Tenet : I was No Hero....

Today on Meet the Press, exactly one week after Condoleeza Rice's whirlwind talkshow appearances and in a far less animated performance than what was shown on 60 Minutes, former CIA Director George Tenet sat down with Tim Russert and proceeded to explain just how many times he completely screwed the pooch prior to the Iraq War and how he failed to tell the President of his concerns about our invasion of that country.

I didn't do it, Tim. I, I did not, I did not oppose this, and to, to, to dress me up as a hero at this--I wasn't a hero here, and, and that's the record.

Well, ain't that the truth.

Wait, let me rephrase that.

NO SHIT SHERLOCK!

But apparently now that Tenet has had a chance to calm down and refresh his meds - he actually managed to put forth a pretty good case that he honestly did the best job he could.

Almost.

The main issue clearly that Tenet wants to put forward is the fact the CIA didn't know - just how much they didn't know.

I've heard debate about this book subsequently, and it, and it looks like, "You knew this was wrong, and you let the president of the United States or you let the secretary of state go to the United Nations and say it."

Absolutely not.

"You knew in the moment, at the time you lived in, all of the problems that would manifest themselves in postwar Iraq and didn't tell anybody."

That's absolutely not true.

On these two points, Tenet has a strong case surprisingly. First of all you have to look not just to him, but to other sources such as Col. Lawrence Wilkerson and Colin Powell who actually gave the UN speech. As Tenet described today, Powell did spend several days at CIA headquarters vetting the accuracy of the speech and largely tossing out many of the White House claims which he had been provided via Scooter Libby.

"We've really got to make the case" against Hussein, Bush told Powell in an Oval Office meeting in late January, "and I want you to make it." Only Powell had the "credibility to do this," Bush said. "Maybe they'll believe you." It was a direct order from his commander in chief, and it never occurred to Powell to question it.

He was told that the case had already been put together by the White House, and he assumed that with a little tweaking he could turn it into a speech that would fit his voice and style. He was taken aback on Tuesday, January 28, when he received the bulk of the document, a 48-page, single-spaced compilation of Hussein's alleged weapons of mass destruction program, replete with drama, rhetorical devices and a kitchen sink full of allegations. The most extreme version of every charge the administration had made about Hussein, the document had been written, Powell concluded, under the tutelage of Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, who shared all of his boss's hard-line views and then some.

That was the Speech the President wanted Powell to give, but he didn't do it and frankly - neither Tenet or Wilkerson wouldn't let him. Still things didn't go smoothly.

MR. RUSSERT: He now says that that presentation was inaccurate and that it's a blot on his career.

MR. TENET: And we let the secretary down, and we undermined the credibility of the United States because we, we worked very hard for three nights. We believed we put together a presentation that we thought was good and solid. And we know that once we got on the ground, and we know that once we started learning things, that that presentation didn't stand up. So, you know, I sat behind, I sat behind the secretary of state. We sat there for three and a half days trying to make sure that he said what we believed. We worked very, very hard. We started with a draft that wasn't our own. We spent two and a half days trying to figure out where, where half the stuff came from.

But it's fair to note - that their failure wasn't for lack of trying to do a good job.

"HERE YOU GO," POWELL SAID, as he dropped the White House document on the desk of his chief of staff, Lawrence Wilkerson. Wilkerson quickly agreed it read more like a badly written novel than something designed to persuade the world. That afternoon, he assembled a State Department team-- including speechwriter Lynne Davidson and Barry Lowenkron, a senior CIA officer before he joined Powell's policy planning staff -- to set up shop at CIA headquarters, across the Potomac River in Virginia. They would examine the evidence themselves and turn the document into what Wilkerson called "a Colin Powell speech." Cheney aide John Hannah and William Tobey, the counterproliferation director at the White House National Security Council, would meet them there to answer any questions.

The problem as has been admitted by Wilkerson, is that they never considered the possibility that they were wrong about Saddam.

As they probed for proof of Hussein's lies, no one thought of looking for evidence that might have raised questions about their assumptions that the weapons existed.

And as it turned out Hussein finally did tell the truth when he put forth his "Final Declaration" on the status of his WMD programs in the wake of Powell's speech and the passage Un Resolution 1441.

He didn't have any more WMD's, Hussein had given the order to destroy them in 1991 - not that anyone in 2002 was listening to him.

What Tenet and Powell didn't know was that their source for the many of the claims in the UN speech, Ibn Sheik al-Libi was known as a fabricator by the DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency) - a fact which was not shared with CIA.

Another of the primary sources was Curveball, who had also been identified by DIA as a fabricator.

But some people in CIA were aware of problems with Curveball, including European chief Tyler Drumheller, who personally crossed out information from Powell's UN speech which he recognized as coming from that source. Unfortunately, it didn't take.

In late January 2003, as Secretary of State Colin Powell prepared to argue the Bush administration's case against Iraq at the United Nations, veteran CIA officer Tyler Drumheller sat down with a classified draft of Powell's speech to look for errors. He found a whopper: a claim about mobile biological labs built by Iraq for germ warfare.

Drumheller instantly recognized the source, an Iraqi defector suspected of being mentally unstable and a liar. The CIA officer took his pen, he recounted in an interview, and crossed out the whole paragraph.

A few days later, the lines were back in the speech. Powell stood before the U.N. Security Council on Feb. 5 and said: "We have first-hand descriptions of biological weapons factories on wheels and on rails."

Tenet has long argued that he wasn't told about Curveball's credibility problems, in 2005 he said:

It is deeply troubling to me that there was information apparently available within CIA as of late September or October of 2002 indicating that Curveball may have been a fabricator"

And Wilkerson - whose been no fan of Bush Iraq policy or the Vice President's tactics in pushing his agenda - says he never heard anything about Curveball or Drumheller.

"No one mentioned Drumheller, or Curveball," Lawrence B. Wilkerson, Powell's chief of staff at the time, said in an interview. "I didn't know the name Curveball until months afterward."

Drumheller, according the Washington Post has stated that he informed deputy-DCI John McLaughlin about the problems with Curveball, but McLaughlin has claimed before the Robb-Silberman Commission that he didn't remember it.

The same situation was repeated when it comes to the infamous 16 Words - although Tenet personally intervened to have the reference to Niger and Uranium removed from the President's Cincinnati speech, it still found it's way back into the State of the Union. From MTP.

MR. RUSSERT: You said six months after that, that those words should not have been included in the president's speech.

MR. TENET: Correct.

MR. RUSSERT: Why did it take six months?

MR. TENET: Well, well, Tim, first of all, it's interesting. Let's, let's do the history here. Identical words were intended to be put in the Cincinnati speech, and we took them out. I took them out directly in a conversation with Mr. Hadley and follow-up memos that we sent to the White House as to why you can't use this data. We document that in the book. That speech was provided to me just before it was given. Unfortunately, I didn't read it. We passed it out for comment. Nobody came back to me to say "Let's take it out."

To his credit though, Tenet doesn't completely pass the buck to his underlings.

TENET: But we took it out--we took it out in the Cincinnati speech. We left it in in this speech. I believe we had a responsibility in clearing the (SOTU) speech to, to accept the responsibility of the fact that we didn't get our job done and allowed the president of the United States to say that. I believed there was going to be shared responsibility. We took it out of Cincinnati. We were very forceful about that.

Yes, they were - with two faxes and a phone call directly from Tenet to Stephen Hadley. Yet the incorrect words returned

I may be weird, but it seems to me this is exact repeat of what didn't happen with Curveball because in that case as well, the issue apparently got lost somewhere on the desk of Tenet's deputy John McLaughlin. Hmmmm...

In the midst of all this were the action being taken by Douglas Feith over at Defense to help promote and hype the Curveball and al-libi claims, to hype the Niger forgeries and the aluminum tubes. As Wilkerson has noted:

What I saw was a cabal between the vice president of the United States, Richard Cheney, and the secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, on critical issues that made decisions that the bureaucracy did not know were being made. And then, when the bureaucracy was presented with the decision to carry them out, it was presented in a such a disjointed, incredible way that the bureaucracy often didn't know what it was doing as it moved to carry them out.

With Libby pushing his points from the OVP along with Feith at DOD and his attempts to hide and overide the issues with Curveball, al-libi, the Niger forgeries, the non-existent Atta/Prague meeting, the fact that Iraq Foreign Minister Sabri had essentially defected and told us outright - that Iraq Had No More WMD's - the ones who got "slammed dunked" were Tenet and the American people.

But one point where Tenet does appear to be a little bit of Hero - almost - is on the pre-9-11 warnings.

MR. RUSSERT: Then in June, a briefer of the CIA named Rich B gave a conclusion saying, based on all the reporting we've seen, that "bin Laden is going to launch a significant terrorist attack against U.S." Israeli "interest in the coming weeks." July 10 you got another briefing so alarming that you picked up the phone, said to Condoleezza Rice, "I want to come see you now," jumped in the car with some of your key advisers, went to see her. Rich B, he gave her a briefing package. Opening line, "There will be a significant terrorist attack in the coming weeks or months!" And then you--and later July, Rich B
sitting at the CIA, said, "They're coming here." When he told you that, what did you think?

MR. TENET: It was a moment I'll never forget. We, we were sitting there trying to rack our brains, trying to figure out what we were up against at that moment. And you know, Rich, Rich said that, it hung over the room. We had no texture. We took it seriously, you know, but we had no texture at that moment. Of course, this is a, this is a human being who's been following this for many years, and he's giving us an instinctual call.

Tenet briefed Rice, she had them repeat the briefings with Rumsfeld. The August PDB reitereated the warnings.

Yet Bush and Co did nothing.

They only had ONE MEETING on the issue eight months after Richard Clark had begged for one.

Condoleezza Rice has consitently maintained that there were no warnings of an attack "inside the U.S." - either in the PDB ("This was historical information") or during this briefing, which she intially claimed didn't even happen.

But he's the thing, considering how the filtering of subordinates (and a healthy dose of hype from Douglas Feith) later hurt us going into Iraq, did the President ever get the message about al-Qaeda before 9-11? Apparently he did.

MR. RUSSERT: This is late July. The evidence coming in the intelligence: big event, spectacular, King, King Abdullah of Jordan calling, saying, "We have to go to Afghanistan. We have to do something." A presidential daily brief was prepared for the president on August 6 entitled "Bin Laden Determined To Strike in the U.S."

Late August, you went to Crawford, Texas, first time ever, met with the president, rode with him in his pickup truck. Did you say to him at that time, "Mr. President, Rich B told me at the CIA they are coming. You got to do something now"?

MR. TENET: Tim, by, by August, remember, this threat reporting starts way back in the spring--May, June, July, August. I held nothing back from the president. He understood our concerns about threats. He understood what we were doing around the world at the time. The interesting thing is is by the end of July, everything goes silent on us.

So, yes - Bush was specifically told and knew that Bin Laden was going to attack the U.S. He was In The Loop.

TENET: You know, I, I have every confidence that everybody in our government understood what I believed to be a very, very serious time period. At the end of the day, the authorities we were seeking were to get on the ground and work covertly with, with Ahmed Shah Massoud and the northern alliance. We wanted to get more proactive on the ground. The hijackers were already here.

Again, this puts the lie to Rice's claims from just last week that the desire to go to Afghanistan and deal with al-Qaeda directly Prior to 9-11 was a "New Fact".

Unfortunately for Tenet, Massoud was murdered just a week before 9-11. While the Bush Administration was "deliberating" the issue of an imminent al-Qeada attack - Bin Ladin was finalizing his plan. While we sat on our hands and CIA waited for authority to proceed - al Qaeda was taking action.

Tenet is indeed "No Hero" in all of this, but neither is he entirely a villain. It's fair to say that he did try hard to do what he thought was right, he made mistakes - serious ones (although he had a ton of help in that regard) - and it may be true that all he may be trying to do now is simply brush some of the tarnish off of his tattered legacy, he has at least been man enough to admit his own many, many mistakes.

He may have an ongoing tiff with Richard Perle over who said what and when about Iraq's links to Al-Qaeda - (and he's already admitted his mistake here as well) - but utimately it's going to take the 20/20 hindsight of history to fully appreciate the total scope of the failures and successes of the CIA under his leadership.

It seems to me there's more than enough blame to go around.

When exactly we're going to hear Feith, Libby, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice and Bush admit their complete and total fuck-ups will probably be sometime after the next Ice-Age in Hell.

Vyan

What did Rice Know (about the Niger Forgeries) and when did she know it?

That's what Henry Waxman wants to know. He's already subpoened her, while she remains "dis-inclined" to honor that subpeona claiming that it is a "seperation of powers" issue - but since new revelations have surfaced that a state department analyst clearly identified the Niger documents as "probably a hoax" and "clearly a forgery" three months before the President's 2003 State of the Union address Rice and the State Dept have apparently blocked his access to Congressional Investigators - that view seems increasingly spurious.

It's one thing to dubiously claim that Executive Priviledge extends not simply to communications directly with the President, as has been the historical precedent, and that the now extend all the way to communications between the CIA and NSC, it's quite another to willinging obstruct a lawful Congressional Investigation by refusing to grant them access to witnesses.

It seems the Diva of Dissembling is at it yet again.

ere are the relevant facts from David Corn at Slate:

In mid-October 2002, a nuclear analyst named Simon Dodge in the State Department's intelligence division was forwarded copies of documents purporting to outline a recent sale of 500 tons of yellowcake uranium—which can be enriched for use in nuclear weapons—from the impoverished African nation of Niger to Iraq. As he reviewed the papers—which had been handed to the U.S. Embassy in Italy by an Italian journalist who had received them from a not-so-credible paid source—Dodge zeroed in on a bizarre companion document. It described a secret 2002 meeting at the home of the Iraqi ambassador in Rome of representatives of the world's outlaw states—Iraq, Iran, Sudan, and Libya (and Pakistan, too). The purpose of this session was to form a clandestine alliance against the West and to concoct a "plan of action" for "Global Support."

Iran and Iraq in a secret pact to create a partnership of rogue states? This was something out of James Bond—or Austin Powers. Dodge considered it "completely implausible," as he later told congressional investigators. Yet this memo bore the same "funky" (as he saw it) embassy of Niger stamp that appeared on the uranium-deal papers. That was, for Dodge, a telltale sign. If the uranium-agreement papers were coming from the same source as the outlandish rogue-state alliance memo (and bearing the same suspect markings), they, too, must be fishy. He concluded that the entire set of papers from Italy was likely fraudulent and e-mailed that assessment to colleagues within the intelligence community. Three months later, he reiterated his concerns in a Jan. 12, 2003, e-mail to other intelligence-community analysts and warned that the uranium-purchase agreement "probably is a hoax."

It's become clear that there were plenty of things "fishy" about those Niger documents. First of all was the fact that Iraq already had 500 tons of Yellowcake which had been purchased in the 80's and were under the control of UN Weapons inspectors. And Besides the "funky stamp" noted by Dodge there were a whole host of other problems as documented by Vanity Fair last year.

The forged documents were full of errors. A letter dated October 10, 2000, was signed by Minister of Foreign Affairs Allele Elhadj Habibou—even though he had been out of office for more than a decade. Its September 28 postmark indicated that somehow the letter had been received nearly two weeks before it was sent. In another letter, President Tandja Mamadou's signature appeared to be phony. The accord signed by him referred to the Niger constitution of May 12, 1965, when a new constitution had been enacted in 1999. One of the letters was dated July 30, 1999, but referred to agreements that were not made until a year later. Finally, the agreement called for the 500 tons of uranium to be transferred from one ship to another in international waters—a spectacularly difficult feat.

In fact long before Dodge - who was apparently the first American official to actually see the documents first hand - the Niger claims had been thoroughly discounted by the intelligence community. According to Vanity Fair's report it had been knocked down at least 19 different times before Bush's State of the Union.

In December 2001, Greg Thielmann, director for strategic proliferation and military affairs at the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR), reviewed Iraq's W.M.D. program for Colin Powell. As for the Niger report, Thielmann said, "A whole lot of things told us that the report was bogus. This wasn't highly contested. There weren't strong advocates on the other side. It was done, shot down."

By late 2002 Joseph Wilson had already been to Niger and back, to follow up on the Niger documents filing a verbal report with CPD at CIA which was also shared with INR at State. What he found was Bupkis. Not only had the Iraqis failed to get Uranium from Niger, the Nigerian government couldn't have given it too them if they wanted to since the mining operations was under the control by the French and overseen by the IAEA. By the time Wilson returned the story had been essentially debunked.

By now the Niger reports had been discredited more than half a dozen times—by the French in 2001, by the C.I.A. in Rome and in Langley, by the State Department's INR, by some analysts in the Pentagon, by the ambassador to Niger, by Wilson, and yet again by State.

Despite the fact that members of the Intelligence Community were highly skeptical of these documents, the White House continued to press the issue - interjecting references to the Niger claims into President Bush's October Cincinatti speach. An intervention was required...

The C.I.A. faxed a memo to Hadley and the speechwriters telling them to delete the sentence on uranium, "because the amount is in dispute and it is debatable whether it can be acquired from the source. We told Congress that the Brits have exaggerated this issue. Finally, the Iraqis already have 550 metric tons of uranium oxide in their inventory."

Even after this fax, the reference remained in the speach - so George Tenet personally picked up the phone and called Hadley.

According to his Senate testimony, he told Hadley that the "president should not be a fact witness on this issue," because the "reporting was weak." The C.I.A. even put it in writing and faxed it to the N.S.C.

The reference was removed from the speach, but the issue just refuse to remain dead, like a cat from a Stephen King novel.

For the next two months, December 2002 and January 2003, references to the uranium deal resurfaced again and again in "fact sheets," talking-point memos, and speeches. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Powell, and Rice all declared publicly that Iraq had been caught trying to buy uranium from Niger. On December 19, the claim reappeared on a fact sheet published by the State Department. The bureaucratic battle was unending. In light of the many differing viewpoints, the Pentagon asked the National Intelligence Council, the body that oversees the 15 agencies in the U.S. intelligence community, to resolve the matter. According to The Washington Post, in a January 2003 memo the council replied unequivocally that "the Niger story was baseless and should be laid to rest." The memo went immediately to Bush and his advisers.

Yet, miraculously, Bush still uttered the infamous 16 words on National Television during his 2003 State of Union, fueling greater support for his eventual decision to began a war with Iraq.

Despite Rice claims last week to George Stephanapolous that this has been "well investigated" IT. HAS. NOT. Neither the Robb-Silberman commission nor the Senate Intelligence committe under Roberts addressed this isssue.

And now, on top of the moutainous pile of evidence that the White House was well and repeatedly informed that the Niger story was bogus - we have Dodge's assesment and the stunning fact that the State Department refuses to let him speak to Waxman's Committee even though he is more than willing to do so. Waxman's letter to Rice.

[A] member of your legislative office informed Committee staff that you were prohibiting Mr. Dodge from meeting with Committee investigators. This official claimed that allowing Mr. Dodge to speak with Committee staff would be "inappropriate" because the Committee voted to issue a subpoena to compel your attendance at a hearing on your knowledge of the fabricated evidence.

I assume that your legislative staff was acting without your authorization in this matter. It would be a matter of great concern - as well as an obvious conflict of interest - if you had directed your staff to impede a congressional investigation into matter that may implicate your conduct as National Security Advisor.

In fact, it would be Obstruction of Justice for anyone at State, particularly Secretary Rice, to interfere with a Congressional investigation, not to mention possible Witness Tampering charges and what was that other one again...?

Oh yeah... Contempt of Congress.

Maybe, just maybe, they're so resistant to this inquiry for a reason, perhaps it's the apparently probability that the Niger Forgeries were originated by the U.S. according to a Reagan era CIA Official.

The Italian intelligence service, the military intelligence service, was acquiring information that was really being hand-fed to them by very dubious sources. The Niger documents, for example, which apparently were produced in the United States, yet were funneled through the Italians.

This allegation has also been repeated and supported by former CIA analyst Ray McGovern as he appeared on Tucker Carlson this week.

Tucker:"That memo came from abroad."

McGovern:"Some of it came from abroad, but you know if you trace the memo back and see the characters who are involved, it's my appreciation that the memo leads right back to the doorstep of the Vice President of the United States."

Tucker: "So the Vice President you believe forged, now if the Vice President was behind that forgery, don't you think he would have done a better job?"

McGovern: "I don't think he and Lynn, you know, sat down and did it. I think they farmed it out to a cottage industry of former intelligence agents that did a rather amateurish job."

McGovern is clearly referring to Michael Ledeen, a former member of Reagan's NSC - who had more than few fingers in the Iran-Contra cookie jar - and has long been rumored to have have used his long-standing links to SISMI and the then incoming Bush Administration to act as a rogue independent intelligence operative in 1999 when the forgeries were created. Last year's Vanity Fair article stopped short of claiming it had proof that Ledeen and/or his associates were responsible for the forgery, but McGovern's claim indicates that he may have found information that is more damaging.

Or not, we'll see.

This is all the more reason, of course, for Rice to damn the torpedos and continue play "beat the clock" with the Waxman investigation forcing them into court to gain each and every single peice of information if she can - for now that is.

As I've stated before, they can always simply Impeach Her Arrogant Ass.

Vyan

The Contempt of Condoleeza

Today the Secretary of State made a whirlwind tour appearing both on Face the Nation with Bob Schieffer and This Week with George Stephanapolous to address the multi-headed shit storm that coming her way from the never-ending 16 Words Controversy, George Tenet's New Book, her failure to respond to 9-11 warnings and apparent "inclination" to ignore a Congressional Subpoena.

Yeah, Life Sure can be a Bitch when you're a Gangsta! eh, Condi?

The most pressing issue, since George Tenet will be appearing on 60 Minutes tonight, is the fact that in his new book he confirms the July 10th briefing with Condi Rice and Stephan Hadley that was first revealed by Bob Woodwards "State of Denial".

Rice originally denied that the briefing had even happened, claiming that it wasn't mentioned in the 9-11 report!

But that canard didn't last long when her spokesman Sean McCormack revealed that there really had been a briefing, but gee it wasn't really any "big deal", ok?

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack [said]... the information Rice got "was not new'’ and didn’t amount to an urgent warning.

Strange, that's not how McClatchy reported it.

One official who helped to prepare the briefing, which included a PowerPoint presentation, described it as a "10 on a scale of 1 to 10″ that "connected the dots" in earlier intelligence reports to present a stark warning that al-Qaida, which had already killed Americans in Yemen, Saudi Arabia and East Africa, was poised to strike again...

Today Schieffer pressed Rice on this issue, using excerpts from tonights 60 minutes report where Tenet states that his briefing was intended to spark immediate pre-emptive offensive attacks in Afghanistan against Al Qaeda.

Rice: The idea of launching preemptive strikes into Afghanistan in July of 2001, this is a new fact. I don't know what we were supposed to pre-emptively strike in Afghanistan. Perhaps someone should ask that question...

A New Fact? Really? Back when the Woodward's book came out, it was discussed on Olberman with Roger Cressey.

OLBERMANN: My first question, you‘re now consulting within a firm with Richard Clarke, who was at that meeting on July 10, on the central question of whether Rice was warned then of an attack on the U.S. Do we know who‘s right here, Woodward or Secretary Rice?

CRESSEY: Yes, she was warned. I mean, there was a meeting. It was George Tenet, Dick Clarke, another individual from the agency, Cofer Black, and Steve Hadley. And what it was, Keith, was a briefing for Dr. Rice that was similar to a briefing the CIA gave to us in the situation room about a week before, laying out the information, the intelligence, laying out the sense of urgency. And it was pretty much given to Dr. Rice and Steve Hadley in pretty stark terms.

But it was more than just a warning - there was a plan attached also.

OLBERMANN: The $500 million Cofer Black action plan against bin Laden, would have read like crazy talk if that had been presented to her as Woodward describes it?

CRESSEY: Not crazy talk, but because in some respects, that‘s what we did after 9/11...

Although Cofer's amazing Bucket-o-Bin-Laden's-Head plan was probably a tad over the top (Wassa matter, they don't make decent Pikes no more?!), at the very least they could have done what Bill Clinton Did in 1998 against Al Qaeda and even if they didn't kill bin Laden, they could have disrupted their operations and sent a signal that we were on to them, just as he had with the Lincoln and Holland Tunnel Attacks and the Millenium Bomb Plot. It might have postponed or even caused 9-11 to be aborted.

Or they could have done what Clinton really wanted to do which was have Special Forces go after Bin Laden. Clinton stated...

"Hugh [Shelton, then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs], what i think would scare the shit out of these al Qaeda guys more than any cruise missle... would be the sight of U.S. commandos, Ninja guys in black suits, jumping out of helicopters into their camps, spraying machine guns. Even if we don't get the big guys, it will have a good effect."

Except that the Joint Chief's wouldn't let him.

Then there was the Armed Predator Project which had languished on the shelf since Bush had taken office, and the fact that despite Richard Clark's desperate plea for a meeting of the NSC Principles to discuss the immentent threat of Al Qeada and implement his PLAN TO ATTACK AND DISMANTLE THEM (pdf) back in January of 2001 - No Such Meeting took place until September!

Anyway, while the Bush Administration was laying down in the face of Al Qaeda - they were more than ready to stand up and swat down the "imminent threat" of Saddam Hussein in Iraq.

Rice on This Week today. (Not an exact transcript)

Stephanapolous: So was Iraq really an imminent threat?

Rice: Imminent? An "imminent threat" is not "if somebody is going to strike tomorrow," but rather, "it’s whether you believe you’re in a stronger position today to deal with the threat, or whether you’re going to be in a stronger position...

Well, what we tried to do was assess whether the threat was growing better or worse. Saddam has abused the UN Oil for Food Program. His people were under harsh sanctions, while he was enriching himself. He was still filing mass graves. This was a threat that needed to be dealt with. It was the totality of the picture prompted the President to make the decision he made

Ok, we had to solve the mass grave problem in Iraq, but not in Darfur? We had to "Get Saddam" but Bin Laden wasn't news? Bin Laden determined to attack inside the U.S. was "Historical Information?" Yeah, right.

It's odd that I've never noticed a single mention of Mass Graves in HJ 141, the Iraq Force Resolution. But maybe that's because IT DOESN'T HAVE ANY.

It does say this...

Whereas Iraq persists in violating resolutions of the United Nations Security Council by continuing to engage in brutal repression of its civilian population thereby threatening international peace and security in the region, by refusing to release, repatriate, or account for non-Iraqi citizens wrongfully detained by Iraq, including an American serviceman, and by failing to return property wrongfully seized by Iraq from Kuwait;

This seems to be more about recovering our MIA's and property stolen from Kuwait during the First Gulf War than addressing the "imminent threat of Iraqi mass graves", doesn't it?

Well, it does talk about Saddam Hussein's attempts to gather WMD's and Nuclear Materials.

Whereas the efforts of international weapons inspectors, United States intelligence agencies, and Iraqi defectors led to the discovery that Iraq had large stockpiles of chemical weapons and a large scale biological weapons program, and that Iraq had an advanced nuclear weapons development program that was much closer to producing a nuclear weapon than intelligence reporting had previously indicated;

Unfortunately, none of this was true.

Which then leads us to the next issue that Rice was hammered about this morning - The 16 Words.

Back in 2003 Rice said on This Week:

The Intelligence Community did not know, at least at levels that got to us (in the White House), that their were serious questions about this report

And today on This Week:

Stephanopolous: But that statement wasn't true. You and Stephen Hadley received a memo in October of 2002 that indicated that there were serious questions [ about the 16 words report].

On both shows, Rice stuck to her talking points.

This has been one of the most investigation issues...

The information was included in the NIE...

Both the Robb-Silbermann Commission and the Select Senate Commitee have addressed this...

I have answered these questions [of Rep Waxman] with hundreds of pages of documents and with several letters...

I answered these questions at my confirmation hearing...

Maybe we [Hadley and I] should have remembered [to keep the 16 words out after the Cincinatti speach], but we didn't

In point of fact neither the Robb-Silberman Commission or the Senate Select Commitee investigation had the authority to address the question of how the Bush Administration used, manipulated and/or ignored the intelligence it was provided.

The Robb-Silbermann commission essentially blames the Intelligence Community for Bush's 16 word mistake.

The Intelligence Community failed to authenticate in a timely fashion transparently forged documents purporting to show that Iraq had attempted to procure uranium from Niger.

This is basically true, since the CIA didn't yet have copies of the documents in question, but they had sent Joe Wilson to Niger to investigate and he had found that there was no "there" there. Besides the NIE did include a a lengthy dissent from the State & Energy Depts about the viabiilty of aluminum tubing for use in a centerfuge.

Contrary to her claims Sec Rice has not addressed all of Waxman's questions...

In my March I2 letter, l requested information about what you knew about this assertion and how it ended up in the State of the Union address. I asked you to answer specific questions raised in a June 10, 2003, letter and a July 29,2003, letter, both of which I enclosed. These questions included: (1) whether you had any knowledge that would explain why President Bush cited forged evidence about Iraq’s efforts to procure uranium from Niger in the State of the Union address; (2) whether you knew before the State of the Union address of the doubts raised by the CIA and the State Department about the veracity of the Niger claim; (3) whether there was a factual basis for your reference in a January 23,2003, op-ed to "Iraq’s efforts to get uranium from abroad"; and (4) whether you took appropriate steps to investigate how the Niger claim ended up in the State of the Union address after it was revealed to be fraudulent.

He has sent her a total of 16 letters, most of which she has blown-off.

According to Committee records, you have satisfactorily responded to only five of those 16 letters.

Now she's been put under subpoena and she's going to blow that off too.

Rice apparently feels that a) She's already answered the question and/or b) She prefers to answer them on TV, but not in front of the House Oversight Commitee.

Stephanopolous: Why not Testify?

Rice: It's a seperation of powers issue. I was in the White House, and it's up to the White House Counsel's Office.

Stephanopolous: Waxman intends to site you for Contempt of Congress

Rice (and Hadley's) problem here is that George Tenet didn't just send a single memo about the Niger issue. He sent several, as well as phone calls. From the Washington Post via Common Dreams.

The officials made the disclosure hours after they were alerted by the CIA to the existence of a memo sent to [Bush]'s deputy national security adviser, Stephen J. Hadley, on Oct. 6. The White House said Bush's chief speechwriter, Michael Gerson, on Friday night discovered another memo from the CIA, dated Oct. 5, also expressing doubts about the Africa claims.

Hadley, who also received a phone call from CIA Director George J. Tenet before the president's Oct. 7 speech asking that the Africa allegation be removed, took the blame for allowing the charge to be revived in the State of the Union address. "I should have recalled . . . that there was controversy associated with the uranium issue," he said

Shortly after Friday's briefing, [Dan Bartlett] and Hadley said yesterday, Gerson discovered the first of two CIA memos to the White House from last October. The CIA memo, dated Oct. 5 and addressed to Gerson, Hadley and others, objected to a sentence that the White House included in a draft of Bush's upcoming speech, saying [Saddam Hussein]'s "regime has been caught attempting to purchase" uranium in Africa. The officials did not release the memo but said the uranium information was on Page 3 of a four-page document.

Oh, it was all the way back on Page 3? So you guys only read the cliff notes of your memos from the CIA now?

Two memos and a call directly from the Director of Central Intelligence himself - and they just plain forgot? No wonder she doesn't want to go under oath with that stinker of a story. The "I was just too busy" defense didn't work for Scooter and it doesn't work here.

Instead Rice intends to play chicken with the Congress, which could get very interesting indeed. As Kagro X has mentioned, there have been occasions when the Attorney Generals' Office has declined to prosecute a Contempt of Congress Charge against an Administration official, but that isn't the last card they have to play.

Just as John Murtha brought up today during his appearance on Face the Nation in regards to influencing the President - they also have the option of Impeachment, particularly if the Alberto Gonzales hand-picked lapdogs at the DOJ decide not to prosecute Secretary Rice for the pure and utter Contempt she's shown the Congress and the American people with this cock and bull story of her's.

The simple fact is that she failed to respond to genuinely urgent warnings about Al Qaeda and then ignored evidence that Saddam Hussein wasn't any kind of imminent threat to the U.S. Even the NIE, incomplete though it was, still stated that "he was unlike to use WMD's Unless he was provoked."

So of course, we provoked him didn't we!

The body count for the blunder of ignoring what the weapons inspectors were actually saying ("The U.S. Intel is Garbage") has risen to over 3,300 for Americans and hundreds of thousands for Iraqis, not to mention those who've been permenently wounded by this war - and those who were needlessly lost on 9-11.

It's high time someone was held accountable for the fact that the Bush Administration was completely asleep at the switch on 9-11 and the total FusterCluck we're made out of Iraq. Rice is as good a person to start with as anyone.

Investigate, Indict, Impeach, Remove - then Rinse and Repeat.

Update 4-30-07:

Ok, I've had a chance to review Tenet's performance on 60 Minutes and first thing I have to say is "Wow, doesn't that guy have some issues!"

Former CIA Analyst Ray McGovern has taken him to task on OpedNews.

We write to you on the occasion of the release of your book, At the Center of the Storm. You are on the record complaining about the "damage to your reputation". In our view the damage to your reputation is inconsequential compared to the harm your actions have caused for the U.S. soldiers engaged in combat in Iraq and the national security of the United States. We believe you have a moral obligation to return the Medal of Freedom you received from President George Bush. We also call for you to dedicate a significant percentage of the royalties from your book to the U.S. soldiers and their families who have been killed and wounded in Iraq.

McGovern also recounts what Bob Baer has to say about Tenet's ridiculous of his "Slam Dunk" whine...

"So, it is better that the 'slam dunk' referred to the ease with which the war could be sold? I guess I missed that part of the National Security Act delineating the functions of the CIA - the part about CIA marketing a war. Guess that's why I never made it into senior management."

I myself have two major bones to pick with him. First his claim that "Enhanced Interrogation" has been worth it.

What he seems to conveniently forget is that while he was sitting there behind Colin Powell at the UN while he talked about Al Qaeda and Saddam being "in cooperation" - that information came from someone who had been part of the CIA Ghost Detainee program named Ibn Sheik al-Libi and that al-Libi had told us what we wanted to hear in order to stop being tortured.

Former CIA European Chief Tyler Drumheller had tried to remove references to "biological labs" from the UN Speech because he knew the information came from a source he knew to be a fabricator codenamed "Curveball". Yet those references found their way back into the speech.

Tenet may like to protend that "No one has died" from being tortured under the CIA program, but he ignores the fact that the Pentagon and Military intelligence have also implemented their own interrogation and Ghost Detainee programs which have so far resulted in the deaths of at least 26 people (that we know of so far).

Yes, it is to his credit that Tenet tried to have the 16 words removed from various speeches made by the President - but he wasn't the only one.

Vanity Fair has found at least 14 instances prior to the 2003 State of the Union in which analysts at the C.I.A., the State Department, or other government agencies who had examined the Niger documents or reports about them raised serious doubts about their legitimacy--only to be rebuffed by Bush-administration officials who wanted to use the material. "They were just relentless," says Wilkerson, who later prepared Colin Powell's presentation before the United Nations General Assembly. "You would take it out and they would stick it back in. That was their favorite bureaucratic technique--ruthless relentlessness."

The second issue I have with Tenet is this arguement that the CIA had assets on the ground in Afghanistan in 1999 that could have "done something about bin Laden, but President Clinton wouldn't give the go ahead."

This is frankly a line of bull. Former NSC member Roger Cressey has already debunked this:

Mr. Miniter (In his Book "Losing Bin Laden") also alleges that in the spring and summer of 1998 the Clinton administration was deadlocked over the decision to conduct a special forces mission near a bin Laden camp. Mr. Miniter suggests that the president did not want to overrule Pentagon concerns over risks because he could not "stomach sending thousands of troops into harm's way." Mr. Clinton was, in fact, ready and willing to undertake a special forces or other paramilitary assault on bin Laden, particularly after our missile attacks on bin Laden in the summer of 1998, and often pressed his senior military advisers for options. But Mr. Clinton's top military and intelligence advisers concluded that a commando raid was likely to be a failure, given the potential for detection, in the absence of reliable, predictive intelligence on bin Laden's whereabouts.
Mr. Clinton approved every request made of him by the CIA and the U.S. military involving using force against bin Laden and al Qaeda. As President Bush well knows, bin Laden was and remains very good at staying hidden.

In point of fact, it wasn't Clinton who refused to pull the trigger on bin Laden when he might have had a chance - it was Tenet as has been documented by Richard Clark as he debunked ABC's "Path to 9-11".

1. Contrary to the movie, no US military or CIA personnel were on the ground in Afghanistan and saw bin Laden.

2. Contrary to the movie, the head of the Northern Alliance, Masood, was no where near the alleged bin Ladin camp and did not see UBL.

3. Contrary to the movie, the CIA Director actually said that he could not recommend a strike on the camp because the information was single sourced and we would have no way to know if bin Laden was in the target area by the time a cruise missile hit it.

Vyan

Vyan

Raw Story: Dems going BIG on Oversight

Uh oh, I think Bushgov is in deep deep trouble...

Democrats are "thinking big" on Bush oversight, according to a Capitol Hill newspaper.

"Senate Democrats’ plans to significantly beef up the chamber’s oversight of the Bush administration will go well beyond intelligence-gathering activities and President Bush’s prosecution of the Iraq War to include investigations into the Medicare program, alleged censorship of scientists, climate change and potential manipulation of energy markets, according to aides and lobbyists," John Stanton reports for Roll Call.

So we're finally going to ask what the "F" is up with Dick Cheney's secret meeting with Energy Companies just before the California Rolling Blackouts? We're finally to get that lying weasal Abu Gonzales under oath?

Hallu-fraking-lujah!

But, I wonder and worry, if this just might be too much of a good thing?

As I've noted previously the Wing-Nuts and Neo-Con/Artists are salivating like an overheated dog at the prospects of "Libruls Run Amok" in the Congress.

They're already framing Speaker Pelosi as a "Shrew" and "Wicked Witch of the West".

In her New York Post column -- "Call Her 'Nancy Shrew'?" -- also addressing Pelosi's handling of the Hoyer/Murtha contest, Orin-Eilbeck wrote: "Forget 'The Devil Wears Prada['] the hot show in Washington is 'The Shrew Adores Armani.' In just a few short days, House Speaker-to-be Nancy Pelosi has turned into a caricature of the shrill, petty woman boss."

Then you've got O'Leilly on Nov 9th.

Now the unintended consequence of the power shift in D.C. is that some Democrats will try to impose a secular-progressive agenda on the country.

First, there will be an attempt to raise taxes — Ways and Means Chairman Charles Rangel will lead that.

Second, new speaker, Nancy Pelosi, will encourage investigations of the Bush administration, seeking to create a scandal which would help the Democrat presidential nominee in 2008.

But that could backfire on the Democrats as most Americans do not want Mr. Bush attacked. They want to see if the Democrats can do better. They do not want to see their government ripped apart in a time of war.

I'll say again what I said before.

"Create a Scandal?" Democrats don't have to "make up a scandal" - they have a all you can eat buffet of scandals laid out right in front of them.

However -- I will with heavy heart and a lump in my throat admit one. true. fact. We shouldn't try to eat the entire buffet all in one sitting!

That's just plain gluttony.

All of these issues should be looked at, the Congress should absolutely perform oversight. The Senate still hasn't finished Phase II of the original WMD investigation. We have multiple sets of Downing Street Memos that still haven't been addressed. We got Torture. We got Illegal Surveillance. We got Katrina and it's aftermath. We're still missing that pesky Habeas Corpus thingy ("I knew I saw it on the countertop just last week...") The people who vowed to "Restore Honor and Integrity the the White House" have instead repeatedly had shoplifters, hookers, pedophiles and not-so-closeted gay drug-addict homophobe preachers in the White House, not to mention the Watergate Hotel and the Congress.

There's serious work here that needs a-doin.

But still - O'Reilly. Actually. Said. Something. True.

(Cue the Shock and Awe Musical montage - with the obligatory FEAR Font!)

IMO if we go hog-wild like a bunch of teenages girls on spring break with way too many video cameras around we'll most likely find we just lined up in a circular firing squad.

I believe strongly that this is why Speaker Pelosi has taken Impeachment "Off the Table". What Democrats do now that they've regained power in Congress can not be seen as payback or a witchhunt. We could spend the next decade investigating all the things that BushCo have totally fracked up, and in all likelyhood we probably will.

Congressional Dems have to do their jobs, they have to do it well - and they have to do them smart - or we'll be crying in our latte's about yet another Stealth Wing-Nut President (like McCain - shiver) in '08.

We have to be in this for the long-haul, not just the quick win.

Or is it just me that feels that way?

Vyan

Iraq Pushback: Soundbites Work

Nevermind detailed and throughtful analysis - what gets a message across is a clear and concise soundbite. Simple. Direct. To the Point. So here are just a few on the Iraq Intelligence Controversy.

Congress does not receive copies of the "Presidential Daily Briefing" on Intelligence.

The Senate and House Intelligence Chairmen and Commitee members receive information that is not available to the full House and Senate.

Neither the Senate Intelligence Report or the Robb-Silbermann report analyzed how intelligence information was used and possibly distorted by the Administration. That analysis was postponed until "Phase II" of the investigation.

The National Intelligence Estimate that was eventually given to Congress just days prior to the Iraq War vote was not voluantarily provided by the Administration and only occured as a result of pressure from Senators Graham and Durbin.

All indications of connections between Al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein came from a single source, Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, who was exposed as a fabricator by the Defense Intelligence Service in Feburary of 2002.

All indications of continued Iraq WMD developement programs came from a single informant code=named "Curveball", a source who both German Inteligence and the DIA consider to be "not reliable".

Both the Senate Intelligence Report and the IAEA found that the Niger-Uranium purchase documents were most likely "A forgery", and the matter was referred to the FBI for Investiation.

The National Intelligence Estimate included a rebuttal by the INR analyst to claims that Saddam was attempting to reconstitute his Nuclear program as "inadaquate to support such a judgement".

Inspectors on the ground in Iraq during late 2002-2003 claimed that U.S. Intelligence on Iraqi WMD's was "garbage" right until Feb of 2003, one Month before the War began.

Many countries did not agree with the Bush Analysis, including Britain who said "the case was thin. Saddam was not threatening his neighbours, and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran." in the Downing Street Minutes - while France, Russia and Germany all voted against increasing pressure on Saddam prior to the War.

Democrats need to learn that soundbytes WORK.

Vyan

NYT: The Iraq Intelligence was maniplated?

It may not be July, but it doesn't mean it isn't time a bit of Fireworks from the New York Times:

Smoking Gun on Manipulation of Iraq Intelligence? 'NY Times' Cites New Document

Ever since the Democrats briefly closed the U.S. Senate from view earlier this week, to protest alleged Republican foot-dragging in probing Bush administration pre-war manipulation of intelligence, the press has been asking: So what new evidence do the Democrats have in this matter?

Tomorrow, The New York Times starts to answer the question, with reporter Doug Jehl disclosing the contents of a newly declassified memo apparently passed to him by Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee.

It shows that an al-Qaeda official in American custody was identified as a likely fabricator months before the Bush administration began to use his statements as the foundation for its claims that Iraq trained al-Qaeda members to use biological and chemical weapons, according to this Defense Intelligence Agency document from February 2002.

It declared that it was probable that the prisoner, Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, "was intentionally misleading the debriefers" in making claims about Iraqi support for al-Qaeda's work with illicit weapons, Jehl reports.

"The document provides the earliest and strongest indication of doubts voiced by American intelligence agencies about Mr. Libi's credibility," Jehl writes. "Without mentioning him by name, President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Colin L. Powell, then secretary of state, and other administration officials repeatedly cited Mr. Libi's information as `credible' evidence that Iraq was training Al Qaeda members in the use of explosives and illicit weapons.

Man, that New York Times really is good at the Investigative Journalism. It's not like we haven't had plenty of previous evidence -- like say from the Secret Service that the Niger/Uranium documents were forged, or that Curveball simply couldn't be trusted, the revelation of the Downing Street Minutes that the "facts were being fixed around the policy", Lawrence Wilkerson going bat-shit postal over the Cheney-Rumsfeld Cabal, or from the Dulfer Report -- that pretty much everything that Colin Powel told the UN, was Fuckin-A Wrong!

I'm so glad the Times is on the case.

Vyan