Remember That Mushroom Cloud?

97silverlsc

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Remember That Mushroom Cloud?
Published November 2, 2005
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/02/opinion/02weds1.html?hp

The indictment of Lewis Libby on charges of lying to a grand jury about the outing of Valerie Wilson has focused attention on the lengths to which the Bush administration went in 2003 to try to distract the public from this central fact: American soldiers found a lot of things in Iraq, including a well-armed insurgency their bosses never anticipated, but they did not find weapons of mass destruction.

It's clear from the indictment that Vice President Dick Cheney and his staff formed the command bunker for this misdirection campaign. But there is a much larger issue than the question of what administration officials said about Iraq after the invasion - it's what they said about Iraq before the invasion. Senator Harry Reid, the minority leader, may have been grandstanding yesterday when he forced the Senate to hold a closed session on the Iraqi intelligence, but at least he gave the issue a much-needed push.

President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld, Colin Powell and George Tenet, to name a few leading figures, built support for the war by telling the world that Saddam Hussein was stockpiling chemical weapons, feverishly developing germ warfare devices and racing to build a nuclear bomb. Some of them, notably Mr. Cheney, the administration's doomsayer in chief, said Iraq had conspired with Al Qaeda and implied that Saddam Hussein was connected to 9/11.

Last year, the Senate Intelligence Committee did a good bipartisan job of explaining that the intelligence in general was dubious, old and even faked by foreign sources. The panel said the analysts had suffered from groupthink. At the time, the highest-ranking officials in Washington were demanding evidence against Iraq.

But that left this question: If the intelligence was so bad and so moldy, why was it presented to the world as what Mr. Tenet, then the director of central intelligence, famously called "a slam-dunk" case?

Were officials fooled by bad intelligence, or knowingly hyping it? Certainly, the administration erased caveats, dissents and doubts from the intelligence reports before showing them to the public. And there was never credible intelligence about a working relationship between Iraq and Al Qaeda.

Under a political deal that Democrats should not have approved, the Intelligence Committee promised to address these questions after the 2004 election. But a year later, there is no sign that this promise is being kept, other than unconvincing assurances from Senator Pat Roberts, the Republican who is chairman of the intelligence panel, that people are working on it.

So far, however, there has been only one uncirculated draft report by one committee staff member on the narrow question of why the analysts didn't predict the ferocity of the insurgency. The Republicans have not even agreed to do a final report on the conflict between the intelligence and the administration's public statements.

Mr. Reid wrested a commitment from the Senate to have a bipartisan committee report by Nov. 14 on when the investigation will be done. We hope Mr. Roberts now gives this half of the investigation the same urgency he gave the first half and meets his commitment to examine all aspects of this mess, including how the information was used by the administration. Americans are long overdue for an answer to why they were told there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
 
barry2952 said:
What basis do you have to make that comment?

It was a sarcastic comment. Either you're with us or you're against us, remember? People who dissent with Shrub are commies or treehuggers.
 
Five unanswered questions raised by Libby indictment

What we don't know
Five unanswered questions raised by Libby indictment
http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?ItemID=19812
In my column of June 9, 2003, I led with the assertion that:

"The Bush Administration's case for invading Iraq was a combination of willfully gross exaggerations and flat-out lies."

Even at the time, this was nothing new; it was a claim critics of the war had been making for nearly a year. The lack of discovery of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq was simply confirming what war opponents knew all along.

Now, with Friday's five-count felony indictment of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, the investigation of special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has parted the curtains on some of the mechanisms of that campaign of lies -- specifically, the lengths to which the Vice President's chief of staff was willing to go to in an attempt to smear an ex-ambassador, Joseph Wilson, who had meticulously disproven a key administration claim. Those lengths allegedly included lying twice to a grand jury, and twice more to FBI investigators, about whether he had leaked to the press that Valerie Wilson, the wife of the ex-ambassador, was a CIA operative.

There seems little room for doubt in Fitzgerald's indictment that Libby was, indeed, caught telling a whopper -- and a particularly clumsy one at that. It's a far more serious matter than the lie that got President Bill Clinton hauled up before an impeachment tribunal -- involving not just marital infidelity, but a key justification for putting the lives of hundreds of thousands of American soldiers -- and millions of Iraqis -- at risk.

But in prosecuting the cover-up of the crime, rather than the original crime itself, Fitzgerald's indictment raises or leaves unanswered more questions than it settles. Here are a few of the biggest:

1. Who actually leaked the CIA identity of Valerie Wilson to conservative columnist Robert Novak, whose July 2003 column first unmasked Wilson? The figure is referred to in Fitzgerald's indictment as "Official A" -- probably Karl Rove. Prosecution of Rove would seem to hinge on the ability to prove that Rove knew of Wilson's covert status, a difficult proposition. But there seems little doubt that Rove, as one of the leakers alongside Libby, acted in a highly unethical (if not treasonous) manner. President Bush once averred that there was no room for unethical behavior in his administration. He also said he'd fire anyone who leaked Wilson's name. He has been conspicuously silent on such topics of late, but if he's serious about upholding ethical standards Bush should fire Rove.

2. Why did Scooter Libby lie to the grand jury? Did he do so on his own initiative? Was he acting as part of an intentional White House strategy, and if so, who was in on the formulation of that strategy? Was he trying to protect Cheney? Bush?

3. What was Dick Cheney's role in the Wilson smear campaign? We now know that both Libby and Cheney were independently gathering dirt on Joe Wilson; both discovered independently that his wife worked at the CIA, and it was from Cheney that Libby learned that Valerie Wilson worked in the counter-proliferation division. From the beginning of the war campaign, Cheney has been spewing disinformation and outrageous claims about Iraq, particularly its alleged weapons programs and (nonexistent) links to Al-Qaeda. We now know that Cheney simply lied when he told a 2003 television interviewer that he had no idea Joseph Wilson even had a wife. What other intentional lies did he tell?

4. Who forged the documents alleging Niger sold yellowcake uranium to Saddam Hussein's Iraq? Joseph Wilson's 2002 trip to Niger disproved that claim, but only later was it concluded by the International Atomic Energy Agency that the documents the claim was based on were crude forgeries. An investigative series last week in the Italian daily La Republica traces the origins of that document back through the Italian intelligence agency SISMI -- and points also to the possible involvement of CIA and FBI officials. Did the Bush Administration or its allies plant the forgery in the intelligence stream in the first place, for use in justifying claims of an imminent threat to American security?

5. How much of all this did George Bush know, and when? We now know that an alternative intelligence cabal, operating primarily out of the Vice President's office, was bypassing the usual channels of the CIA and State Department to cherry-pick (if not generate) intelligence that could justify an invasion. Did Bush know that much of this information was fictitious? How long has he known that Libby and Rove leaked Valerie Wilson's CIA identity? It seems likely he's known since the beginning of Patrick Fitzgerald's investigation, which begs the question of why either of them have continued to work at the White House for the past two years.

It was no secret in 2002 and 2003 that the claims of the Bush Administration in making the case of war against Iraq ranged from highly improbable to ludicrous. They achieved something resembling received Beltway wisdom through a combination of endless repetition, a credulous media, and the lack of any spine whatsoever in the opposition party. The indictment of I. Lewis Libby is a saga of a campaign of lies, orchestrated by the inner sanctum of the White House, and used to justify a flagrantly illegal war. Libby should go down hard for his misdeeds.

But he did not act alone. This entire administration sold the invasion of Iraq, and, as the Downing Street Memo suggested, fixed the intelligence around the predetermined policy. They lied about whether they were going to war, and they lied about the reasons for going to war.

The decision to engage in war is the most serious a president can make. The more we learn, the more we confirm that George Bush, Dick Cheney, and every single one of their senior advisors participated in a campaign of lies. They lied to Congress, they lied to the U.N., they lied to international allies, and they lied to the American public. And if only one of them lied to a grand jury, that's hardly where the criminality of the matter stops.

Libby lied to investigators in order to protect somebody, and there are really only two possibilities as to who: the Vice President of the United States, and the President of the United States. There's a lot more we still need to find out -- if not from Fitzgerald's ongoing probe, then from a Congressional inquiry. If a president can be impeached for lying about sex, what is the proper fate for a president who lies about war?
 
97silverlsc said:
Under a political deal that Democrats should not have approved, the Intelligence Committee promised to address these questions after the 2004 election. But a year later, there is no sign that this promise is being kept, other than unconvincing assurances from Senator Pat Roberts, the Republican who is chairman of the intelligence panel, that people are working on it.


Gee, I wonder why THAT was?

They are holding out for time, only 3 more years to carry on this cover-up.
The guilty bunch of SOBs.

Hey Pat Roberts, I've got something for you to give lip service to..... RIGHT HERE!!
 
97silverlsc said:
What we don't know
Five unanswered questions raised by Libby indictment
http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?ItemID=19812
In my column of June 9, 2003, I led with the assertion that:

"The Bush Administration's case for invading Iraq was a combination of willfully gross exaggerations and flat-out lies."

Even at the time, this was nothing new; it was a claim critics of the war had been making for nearly a year. The lack of discovery of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq was simply confirming what war opponents knew all along.

Now, with Friday's five-count felony indictment of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, the investigation of special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has parted the curtains on some of the mechanisms of that campaign of lies -- specifically, the lengths to which the Vice President's chief of staff was willing to go to in an attempt to smear an ex-ambassador, Joseph Wilson, who had meticulously disproven a key administration claim. Those lengths allegedly included lying twice to a grand jury, and twice more to FBI investigators, about whether he had leaked to the press that Valerie Wilson, the wife of the ex-ambassador, was a CIA operative.

There seems little room for doubt in Fitzgerald's indictment that Libby was, indeed, caught telling a whopper -- and a particularly clumsy one at that. It's a far more serious matter than the lie that got President Bill Clinton hauled up before an impeachment tribunal -- involving not just marital infidelity, but a key justification for putting the lives of hundreds of thousands of American soldiers -- and millions of Iraqis -- at risk.

But in prosecuting the cover-up of the crime, rather than the original crime itself, Fitzgerald's indictment raises or leaves unanswered more questions than it settles. Here are a few of the biggest:

1. Who actually leaked the CIA identity of Valerie Wilson to conservative columnist Robert Novak, whose July 2003 column first unmasked Wilson? The figure is referred to in Fitzgerald's indictment as "Official A" -- probably Karl Rove. Prosecution of Rove would seem to hinge on the ability to prove that Rove knew of Wilson's covert status, a difficult proposition. But there seems little doubt that Rove, as one of the leakers alongside Libby, acted in a highly unethical (if not treasonous) manner. President Bush once averred that there was no room for unethical behavior in his administration. He also said he'd fire anyone who leaked Wilson's name. He has been conspicuously silent on such topics of late, but if he's serious about upholding ethical standards Bush should fire Rove.

2. Why did Scooter Libby lie to the grand jury? Did he do so on his own initiative? Was he acting as part of an intentional White House strategy, and if so, who was in on the formulation of that strategy? Was he trying to protect Cheney? Bush?

3. What was Dick Cheney's role in the Wilson smear campaign? We now know that both Libby and Cheney were independently gathering dirt on Joe Wilson; both discovered independently that his wife worked at the CIA, and it was from Cheney that Libby learned that Valerie Wilson worked in the counter-proliferation division. From the beginning of the war campaign, Cheney has been spewing disinformation and outrageous claims about Iraq, particularly its alleged weapons programs and (nonexistent) links to Al-Qaeda. We now know that Cheney simply lied when he told a 2003 television interviewer that he had no idea Joseph Wilson even had a wife. What other intentional lies did he tell?

4. Who forged the documents alleging Niger sold yellowcake uranium to Saddam Hussein's Iraq? Joseph Wilson's 2002 trip to Niger disproved that claim, but only later was it concluded by the International Atomic Energy Agency that the documents the claim was based on were crude forgeries. An investigative series last week in the Italian daily La Republica traces the origins of that document back through the Italian intelligence agency SISMI -- and points also to the possible involvement of CIA and FBI officials. Did the Bush Administration or its allies plant the forgery in the intelligence stream in the first place, for use in justifying claims of an imminent threat to American security?

5. How much of all this did George Bush know, and when? We now know that an alternative intelligence cabal, operating primarily out of the Vice President's office, was bypassing the usual channels of the CIA and State Department to cherry-pick (if not generate) intelligence that could justify an invasion. Did Bush know that much of this information was fictitious? How long has he known that Libby and Rove leaked Valerie Wilson's CIA identity? It seems likely he's known since the beginning of Patrick Fitzgerald's investigation, which begs the question of why either of them have continued to work at the White House for the past two years.

It was no secret in 2002 and 2003 that the claims of the Bush Administration in making the case of war against Iraq ranged from highly improbable to ludicrous. They achieved something resembling received Beltway wisdom through a combination of endless repetition, a credulous media, and the lack of any spine whatsoever in the opposition party. The indictment of I. Lewis Libby is a saga of a campaign of lies, orchestrated by the inner sanctum of the White House, and used to justify a flagrantly illegal war. Libby should go down hard for his misdeeds.

But he did not act alone. This entire administration sold the invasion of Iraq, and, as the Downing Street Memo suggested, fixed the intelligence around the predetermined policy. They lied about whether they were going to war, and they lied about the reasons for going to war.

The decision to engage in war is the most serious a president can make. The more we learn, the more we confirm that George Bush, Dick Cheney, and every single one of their senior advisors participated in a campaign of lies. They lied to Congress, they lied to the U.N., they lied to international allies, and they lied to the American public. And if only one of them lied to a grand jury, that's hardly where the criminality of the matter stops.

Libby lied to investigators in order to protect somebody, and there are really only two possibilities as to who: the Vice President of the United States, and the President of the United States. There's a lot more we still need to find out -- if not from Fitzgerald's ongoing probe, then from a Congressional inquiry. If a president can be impeached for lying about sex, what is the proper fate for a president who lies about war?

You forgot one:

6. Why hasn't Joe Wilson been called to testify about his false, misleading statements that have ultimately led to this investigation in the first place?
 
97silverlsc said:
Remember That Mushroom Cloud?
Published November 2, 2005
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/02/opinion/02weds1.html?hp

The indictment of Lewis Libby on charges of lying to a grand jury about the outing of Valerie Wilson has focused attention on the lengths to which the Bush administration went in 2003 to try to distract the public from this central fact: American soldiers found a lot of things in Iraq, including a well-armed insurgency their bosses never anticipated, but they did not find weapons of mass destruction.

It's clear from the indictment that Vice President Dick Cheney and his staff formed the command bunker for this misdirection campaign. But there is a much larger issue than the question of what administration officials said about Iraq after the invasion - it's what they said about Iraq before the invasion. Senator Harry Reid, the minority leader, may have been grandstanding yesterday when he forced the Senate to hold a closed session on the Iraqi intelligence, but at least he gave the issue a much-needed push.

President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld, Colin Powell and George Tenet, to name a few leading figures, built support for the war by telling the world that Saddam Hussein was stockpiling chemical weapons, feverishly developing germ warfare devices and racing to build a nuclear bomb. Some of them, notably Mr. Cheney, the administration's doomsayer in chief, said Iraq had conspired with Al Qaeda and implied that Saddam Hussein was connected to 9/11.

Last year, the Senate Intelligence Committee did a good bipartisan job of explaining that the intelligence in general was dubious, old and even faked by foreign sources. The panel said the analysts had suffered from groupthink. At the time, the highest-ranking officials in Washington were demanding evidence against Iraq.

But that left this question: If the intelligence was so bad and so moldy, why was it presented to the world as what Mr. Tenet, then the director of central intelligence, famously called "a slam-dunk" case?

Were officials fooled by bad intelligence, or knowingly hyping it? Certainly, the administration erased caveats, dissents and doubts from the intelligence reports before showing them to the public. And there was never credible intelligence about a working relationship between Iraq and Al Qaeda.

Under a political deal that Democrats should not have approved, the Intelligence Committee promised to address these questions after the 2004 election. But a year later, there is no sign that this promise is being kept, other than unconvincing assurances from Senator Pat Roberts, the Republican who is chairman of the intelligence panel, that people are working on it.

So far, however, there has been only one uncirculated draft report by one committee staff member on the narrow question of why the analysts didn't predict the ferocity of the insurgency. The Republicans have not even agreed to do a final report on the conflict between the intelligence and the administration's public statements.

Mr. Reid wrested a commitment from the Senate to have a bipartisan committee report by Nov. 14 on when the investigation will be done. We hope Mr. Roberts now gives this half of the investigation the same urgency he gave the first half and meets his commitment to examine all aspects of this mess, including how the information was used by the administration. Americans are long overdue for an answer to why they were told there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

I've already posted excerpts from the Siberman/Robb Report which state that there were absolutely NO INSTANCES of the administration trying to influence the intelligence or 'knowingly hyping it.'

Sorry, your article has been discredited with real facts.

Your predictable reply:

Nuh-uh! No you didn't! Because Bush is a liar and all his cronies are liars! Yeah, that's it! And the Silberman/Robb report lied too!

BS.
 

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