophisticated colleague from the country.
So, for someone like Kerry to want to backtrack now just smells more like party politics than principled decision making. He was happy to vote against the first Gulf War resolution (though I’ve never heard why), and he was happy to vote against the $87B appropriations bill* because he didn’t like some small provisions of that bill. He could have voted against the Oct '02 resolution if he had any concerns.
*You know, the one he voted for before he voted against
There are always other options. If you want to say Bush lied, fine. I don’t expect politicians to tell the truth, so I’m not really out there looking to prove that they lie.
Yes, I was one of them. I really didn’t care whether Saddam had WMDs or not-- I thought war was a bad idea, and I’m disapointed in any of my representatives who thought otherwise.
Kerry’s floor speach was pretty good. I cited it in another thread (maybe in response to one of your posts). He was quite clear that WMDs were the only reason he considered authorizing the use of force-- a good point for those who like to point to other provisions in the bill. Hillary’s floor speach was quite a bit more hawkish, and that might be one reason she isn’t raising her voice so much now in the chorus of Democrats who regret what they did. Or, perhaps she’s just smarter than the rest of them and doesn’t need to make political hay out of the situation.
No, just unintentional sloppiness. You know I am usually more diligent than that. But, anyone can check the original cite. I think I gave the address (I hope I did).
To everybody, I want to add something though. It is true Congress could have aksed for the “other info”, but to ask for something you need to know it exists. From my memory, it was all, at the time, being pushed as absolute proof, and any dissenting or contradictory information in the reports was deliberately not mentioned. Again, why ask for something if you don’t know enough to ask. Just a thought.
We were seeign the end of “esteemed colleague” with the first episode of “gof fuck yourself” Cheney. Then we have “almost call you a traitor” Bush. Also, that great hit, “retreatis for cowards” Schmidt. Let the mud fly. Let the games begin. Are you not entertained. I’m hoping for swordplay and pistol duels on the Senate floor
Bush led us recklessly into war. No ifs and or buts about it.
But last I looked, this thread was about Dems, so that’s what I’m addressing. If you think we need another thread about Bush and the war in Iraq, feel free to start one.
It was a carte blanche, no question about it. If you were a Congressperson and were treating it as the “I need the authority to go to war so I can call his bluff on inspections” thing Bush sold it at the time as, it really came down to “Do you trust this President?”
I can see how people could have come down on both sides of this. There’s a tremendous predisposition to trust the President on matters of war and peace. But OTOH, even in October of 2002, it was clear that Bush had been gunning for Iraq all year, and the idea that he was going to pull back if the inspectors didn’t turn up much seemed unlikely to me even then.
In retrospect, ISTM that if Congress takes a vote like this, it should assume it’s voting to go to war, even if it thinks the President is trustworthy. Which this one wasn’t, of course.
I would agree with you if he hadn’t said quite clearly at the time what he thought he was voting for, which happened to coincide quite precisely with what Bush said he was asking Congress to vote for. Bush is the one who’s backtracked - and gotten away with it.
Sure, Kerry was duped. So we got another four years of the con man, instead of electing his mark. Good thing the con is wearing thin - but Bush is still setting the agenda, even if not all of it’s getting through. He’s still got the ball; he’s just not scoring every time down the field.
Well, not the least of which is that Iraq did basically everything that we now believe it could have done and we still went to war. I.e., the biggest problem people had was their being unable to provide documentation of the WMD being destroyed. However, as far as I know, neither the WMD nor documentation have been found.
And, of course, the inspections turned up no WMD and plenty of evidence that our intelligence about WMD was complete fantasy and yet that didn’t stop the war march either.
