'Wash Post' Story Rejects Bush Claims on Pre-War Intel

[IChing]

Published: November 12, 2005 11:00 AM ET
NEW YORK Washington Post reporters Dana Milbank and Walter Pincus offered today a front-page reply to President Bush's claims on Friday that Democrats in Congress, now critical of the Iraq war, saw the same pre-war intelligence that the White House did.

"Bush and his aides had access to much more voluminous intelligence information than did lawmakers, who were dependent on the administration to provide the material," the pair write. They also point to Bush's claim that a congressonal commissions had cleared the White House of manipulation, noting none were authorized "to determine whether the administration exaggerated or distorted those conclusions." The only committee investigating the matter in Congress, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, has not been slow to press its inquiry into whether officials mischaracterized intelligence by omitting caveats and dissenting opinions. >>>snip


But Pincus and Milbank write: "Bush does not share his most sensitive intelligence, such as the President's Daily Brief, with lawmakers. Also, the National Intelligence Estimate summarizing the intelligence community's views about the threat from Iraq was given to Congress just days before the vote to authorize the use of force in that country.>>>snip

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001478770

[fjc]

1. Link fails

[IChing]

3. works fine .. Just tested it

[patrice]

2. Let me see if I get this: The fact that there was MORE intelligence,

not necessarily that Congress KNEW exactly WHAT the intelligence was, just that they knew there was MORE of it than they/Congress was privvy to at that time, is supposed to make Congress equal to Bush in their responsibility for the Invasion? According to BushCo that is.

[mike_c]

6. I still think Congress is as complicit as Bushco....

There was ample information available at the time suggesting that Iraq had been disarmed for nearly a decade (which turned out to be the case). Iraq had agreed to resumption of unconditional inspections, had provided documentation of the destruction of its WMD programs, and was cooperating with the disarmament certification process. It had been subjected to over 10 years of a crippling embargo, and was no threat to anyone.

The abundant verbiage to the contrary was baldfaced propaganda-- which began during the Clinton administration and accelerated under Bush the younger. Members of Congress should have known better-- the information was available to anyone who looked for it. The propaganda machine simply overwhelmed the truth, but members of Congress also participated in that propagandizing-- go back and read the responses most Senators sent to their constituents regarding their IWR votes. They're filled with a sense of urgency to "do something" about the monster Saddam Hussein, and usually a laundry list of his potential for wreaking international havoc.

The only congress persons not complicit, IMO, are the ones who voted against the IWR. This whole debate has ignored them, but IF Congress only had access to information suggesting that Iraq was about to rain nuclear destruction on the parts of the world that it didn't drench with chemical or biological toxins, if they were so thoroughly hoodwinked that all the evidence suggested Iraq was arming terrorists around the world-- what then were those who opposed the IWR thinking? Or might they have actually paid attention to the truth rather than the propaganda? And if that truth was available to them, why did the rest of the Congress vote to approve the IWR? I think they did it out of simple political expediency, and that makes them complicit in the deaths of tens of thousands of innocent people, the destruction of a nation, and the loss of America's international standing.

[mike_c]

4. they're still missing the point, or simply not stating it....

First, the OSP and WHIG cherry-picked the raw intel for data that, taken out of context, supported their arguments in favor of war. That's what they showed congress, not the analyses performed by unbiased reviewers, and most especially not the balanced view provided by dissenting analyses. It's disengenuous in the extreme to suggest that Congress had the "same intel" as the WH when that intel was itself manipulated, removed from context, and filtered to remove contrary information. So the WH not only had access to "voluminous information" denied Congress, but the process of presenting that information to Congress was itself inherently manipulative.

Second, Iraq had already agreed to unconditional resumption of inspections before the IWR, and had provided documents accounting for all of its WMD disarmament-- all that could be accounted for over a decade later and as we now now, an entirely truthful accounting. At least to the extent we CAN know, because the WH censored it before releasing it to the UN, and presumably to U.S. law-makers. Or to any interested enough to consult it (my guess is that not a single one did).

So not only was the intel manipulated to support the WH arguments for war, but the directly observable facts on the ground and events of the day all made both the IWR and the subsequent invasion absolutely unnecessary.

[Norquist Nemesis]

5. I'm wondering about recent comments by the "nays" like Levin

Levin (and others like Durbin) have made an excellent point that's not really getting the attention in the argument that it should. What they have said is after listening to the intelligence briefings, they couldn't talk about them. To come out over the public air waves and state something told to them in confidential briefings that the intelligence says would be illegal.

So, imagine if they came onto CNN and said, "The President is wrong on this. We were told conflicting things in our intelligence briefing that the President is not telling the public."

MSM Host: "Well, what exactly is it the President is not telling us, Senator? Are you saying the President is not giving the full picture or is lieing?"

Senator: "I'm not saying the President is lieing. I am saying the American people to not have all of the information."

MSM Host: "Senator, what is it that they don't know but need to know?"

Senator: "I can't talk about that."

MSM Host: "Thank you, Senator. And now for a response, let's go to the White House Deputy Communications Chief to get the real story on this..."

[IChing]

7. this is revealing also

"In addition, there were doubts within the intelligence community not included in the NIE. And even the doubts expressed in the NIE could not be used publicly by members of Congress because the classified information had not been cleared for release. For example, the NIE view that Hussein would not use weapons of mass destruction against the United States or turn them over to terrorists unless backed into a corner was cleared for public use only a day before the Senate vote."

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001478770