elf6c
October 24, 2003, 4:56pm
1
Time for the traditional finding of the scapegoat. The Senate GOP seems to have settled on the CIA in this one.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/washpost/a9230_2003oct23
The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence is preparing a blistering report on prewar intelligence on Iraq that is critical of CIA Director George J. Tenet and other intelligence officials for overstating the weapons and terrorism case against Saddam Hussein, according to congressional officials.
The committee staff was surprised by the amount of circumstantial evidence and single-source or disputed information used to write key intelligence documents – in particular the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate – summarizing Iraq’s capabilities and intentions, according to Republican and Democratic sources. Staff members interviewed more than 100 people who collected and analyzed the intelligence used to back up statements about Iraq’s chemical, biological and nuclear weapons capabilities, and its possible links to terrorist groups.
Like a similar but less exhaustive inquiry being completed by the House intelligence committee, the Senate report shifts attention toward the intelligence community and away from White House officials, who have been criticized for exaggerating the Iraqi threat. At stake as the presidential political season approaches, said committee sources and intelligence figures, is who gets blamed for misleading the American public if weapons of mass destruction are never found in Iraq – the president or his intelligence chief.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the search for a scapegoat of the illegal intelligence leaks tied to “senior admistrative officials” continues:
WASHINGTON - The FBI has interviewed more than three dozen Bush administration officials, including political adviser Karl Rove and press secretary Scott McClellan, in its investigation into the leak of an undercover CIA officer’s identity.
The interviews have extended beyond the White House to other government agencies. The Defense and State departments and the CIA itself also are part of the probe.
The focus, however, remains on the White House, two law enforcement officials said on condition of anonymity. While the initial, informal interviews have yielded no major breaks, the FBI is satisfied that the dozen agents assigned to the probe are making progress and have not encountered any stalling tactics, the officials said Thursday.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=542&ncid=693&e=6&u=/ap/20031024/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/cia_leak
I wonder if they plan on blaming this on the CIA as well?
More on the faulty intelligence used by Bush to justify the need for an immediate invasion.
The adminstration’s hope for a quick and dirty coverup and blame shifting to the now out of favor CIA doesn’t look good:
Rockefeller is under considerable pressure from the Senate Democratic leadership not to allow Roberts to focus only on intelligence bureaucrats while avoiding questions about whether Bush, Vice President Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and others exaggerated the threat from Iraq.
But it is unclear whether the committee has jurisdiction on this topic. Also, the administration could cite executive privilege and refuse to give the committee information related to internal White House discussions, as it did when a congressional inquiry tried to find out what Bush had been told about al Qaeda and the possibility of civilian aircraft used as weapons before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
“We’re going to get this one way or the other,” Rockefeller said yesterday. “If the majority declines to put the executive branch at risk, then they are going to have a very difficult minority to deal with.”
He said that if that turned out be the case , he has the five votes necessary, under Rule 6 of the committee’s rules of procedure, to launch an inquiry into the administration’s use of intelligence.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A9230-2003Oct23.html
And finally speaking of spin control, watch Rummy engage in a Clintonesce display after his memo on Iraq that was far from the pollyanna Bush spin control got leaked to the press:
But coming at a time when the administration is attempting to put a more positive spin on the situation in Iraq and the war on terrorism, the doubts and musings in Rumsfeld’s memo – written last week and first reported Wednesday – have proved particularly awkward for the defense secretary and the White House. Democratic lawmakers and other critics of the administration’s course continued yesterday to seize on the memo as evidence of doublespeak.
“While I am dismayed that Secretary Rumsfeld says publicly something so different from what he says privately, I am glad he is looking for new directions since our policy is not working well given the sustained and increasing attacks on our forces,” said Sen. Carl M. Levin (Mich.), the senior Democrat on the Armed Services Committee.
Appearing unexpectedly in the Pentagon’s news conference room while a briefing by his spokesman was underway, Rumsfeld said he and other officials had frequently warned the war on terrorism would be long and tough. Focusing on his use of the word “slog,” he cited a dictionary definition: “to hit or strike hard, to drive with blows, to assail violently.” Then he added, “And that’s precisely what the U.S. has been doing and intends to continue to do.”
The poor attempt as word parsing is quite amusing. Reminds me of a few posters around here.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A9021-2003Oct23.html
elf6c
October 24, 2003, 5:05pm
2
Here is the orginial story behind Rumsfled’s memo. His interpretation of the memo is pretty laughable once you read the story, but maybe he was playing for the true believers who just want to believe any story, not matter how implausible.
He said the Pentagon had not “yet made truly bold moves” to reshape itself for the ongoing war and said “relatively little effort” had gone into developing “a long-range plan” to defeat terrorism. He also said the United States even lacks a good set of measures to determine how well it is doing in the war.
The two-page memo reveals a blunter, less confident assessment of the anti-terrorism campaign than the largely optimistic statements that Rumsfeld and other senior administration officials have conveyed in public.
and later the part being extensively spun now is discussed:
In the memo, dated Oct. 16 and disclosed yesterday by USA Today, Rumsfeld cited “mixed results” in the fight against al Qaeda, saying “a great many” members of the terrorist network remain at large. He noted “reasonable progress” in Iraq capturing or killing the 55 most-wanted members of Saddam Hussein’s former government and “somewhat slower progress” in Afghanistan tracking Taliban leaders who had supported al Qaeda.
But efforts to combat the Ansar al-Islam terrorist group, which U.S. officials say has reconstituted in Iraq and probably is responsible for a number of recent attacks, “are just getting started,” he added.
The Pentagon leader predicted that U.S.-led coalitions in Iraq and Afghanistan would ultimately win “in one way or another.” But he said victory would come only with “a long, hard slog.”
So apparantly even they don’t really believe the pie in the sky pronouncements coming out of the White House on Iraq. Sadly, rather then be pissed about them lying to us about the Iraq situation, I am more relieved that they are not so stupid as to actually believe it themselves. Sure they are two-faced liars, but at least they are not delusional. Its comforting in a way.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A3217-2003Oct22.html
Rumsfeld is scum.
This pisses me off too.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,101061,00.html
As part of the inducement to get other nations to join coalition forces in Iraq, Washington has offered protective gear and other equipment to allied countries. Coalition requests have varied — the Hungarian military asked for desert vehicles; the Latvians requested night vision goggles.
According to a source at U.S. Central Command (search), the U.S. Army Security Assistance Command has given away thousands of vests that match the description of the Interceptor body armor to protect foreign soldiers from small arms fire.
As of two weeks ago, one or both parts of the two-part vests — made up of an outer tactical vest (OTV) and a small arms protective insert (SAPI) — were provided to troops in Iraq from the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Honduras, Latvia, Lithuania, the Philippines, Mongolia, Nicaragua, Poland and the Ukraine. As of that time, the Department of Defense had provided 3,363 OTVs and 4,161 SAPIs, the source said.
The CIA does bear some responsibility but the primary responsibility for the failure lies with Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz et al who put relentless pressure on the CIA to produce the assessments they wanted.
As usual Seymour Hersh has the goods:http://newyorker.com/fact/content/?031027fa_fact
"As long as that remains the case, one question will be asked more and more insistently: How did the American intelligence community get it so wrong?
Part of the answer lies in decisions made early in the Bush Administration, before the events of September 11, 2001. In interviews with present and former intelligence officials, I was told that some senior Administration people, soon after coming to power, had bypassed the government’s customary procedures for vetting intelligence.
A retired C.I.A. officer described for me some of the questions that would normally arise in vetting: “Does dramatic information turned up by an overseas spy square with his access, or does it exceed his plausible reach? How does the agent behave? Is he on time for meetings?” The vetting process is especially important when one is dealing with foreign-agent reports—sensitive intelligence that can trigger profound policy decisions. In theory, no request for action should be taken directly to higher authorities—a process known as “stovepiping”—without the information on which it is based having been subjected to rigorous scrutiny."
elf6c
October 24, 2003, 5:42pm
5
One more take on the Rumsfled leak:
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/EJ25Ak01.html
The leak of a dour, two-page memo addressed to four of Rumsfeld’s top aides and filled with a series of fundamental questions that most experts would have expected to have been thought out long ago is the latest indication of serious disarray - even self-doubt - among the Bush administration hawks who led the march to war in Iraq.
Coming two weeks into a major administration public relations campaign to persuade the public that things in Iraq are going much better than the press is reporting and on the eve of a donors’ conference in Madrid designed to persuade US allies to cough up billions of dollars in reconstruction aid for Iraq, the timing for airing Rumsfeld’s worries could not be much worse.
And notably:
Despite the bad news, the administration remained officially upbeat this week with Vice President Dick Cheney, for example, telling Republican donors on Monday, “we are rolling back the terrorist threat at the very heart of its power, in the Middle East”.
While that may be the official line, pundits and Democrats noted on Thursday, Rumsfeld’s private doubts tell a different story. While the Pentagon chief’s penchant for constantly sprinkling his “snowflakes” - questions, proddings, suggestions - all over the national security bureaucracy, his October 16 memo seemed, as USA Today called it, especially grim.
Consisting essentially of a series of questions, it is particularly notable for the lack of confidence it expresses in the ability of both the Pentagon and the intelligence agencies to effectively prosecute the “war on terror”.
Nice to see Cheney sticking with the big lie no matter how bad the news gets. I fell sorry for all those reservists and guardsmen facing extended service in Iraq now. Too bad their rich daddies can’t get them out of their military obligations to work as campaign workers.
I don’t understand the defense. At best he’s a bumbling idiot, at worst, a complete lying fuckbag.
rjung
October 24, 2003, 5:59pm
7
I wonder how all this blame-the-CIA is sitting with Poppy Bush, myself. Having his kid thrash the folks he used to work with is not something he’d shrug off, I’d wager…
elf6c
October 24, 2003, 6:10pm
8
I think its a variant of the “Chewbacca Defense” from South Park.
In a jury trial, a Chewbacca defense is a legal strategy in which a criminal defense lawyer tries to confuse the jury rather than refute the case of the prosecutor. It is an intentional distraction or obfuscation.
As a Chewbacca defense distracts and misleads, it is an example of a red herring. It is also an example of an irrelevant conclusion, a type of informal fallacy in which one making an argument fails to address the issue in question. Often an opposing counsel can legally object to suc...
Details:
In the “Chef Aid” episode, Chef is accused of trying to steal the song “Stinky Britches,” which he really wrote many years ago. The record company takes Chef to court, and they hire Johnny Cochran to prosecute Chef. The whole town is wondering if he will use his famous “Chewbacca Defense,” which he used during the O.J. Simpson trial. Here’s a transcript:
Ladies and gentlemen of the supposed jury, I have one final thing I want you to consider: (pulling down a diagram of Chewie) this is Chewbacca. Chewbacca is a Wookiee from the planet Kashyyyk, but Chewbacca lives on the planet Endor. Now, think about that. That does not make sense! (jury looks shocked) <Snip. Lynn>Eventually, Chef wins the case and all is well.
http://wookiee.8k.com/refer/tv.html
The second link has lots of wookie based information. Which is good or bad. I’m not sure.
Hehe it would certainly fit.
Just wanted to pop into this debate and send condolenses to Al’s family.
Please be careful…don’t post entire copyrighted articles! I know it’s tempting, but please just use a link.
Not only is it the LEGAL thing to do, it’s the RIGHT thing to do.
Lynn
*Originally posted by rjung *
I believe Poppy Bush just gave Ted Kennedy some kind of George Bush Lifetime Achievement award.
True. Georgie Anne Geyer’s take
Now it’s all out. Father Bush has done it in his own preferred nuanced way – the way Establishment gentlemen operate – but he has revealed the depth of his disagreement with his impetuously uninformed son.
W has given way to a radical right that abhors international coalitions and manners; he mocks the world and denies any need for its help. He has led the Middle East to the nadir of its hope and possibilities, and he has led the United States to a moment in history in which we face asymmetric warfare from one end of the globe to another.
And above all, he has replaced his father’s courtesy and good graces with an almost proud rudeness and scorn for others.
“A true gentleman never gives offense unintentionally” - Oscar Wilde
sailor
October 25, 2003, 3:10pm
14
This Memo Must Not Be Leaked: Wink, Wink
President Bush the elder was definitely a million times better in every respect than the junior. He understood international politics which the son does not.
