Bush changes strategy -- will call for independent counsel on WMD-----

I miss treeman.

 

I miss treeman as well. Maybe he has oak wilt.


underoverup, I think the title is a little misleading, although I know it was unintentional. It isn't an independent counsel that we are supposed to be offered, but an "independent review", which is far different. I hate to be cynical, but that couild mean anything. i don't like the idea that nothing would come out until after the election. That's a little too convenient for Bush, isn't it?

 

Absolutely, I was about to post the same thing. The independent counsel statute (thankfully) expired a few years ago after the Starr investigation, uhh, careened, and, to my knowledge has not been renewed.

 

"In this case, there's no question that there was an intelligence failure, in some form or another," Sen. Trent Lott (news, bio, voting record) (R-Miss.), a member of the Intelligence Committee, said yesterday on "Fox News Sunday." "Clearly this is not the immediate threat many assumed before the war," is how Charles Duelfer, Kay's replacement, put it a few months ago when he noted "the apparent absence of existing weapons stocks."


I don't understand this - how is this an intelligence failure? Didn't the N.I.E. and all the big reports say specifically that Iraq was not an immediate threat? Wasn't that the whole hoopla over Bush's distortion of intelligence to justify the war?

 

Yeah...tree, johnheath, sino et al are easy targets for not sticking around when things clearly weren't going their way, but if they'd waited just a little longer, they could have been part of the Ostrich Brigade, who simply pretend that none of the facts have yet to surface...


...which is a better policy?

 

This is good news. Fantastic news, by almost any measure. No, an independent "panel" isn't perfect and, yes, it can be politically co-opted, but it's a damn good start.

Maybe Bush was deceived with faulty intelligence or maybe he just lied through his teeth. Either way, the American public deserves to know why we sent more than 520 Americans to their deaths.

 

Bush said threat when intel said no threat, but intel did say WMD. How uninfluenced that intel was is another matter.

There was selective use of intel to say there were WMD's. What has been shown...and ignored by Bush and supporters alike, was that there was no intel, selective or otherwise, which said Saddam was a threat, directly or indirectly. It's only the fact that his supporters keep overlooking this established act that keeps this from being universally accepted.

 

I forgot about sinohero! I miss him, too!

Yeah, both tactics are pretty sorry. Loved it when Jorge revived the old 'why do you love Saddam' thing for me the same day Kay and McCain called for an independent investigation.

 

What's sort of sad is that, with a few exceptions ( bama, texx, T_J, etc.) those who have remained and played ostrich comprise many of the more reasonable war supporters. It's discouraging that they keep ignoring inconvenient facts, acting like others are gray areas ( without ever examining the what if side of same that they don't like) and still more often shifting the argument away from established fact every time it gets too hot to handle.


I can't count the number of times I've been asked to show the NIE report on Saddam as a threat, only to be asked a week or so later to prove my position on it again...and again...it's like if they don't like it, they don't take it in. Or better still, when the entire point of the NIE isn;t it's accuracy, but how it shows us that what Bush was saying the intel said and the truth are opposite, war supporters will respond to the NIE report about Saddam as a threat by saying ' Well, if they were wrong about the WMD, maybe they were wrong about the threat." I have seen that very same, evasive argument several times, often by posters I respect.

Same goes for the fact that several intel officials were complainging/resigning over the practice of selective intel pre-war. Have shown it time and again...yet I guarantee you, next time I mention it in an argument with a war supporter, they will ask me where I get that from...Or the fact that we KNOW that the admin knew it was quoting bad intel...It's been proven time and again, yet it is still treated as an open question, or simply ignored. The fact that many of the more reasonable war supporters still do this so often really brings me down a notch.

 

Cry me a river.

Bill Shakespeare would be rolling over in his grave with you representing the name & likeness of one of his greatest works also.

Who cares really?

 

Aside from the insult, your point?

 

Just noticed that you called the man 'Bill'. Don't bother answering my previous post...already know all I need to about you.

 

Was there a point? Did you just say anything? "Who cares?" You mean other than the families of the dead Americans and Iraqis? Um, pretty much everyone who regularly posts in this forum for starters. If you had a point, other than an awkward attempt to slam MacBeth for his choice of handle, you failed to make it. You're better when you stick to cutting and pasting Chronicle articles.

 

The most disturbing thing about this is that any controversy about this situation could end up being covered up and forgotten. I think this issue needs to be kept alive as long as possible as an object lesson for anytime this and future Admins think about going to war on murky speculative intel and reasoning.

David Kay said it himself.

That's a lesson we should always remember.

 

Yeah, this has "9-11 Commission Part II" written all over it. Count on the administration to obstruct this panel at every turn. This needs to be a congressional thing. An executive order gives Bush an opportunity to limit the scope of the investigation.

 

And it's sure to drag out past the election, making a report, assuming it got as far as a report, too late to let the people make their judgement. Groovy.

 

In a very-much related vein, a grand jury recently convened to investigage the White House for its role in leaking the identity of Joseph Wilson's wife as a CIA agent.

Wilson is the ex-embassador that the White House sent to Africa two years ago to check out reports of Saddam's purchse of yellow-cake uranium. Wilson reported back that it was a hoax -- it never happened.

But Bush turned around and used his report as *proof* that Saddam was purchasing yellow-cake uranium. In the State of the Union address, no less. Amazingly, Bush sold the Iraq war on this hoax, even though Wilson repeatedly told the administration that there was absolutely no proof of any Nigerian deal.

With an invasion looming, Wilson went public with that information. Now, a year later, it looks like the outing of Wilson's wife was apparent revenge for Wilson's criticism of Bush's Iraq policy.

 

Bush will announce this week that he is creating, by executive order, a bipartisan independent panel of at least nine members that will make a report in 2005, the White House confirmed yesterday.

GWB, what a born leader!!! Who better than GHWB to lead this bipartisan comission? or maybe that HOuse of Lords dud who cleared Blair of "sexing" up intel while concentrating on media coverage? or maybe Kissinger? or ...