“‘Saddam only expressed negative sentiments about bin Laden,’ the former Iraqi foreign minister, Tariq Aziz, told the Federal Bureau of Investigation when he was asked about Osama bin Laden, Al Qaeda’s leader…’He specified that if he wanted to cooperate with the enemies of the U.S., he would have allied with North Korea or China,’ says a passage in the nearly 400-page report.” A new Senate intelligence report confirms what has become patently obvious: There was no link between Iraq and Al Qaeda before the war. “Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., a member of the committee, said the long-awaited report was ‘a devastating indictment of the Bush-Cheney administration’s unrelenting, misleading and deceptive attempts’ to link Saddam to al-Qaida.”
Category: Weaponsgate
Suck-Ups to Power.
“Battered by accusations of a liberal bias and determined to prove their conservative critics wrong, the press during the run-up to the war — timid, deferential, unsure, cautious, and often intentionally unthinking — came as close as possible to abdicating its reason for existing in the first place, which is to accurately inform citizens, particularly during times of great national interest.” In very related news (as Dan Froomkin pointed out), Salon publishes an extended excerpt from Eric Boehlert’s Lapdogs: How the Press Rolled Over For Bush.
Trailer Trash.
Add one more lie to the pile: “On May 29, 2003, 50 days after the fall of Baghdad, President Bush proclaimed a fresh victory for his administration in Iraq: Two small trailers captured by U.S. and Kurdish troops had turned out to be long-sought mobile ‘biological laboratories.’ He declared, ‘We have found the weapons of mass destruction.’…But even as Bush spoke, U.S. intelligence officials possessed powerful evidence that it was not true.” The Washington Post recounts step-by-step the tale of Dubya’s fake WMD trailers, sending White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan into a paroxysm of aggressively circular spin. As it turns out, even though Dubya had been notified the trailers were a red herring two days before his above comments, “for nearly a year, administration and intelligence officials continued to publicly assert that the trailers were weapons factories.“
Lies about Lies.
Thanks to more lies emanating from the Dubya administration, the Congressional Research Service is forced to set the record straight: Dubya saw more prewar intelligence than Congress. “The Bush administration has routinely denied Congress access to documents, saying it would have a chilling effect on deliberations. The report…concludes that the Bush administration has been more restrictive than its predecessors in sharing intelligence with Congress.“
Mea Culpa, Sort-of.
“It is true that much of the intelligence turned out to be wrong. As president I am responsible for the decision to go into Iraq.” In his final speech on Iraq before tomorrow’s elections, (text) Dubya admits the case for war was FUBAR, while insisting it was a good idea anyway. (“The United States did not choose war — the choice was Saddam Hussein’s.“) Of course, Bush neglected to mention that it was he, Cheney, Rumsfeld, et al who cherry-picked through the available intelligence and continued to recite claims they knew to be false. Still, for someone who’s seems pathologically incapable of accepting reality at times, this has to be considered a step forward.
Truth-Challenged Cheney (Again).
“What was striking about Cheney’s assault was that while denying critics’ charges of manipulation and dishonesty involving prewar intelligence, he resorted to exactly the tactics that inspired the criticism. As he did with the prewar intelligence, Cheney told no outright lies, but he exaggerated the case, picked only evidence he liked, and ignored the caveats.” In case it wasn’t obvious, Slate‘s John Dickerson explains how Cheney is still misrepresenting the lead-up to war. (In fact, he did it again today, although at least he didn’t join his congressional colleagues in their recent spate of Murtha-bashing.) But, really, can we expect any less from the administration that brought us imaginary WMDs and the phantom Iraq-9/11 connection? Like George Costanza at his worst moments, these jokers have been lying so long they’ve lost sight of the truth.
Shading the Truth (Again).
“President Bush and his national security adviser have answered critics of the Iraq war in recent days with a two-pronged argument: that Congress saw the same intelligence the administration did before the war, and that independent commissions have determined that the administration did not misrepresent the intelligence. Neither assertion is wholly accurate.“ Update: Slate‘s Fred Kaplan parses Dubya’s speech further.
Adding Insult to Intelligence Failures.
As McCain calls for changes in Dubya’s Iraq strategy, White House National Security advisor Stephen Hadley inaugurates Dubya’s comeback plan, which will get more run in a presidential speech today. Step One: Call the Dems out on their pro-war votes. “‘Some of the critics today,’ Hadley added, ‘believed themselves in 2002 that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, they stated that belief, and they voted to authorize the use of force in Iraq because they believed Saddam Hussein posed a dangerous threat to the American people.‘” Well, yes, but if Dems were relying on faulty and doctored intelligence to come to that supposition in 2002, that only brings us back to the $64,000 question: What exactly happened to our prewar intelligence once it reached the White House?
Grey Lady Down.
“Even before I went to jail, I had become a lightning rod for public fury over the intelligence failures that helped lead our country to war…I believed then, and still do, that the answer to bad information is more reporting.” To no one’s surprise, Judy Miller “retires” from the New York Times, but not before getting in one last word (and setting up her own website.) Well, she was way wrong on WMD, but she’s right about this: The best thing the NYT can do to restore its credibility after Judy and Jayson Blair would be to lead an investigatory charge into the pre-war Iraq intelligence, and pronto.
Torturing the truth (and taking uncivil liberties.)
Typical Dubya Doublespeak: Just as Bush tells the world, “We do not torture,” his vice-president continues his quest to exempt the CIA from a congressional torture ban, which would obviously be an unnecessary action were Dubya’s remarks truthful. In related news, the Dems want a wide-ranging inquiry into pre-war intelligence, and members of both parties are concerned about increased “terrorism” inquiries under the Patriot Act.