Mr. Wilson Still Has a Lot to Answer For...
At least that's what I think, and thankfully I'm not the only one. Yet regrettably, the Media gives the guy a free pass at every turn. This guy's a snake, and no one seems to care.
What the powers-that-be in Media and on the Left do care about is "Getting Bush." And they are so blinded by that one consuming desire, they can't see anything else.... Like the glaring inconsistencies in Joseph Wilson's story.
But everything comes out in the wash sooner or later. In the end Mr. Wilson, and his Media conspirators will be exposed. And I will be neither gleeful nor sorrowful. Just satisfied.
Here's some commentary by Dennis Byrne...
Continued at RealClearPolitics
What the powers-that-be in Media and on the Left do care about is "Getting Bush." And they are so blinded by that one consuming desire, they can't see anything else.... Like the glaring inconsistencies in Joseph Wilson's story.
But everything comes out in the wash sooner or later. In the end Mr. Wilson, and his Media conspirators will be exposed. And I will be neither gleeful nor sorrowful. Just satisfied.
Here's some commentary by Dennis Byrne...
November 8, 2005
Wilson Also Deserves Some of the Scrutiny
By Dennis Byrne
Like children in a fever to dive into their Christmas presents, Senate Democrats can't wait for a new Senate report on pre-Iraq war intelligence failures. They even forced the Senate into a rare secret session last week because, ironically, of their supposed determination to make government more transparent.
It's almost as if they have forgotten that the Senate's bipartisan Select Committee on Intelligence already issued a report last year on the quality of the intelligence. The one that should have--but hasn't--stopped former ambassador Joseph Wilson from recklessly claiming that President Bush's "lies" and "disinformation" led us into war. The same report that convincingly demonstrated that any prewar intelligence misinformation was the result of organizational failure or incompetence, not evil intent.
That 500-page unanimously approved report contained 48 well-researched pages just on Wilson's highly self-touted "investigation" of a foreign intelligence report that Niger was slipping Iraq enough lightly processed uranium ore, called yellowcake, to make 50 nuclear bombs. Whatever the truth to the yellowcake charge, the Senate report makes you wonder why the CIA bothered to dispatch Wilson....
Continued at RealClearPolitics
from the mind of... Eric | 2:57 PM
6 Comments:
WHO IN THE White House knew about DITSUM No. 044-02 and when did they know it?
That's the newly declassified smoking-gun document, originally prepared by the Defense Intelligence Agency in February 2002 but ignored by President Bush. Its declassification this weekend blows another huge hole in Bush's claim that he was acting on the best intelligence available when he pitched the invasion of Iraq as a way to prevent an Al Qaeda terror attack using weapons of mass destruction.
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The report demolished the credibility of the key Al Qaeda informant the administration relied on to make its claim that a working alliance existed between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. It was circulated widely within the U.S. government a full eight months before Bush used the prisoner's lies to argue for an invasion of Iraq because "we've learned that Iraq has trained Al Qaeda members in bomb making and poisons and deadly gases."
Al Qaeda senior military trainer Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi — a Libyan captured in Pakistan in 2001 — was probably "intentionally misleading the debriefers," the DIA report concluded in one of two paragraphs finally declassified at the request of Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) and released by his office over the weekend. The report also said: "Ibn al-Shaykh has been undergoing debriefs for several weeks and may be describing scenarios to the debriefers that he knows will retain their interest."
He got that right. Folks in the highest places were very interested in claims along the lines Libi was peddling, even though they went against both logic and the preponderance of intelligence gathered to that point about possible collaboration between two enemies of the U.S. that were fundamentally at odds with each other. Al Qaeda was able to create a base in Iraq only after the U.S. overthrow of Hussein, not before. "Saddam's regime is intensely secular and is wary of Islamic revolutionary movements," accurately noted the DIA.
Yet Bush used the informant's already discredited tall tale in his key Oct. 7, 2002, speech just before the Senate voted on whether to authorize the use of force in Iraq and again in two speeches in February, just ahead of the invasion.
Leading up to the war, Secretary of State Colin Powell tried to sell it to the United Nations, while Vice President Dick Cheney, national security advisor Condoleezza Rice, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer and Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith repeated it breathlessly for homeland audiences. The con worked, and Americans came to believe the lie that Hussein was associated with the Sept. 11 hijackers.
Even CIA Director George Tenet publicly fell into line, ignoring his own agency's dissent that Libi would not have been in a position to know what he said he knew. In fact, Libi, according to the DIA, could not name any Iraqis involved, any chemical or biological material used or where the training allegedly occurred. In January 2004, the prisoner recanted his story, and the next month the CIA withdrew all intelligence reports based on his false information.
One by one, the exotic intelligence factoids Bush's researchers culled from raw intelligence data files to publicly bolster their claim of imminent threat — the yellowcake uranium from Niger, the aluminum tubes for processing uranium, the Prague meeting with Mohamed Atta, the discredited Iraqi informants "Curveball" and Ahmad Chalabi — have been exposed as previously known frauds.
When it came to selling an invasion of Iraq it had wanted to launch before 9/11, the Bush White House systematically ignored the best available intelligence from U.S. agencies or any other reliable source.
It should be remembered that while Bush and his gang were successfully scaring the wits out of us about the alleged Iraq-Al Qaeda alliance, U.N. weapons inspectors were on the ground in Iraq. Weapons inspectors Hans Blix and 2005 Nobel Peace Prize winner Mohamed ElBaradei promised they could finish scouring the country if given a few more months. But instead, they were abruptly chased out by an invasion necessitated by what the president told us was a "unique and urgent threat."
Bush exploited the worldwide horror felt over the 9/11 attacks to justify the Iraq invasion. His outrageous claim, repeated over and over before and after he dragged the nation into an unnecessary war, was never supported by a single piece of credible evidence. The Bush defense of what is arguably the biggest lie ever put over on the American people is that everyone had gotten the intelligence wrong. Not so at the highest level of U.S. intelligence, as DITSUM No. 044-02 so clearly shows. How could the president not have known?
er- that last post was taken from a column in the LA times. Had meant to edit for brevity.
Had also mean to note that Bush has a lot more to answer for.
I have no doubt that Bush has some things to answer for, but let's not forget... Special Prosecutor Fitzgerald was given the task of determining whether or not a crime had been committed in the outing of a CIA operative... not whether or not intelligence was manipulated to get us into a war. That has been the favorite extrapolation of Joe Wilson, Dems, and the Media. As well, DITSUM No. 044-02, was not the only significant report to come out at that time.
How does one get up in front of the Senate and state that there is undeniable proof of WMD's in Iraq [Sen. Rockefeller, D-WV, Member of Senate Intelligence Committee, for one] and insist years later that the evidence was cooked? That there were conflicting reports doesn't surprise me at all. There are always conflicting reports. The question has always been, "What to believe, what to discount?"
As to the particular document's "smoking gun" status, that too is still unverified. Nor does it prove anyone lied or cooked intel. As in the Plame Affair, it is not a lie if the speaker believed what he said to be true and accurate at the time he said it. And no one thus far has been able to prove that anyone in the Bush administration believed otherwise. I'm going to wait for the completion and release of Phase 2. As if Phase 1 hasn't already answer this question!
Personally, I believe Dem's are beating a dead horse... But time will tell, and may just prove me wrong.
I should also add that DITSUM No. 044-02 was dated sometime in February of 2002. Whereas Sen Rockefeller made his infamous...
"I have come to the inescapable conclusion...
statement in October of 2002. It's hard for me to imagine that the then ranking Member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, didn't see the aforementioned report, or at least know of its contents.
There are a lot of questions to be answered on the Democratic side of the aisle, as well. If they believed the intelligence was bogus, why did they vote twice to give the President the authority to act as he saw fit? What did they hope to gain politically? Mid-term elections were right around the corner... Did they perhaps lie to make themselves appear strong and pro War-on-Terror, in hopes of winning seats in the coming election cycle?
There are enough bad moves on both sides to go around. If Dems did lie, this is one fight they don't want to get tangled up in.
I don't want to give the impression that I think Dems are blameless here. I do not consider myself a Democrat, although I tend to vote for them more than Republicans. I am more concerned- at this time- with Bush's behavior because a) he is president, b) his party controls all branches of government, and c) he took us into what is turning into a disasterous mistake for our country and our security.
I think the Dem's chief failing of late has been impotence, e.g., failing to be critical of Bush's rationale for war because so many Dems had been burned politically for not supporting the first Gulf war. So they handed a carte blanche to Bush, which I think was an abdication of their duties.
I think Bush's advisors abdicated their duties too. Even his father is suggesting that he should clean house and get advisors who tell him the truth, instead of telling him what he wants to hear.
Whether or not Bush purposefully misled the country on intelligence (and I think he was quite selective and single-minded in what he presented and what he ignored), what makes me most angry is how he kept insisting that war was a last resort- when clearly it was what he was gunning for all along and rushed into, even when we had inspectors in the country.
All of which are valid concerns. There's just a lot of useless rhetoric being bandied about. I'm only trying to clear some of the polluted air we're all being forced to breathe.
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