Lying to Congress

[ProSense]

(It's ironic that this graphic appears at the top of the WH page)

For Immediate Release
Office of the Press Secretary
October 16, 2002

Statement by the President

Today I have signed into law H.J. Res. 114, a resolution "To authorize the use of United States Armed Forces against Iraq." By passing H.J. Res. 114, the Congress has demonstrated that the United States speaks with one voice on the threat to international peace and security posed by Iraq. It has also clearly communicated to the international community, to the United Nations Security Council, and, above all, to Iraq's tyrannical regime a powerful and important message: the days of Iraq flouting the will of the world, brutalizing its own people, and terrorizing its neighbors must -- and will -- end. Iraq will either comply with all U.N. resolutions, rid itself of weapons of mass destruction, and in its support for terrorists, or it will be compelled to do so. I hope that Iraq will choose compliance and peace, and I believe passage of this resolution makes that choice more likely.

The debate over this resolution in the Congress was in the finest traditions of American democracy. There is no social or political force greater than a free people united in a common and compelling objective. It is for that reason that I sought an additional resolution of support from the Congress to use force against Iraq, should force become necessary. While I appreciate receiving that support, my request for it did not, and my signing this resolution does not, constitute any change in the long-standing positions of the executive branch on either the President's constitutional authority to use force to deter, prevent, or respond to aggression or other threats to U.S. interests or on the constitutionality of the War Powers Resolution. On the important question of the threat posed by Iraq, however, the views and goals of the Congress, as expressed in H.J. Res. 114 and previous congressional resolutions and enactments, and those of the President are the same.

Throughout the past months, I have had extensive consultations with the Congress, and I look forward to con-tinuing close consultation in the months ahead. In addition, in accordance with section 4 of H.J. Res. 114, I intend to submit written reports to the Congress on matters relevant to this resolution every 60 days. To the extent possible, I intend to consolidate information in these reports with the information concerning Iraq submitted to the Congress pursuant to previous, related resolutions.

The United States is committed to a world in which the people of all nations can live in freedom, peace, and security. Enactment of H.J. Res. 114 is an important step on the road toward such a world.

GEORGE W. BUSH
THE WHITE HOUSE,
October 16, 2002.

Presidential Letter

Text of a Letter from the President to the Speaker of the House of Representatives and the President Pro Tempore of the Senate


March 18, 2003

Dear Mr. Speaker: (Dear Mr. President: )

Consistent with section 3(b) of the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002 (Public Law 107-243), and based on information available to me, including that in the enclosed document, I determine that:

(1) reliance by the United States on further diplomatic and other peaceful means alone will neither (A) adequately protect the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq nor (B) likely lead to enforcement of all relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions regarding Iraq; and

(2) acting pursuant to the Constitution and Public Law 107-243 is consistent with the United States and other countries continuing to take the necessary actions against international terrorists and terrorist organizations, including those nations, organizations, or persons who planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001.

Sincerely,

GEORGE W. BUSH

16 Words

"The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

-- From Bush's 2003 State of the Union Address

Rice: 16 words dispute 'enormously overblown'




Another Open Letter to George Tenet:

<...>

Mr. Tenet, if you had one iota of integrity you would donate the $4 million to charity and give the trinket, the "Medal of Freedom," that President George W. Bush delicately clasped around your neck, to one of the 20,000 severely wounded Iraq war veterans. Better yet, you could give the $4 million and any other royalties from the book to the families of the nearly 3,500 American troops who have died in a bloodbath that you helped create.

Mr. Tenet you are playing what the Republicans call "the blame game." You absolve yourself of any wrongdoing, as if you were an innocent bystander during the run up to the Iraq War. And although you were the DCI when several high-profile terrorists slipped into the United States to demolish the World Trade Center on your watch, you are blameless for being asleep at the switch.

Mr. Tenet, you argue that Bob Woodward took your "Slam Dunk" comment "out of context," and you claim that you were offering a more cautious interpretation of the pre-war intelligence than others in the administration were serving up, most notably the neo-cons in the Pentagon and the vice president's office.

But if that is true, Mr. Tenet, then what the hell were you doing on February 5, 2003 sitting like a potted plant right behind Secretary of State Colin Powell during his now infamous dog-and-pony show about Saddam's "weapons of mass destruction" before the United Nations? Your presence seated over Powell's right shoulder like the good angel during his lengthy presentation gave the world the impression that the CIA, which you headed, had given its imprimatur to all of the lies that had poured forth from his mouth that day. If "Slam Dunk" did not encapsulate your views of the WMD intelligence, then maybe you should have refused to sit behind Powell.

Link

Edited title.

[ProSense]

1. Tenet's role

Missing Weapons Of Mass Destruction: Is Lying About The Reason For War An Impeachable Offense?

By JOHN W. DEAN
----
Friday, Jun. 06, 2003

Senator Graham seems to believe there is a serious chance that it is the final scenario that reflects reality. Indeed, Graham told CNN "there's been a pattern of manipulation by this administration."

Graham has good reason to complain. According to the New York Times, he was one of the few members of the Senate who saw the national intelligence estimate that was the basis for Bush's decisions. After reviewing it, Senator Graham requested that the Bush Administration declassify the information before the Senate voted on the Administration's resolution requesting use of the military in Iraq.

But rather than do so, CIA Director Tenet merely sent Graham a letter discussing the findings. Graham then complained that Tenet's letter only addressed "findings that supported the administration's position on Iraq," and ignored information that raised questions about intelligence. In short, Graham suggested that the Administration, by cherrypicking only evidence to its own liking, had manipulated the information to support its conclusion.

Recent statements by one of the high-level officials privy to the decisionmaking process that lead to the Iraqi war also strongly suggests manipulation, if not misuse of the intelligence agencies. Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, during an interview with Sam Tannenhaus of Vanity Fair magazine, said: "The truth is that for reasons that have a lot to do with the U.S. government bureaucracy we settled on the one issue that everyone could agree on which was weapons of mass destruction as the core reason." More recently, Wolfowitz added what most have believed all along, that the reason we went after Iraq is that "(t)he country swims on a sea of oil."

link

[ProSense]

2. Rice: Bush didn't Want War

Rice: Bush didn't Want War

Condi Rice on Sunday denied allegations by former CIA director George Tenet that Bush came into office determined to have a war against Iraq. This is the interview by Wolf Blitzer of CNN:

QUESTION: Because you remember Paul O'Neill, the first Treasury Secretary, where he wrote in his first book, The Price of Loyalty with Ron Suskind, and what Ron Suskind later wrote in his own book, The One Percent Solution, that the Bush Administration came in with a mindset to deal with what they called unfinished business with Saddam Hussein.

SECRETARY RICE: That is simply not true. The President came in looking at a variety of threats. We then had the September 11th events. The September 11th events led to a kind of reassessment of what the threats were. But in the entire period after the President became President, he was trying to put together an international coalition that could deal with Iraq, first by smart sanctions, smarter no-fly zones, then by challenging Saddam Hussein before the Security Council to meet the just demands of the Security Council, and ultimately by having to use military force. But this was an evolution of policy over a long period of time. Of course the President came in concerned about Iraq. President Clinton had used military force against Iraq in 1998. We had gone to war against Iraq in 1991. But the idea that the President had made up his mind when he came to office that he was going to go to war against Iraq is just flat wrong. '

Excerpt from John Kerry's Downing Street Letter (PDF)

The memo indicates that in the summer of 2002, at a time the White House was promising Congress and the American people that war would be their last resort, that they believed military action against Iraq was "inevitable."

The minutes reveal that President "Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."

The American people took the warnings that the administration sounded seriously-warnings that were echoed at the United Nations and here in Congress as we voted to give the president the authority to go to war. For the sake of our democracy and our future national security, the public must know whether such warnings were driven by facts and responsible intelligence, or by political calculation.

These issues need to be addressed with urgency. This remains a dangerous world, with American forces engaged in Iraq and Afghanistan, and other challenges looming in Iran and North Korea. In this environment, the American public should have the highest confidence that policy makers are using intelligence objectively-never manipulating it to justify war, but always to protect the United States. The contents of the Downing Street Memo undermine this faith and only rigorous Congressional oversight can determine the truth.

We urge the committee to complete the second phase of its investigation with the maximum speed and transparency possible, producing, as it did at the end of Phase I, a comprehensive, unclassified report from which the American people can benefit directly.

[ProSense]

3. Juan Cole: "In the end, Tenet exhibits all the symptoms of an abused spouse."

Juan Cole:

Tenet reveals that the CIA voiced substantial dissents from Cheney's "end of history" utopia. On April 27, the Associated Press reported that the book describes how CIA analysts prepared a briefing book with some worst-case scenarios for the invasion of Iraq. The books were distributed to high-ranking Bush officials in early September 2002, seven months before the invasion, and reviewed at Camp David. The scenarios included "a surge of global terrorism against U.S. interests fueled by deepening Islamic antipathy toward the United States"; "regime-threatening instability in key Arab states"; and "major oil supply disruptions and severe strains in the Atlantic alliance." Tenet, with his typical refusal to be confrontational, will not call these utterly prescient and perfectly correct scenarios "predictions" and will not say the obvious, that they proved the CIA right. Could he not just quote Cheney's VFW speech and point to the contrast between the vice president's fantasy world and the real one that his analysts inhabited?

Tenet comes across as a toady who could never stand up to the powerful. But he could order people less powerful than himself, like the helpless prisoners of his war on terror, to be tortured. His subsequent pitiful denial that he ever commanded torture, at the same time that he clearly was attempting to justify it, recalls all the worst excesses of the administration he enabled. Some elements of petty revenge on the perpetrators for having so humiliated Tenet with their sneak attack peek out from the edges of his righteous anger. There are times when the would-be James Bond seems more like Goldfinger, he of the laser between the legs.

<...>

Much of the reporting about the book and the interview has focused on Tenet's feeling of betrayal over the use to which Cheney and Rice later put his comment that presenting the case for an Iraq war to the American public would be a "slam-dunk." He resented the White House leaks that made it appear that he had urged a war on the grounds that the war itself would be a cinch, and the implication that his "slam-dunk" comment is what finally decided the president on his course of action. Tenet's outrage is outrageous. Why was he alleging that a good case could be made for a war that he now says he did not believe in? Why was he selling a war that, all these years later, he claims he believed was a distraction from the important struggle against al-Qaida?

In the end, Tenet exhibits all the symptoms of an abused spouse. He praises Bush and even has good things to say about Cheney. He never could pick up the phone and call the police in the midst of being beaten up. He never cared enough about the fate of the country to stand up and say that the country was being driven to war on the basis of obvious falsehoods and a tissue of lies. Even now, his high dudgeon concerns affronts to his own reputation, and that of his agency, rather than the deaths of more than 3,300 U.S. troops and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. Some of his last words in the "60 Minutes" interview were among the most revealing, but not in the way he implied. "You know, at the end of the day, the only thing you have is trust and honor in this world. It's all you have. All you have is your reputation built on trust and your personal honor. And when you don't have that anymore, well, there you go." You can imagine him mumbling those words over and over again as he walks up the stairs to go to bed.

[Rex]

4. Wow nice work!

They're so desperate they need to spin the Slam Dunk spin! Bush so lied to Congress, Iraq will break his whole party.

[Ino]

5. "The President must certainly be punishable..."

http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/a2_2_2-3s11.html

The President must certainly be punishable for giving false information to the Senate. He is to regulate all intercourse with foreign powers, and it is his duty to impart to the Senate every material intelligence he receives. If it should appear that he has not given them full information, but has concealed important intelligence which he ought to have communicated, and by that means induced them to enter into measures injurious to their country, and which they would not have consented to had the true state of things been disclosed to them,--in this case, I ask whether, upon an impeachment for a misdemeanor upon such an account, the Senate would probably favor him.

-- James Iredell, Supreme Court Justice apptd by Washington

[Dragonbreathp9d]

6. K&R for the banner!

Is that a mistake, or a hacker's work?

[ProSense]

7. Real irony! n/t