and Teddy Kennedy's too! http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/11/20051111-6.html Sen. Kennedy Said Saddam Hussein Was Developing WMDs: "We have known for many years that Saddam Hussein is seeking and developing weapons of mass destruction." (Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA), Remarks At The Johns Hopkins School Of Advanced International Studies, Washington, D.C., 9/27/02) Sen. Kennedy: "Saddam Hussein Is A Dangerous Figure. He's Got Dangerous Weapons." (CBS' "Face The Nation," 10/6/02) Sen. Kennedy Now Says The President Manipulated Facts About Iraq's WMDs: "'Instead of providing open and honest answers about how we will achieve success in Iraq and allow our troops to begin to come home,' Kennedy said, 'the president reverted to the same manipulation of facts to justify a war we never should have fought.'" (Deb Riechmann, "Bush Forcefully Attacks Critics Of The War In Iraq," Associated Press, 11/11/05) Sen. Kennedy Opposed Removing Saddam Hussein From Kuwait. (S.J.Res.2, CQ Vote #2: Adopted 52-47: R 42-2; D 10-45, 1/12/91, Kennedy Voted Nay) Sen. Kennedy Opposed Removing Saddam Hussein From Power. (H. J. Res. 114, CQ Vote #237: Passed 77-23: R 48- 1; D 29-21; I 0-1, 10/11/02, Kennedy Voted Nay) Scott McClellan, White House Press Secretary: "It is regrettable that Senator Kennedy has chosen Veteran's Day to continue leveling baseless and false attacks that send the wrong signal to our troops and our enemy during a time of war." "It is also regrettable that Senator Kennedy has found more time to say negative things about President Bush then he ever did about Saddam Hussein." "If America were to follow Senator Kennedy's foreign policy, Saddam Hussein would not only still be in power, he would be oppressing and occupying Kuwait."
And Stephen Hadley climbs into the ring. http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/11/14/iraq.intelligence/ -- Bush adviser: Intelligence accusations 'flat wrong' WASHINGTON (CNN) -- President Bush's national security adviser defended the administration Sunday against accusations that it misled the nation about the need for war with Iraq as Democrats stepped up their attacks on the president's candor. Stephen Hadley told CNN's "Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer" that those claims were "flat wrong." "We need to put this debate behind us," he said. "It's unfair to the country. It's unfair to the men and women in uniform risking their lives to make this country safe." Top Bush administration officials argued before the 2003 invasion that the regime of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein had stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons and was working toward a nuclear weapon. Hadley said the intelligence Bush used for those arguments "was roughly the same intelligence that the Clinton administration saw." "They drew the conclusion that Saddam Hussein was a threat to peace, that he had weapons of mass destruction. They acted against him militarily in 1998," Hadley said, referring to the administration of Bill Clinton, a Democrat. Bush warned that Saddam's government could provide weapons of mass destruction to terrorists, like the al Qaeda network behind the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington. Those warnings spurred the House and Senate, with the support of many top Democrats, to authorize military action against Iraq. But no such weapons were found once Hussein's government collapsed in April 2003. Two and a half years later, with more than 2,000 U.S. troops killed in Iraq and support for the war dropping sharply in recent months, Democrats have pounded the administration on the intelligence issue, and the White House has begun firing back. On Friday, Bush said it was "deeply irresponsible to rewrite how that war began." Former Sen. John Edwards, the Democrats' 2004 vice presidential candidate, wrote Sunday in The Washington Post that he had made a mistake in voting to give Bush the authorization to go to war. "The argument for going to war with Iraq was based on intelligence that we now know was inaccurate," Edwards wrote. "The information the American people were hearing from the president -- and that I was being given by our intelligence community -- wasn't the whole story. Had I known this at the time, I never would have voted for this war." And Democratic Party chairman Howard Dean, who opposed the invasion as a 2004 presidential candidate, said Bush "misled America when he sent us to war." He told NBC's "Meet the Press" that Bush "left the impression" that Iraq was tied to the Sept. 11 attacks. "He never actually came out and said just that," Dean said. "But in every speech he gave during the campaign and afterwards, he left the impression. He left the impression with 65 percent of the American people, who agreed that Saddam had something to do with 9/11. It was dishonest, what he did." Hadley acknowledged that there was "an issue of our intelligence, and obviously we need to do a better job of our intelligence." But he pointed out that investigations by the Senate Intelligence Committee and the bipartisan Silberman-Robb Commission found no evidence to support claims the administration twisted the intelligence to argue that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, as it claimed before the invasion of Iraq. "Yes, we were all wrong in the intelligence," he said. "But to go back now and to argue that the president somehow manipulated the intelligence -- somehow misled the American people in a rush to war -- is flat wrong." And Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona -- a member of the Silberman-Robb Commission -- said the accusation that Bush lied to Americans to sell the war is "a lie." "Were there intelligence failures? Yes," McCain said. "Were they colossal? Yes. But they do not mean in any way that the president lied to the American people." The renewed controversy over the war, and the related indictment of a top aide to Vice President Dick Cheney, also have taken a toll on Bush's own popularity. Numerous recent polls have put his approval rating in the mid- to upper 30 percent range. Senior White House officials told CNN last week they were working on a "campaign-style" response to the criticism.
While this piece of information attacks Sen Kennedy it does nothing to address the issue of the administration and their cherry picking of intel or their lie that the Dems had access to all the same intel as the President. Rather than address the issues brought up they decide to attack Kennedy. This is hardly productive
http://www.thinkprogress.org/2005/07/26/bush-pulls-security/ 10/5/01: Bush Pulls Security Clearances From 92 Senators “We can’t have leaks of classified information. It’s not in our nation’s interest.” - President George W. Bush, 10/9/01 President Bush’s defiant statement came in the immediate weeks following 9/11, as the administration clamped down on the information it provided to Congress. President Bush issued an order limiting access to classified intelligence only to 8 members of Congress — the Speaker of the House, House Minority Leader, Senate Majority Leader, Senate Minority Leader, and chairmen and ranking members of the House and Senate intelligence committees. What precipitated this course of action? Gannett News Service reported on 10/1/01 that Bush was restricting information because, “The Washington Post reported last week that various lawmakers had been told there would be more terrorist attacks if the United States retaliated.” Here’s what the Washington Post reported: Asked whether more terrorist attacks are inevitable if the United States retaliates, [Sen. Richard] Shelby said, “You can bet on that.” U.S. intelligence officials have told members of Congress there is a high probability that terrorists associated with Osama bin Laden will try to launch another major attack on U.S. targets here or abroad. [Washington Post, 10/6/01] So at this slightest whiff of evidence that information was being leaked, President Bush pulled classified intelligence access for 92 senators. There was no ongoing criminal investigation nor was there evidence that all the members who had their access limited had leaked information. And now he refuses to hold Karl Rove and Scooter Libby to anywhere near the same standard, despite confirmation of their involvement in the leak of an undercover CIA agent’s identity.
And not only that It was Jr himself that debased an honorable and reverent day (Veterans day) by once again wrapping himself in the flag (that he refused to serve properly) and spitting on the memory of those brave men and women that served our great nation by once again attempting to divide America. He is the one who should be ashamed of himself, not Kennedy.
This entire bit about Rockefeller is irrelevant unless he saw all the evidence the WHIG saw. Got any blogs handy that say he did? This is kinda lame though: Even if you've been mislead, sack up and take responsibility for it.
Rediscovered testimony given by CIA director in 2001 suggests manipulation of pre-war intelligence Jason Leopold President George W. Bush’s attempt Friday to silence critics who say his administration manipulated prewar intelligence on Iraq is undercut by congressional testimony given in February 2001 by former CIA Director George Tenet, who said that Iraq posed no immediate threat to the United States or other countries in the Middle East, RAW STORY has found. Details of Tenet’s testimony have not been reported before. Since a criminal indictment was handed up last month against Vice President Dick Cheney’s former Chief of Staff, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, for his role in allegedly leaking the name of covert CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson to reporters in an attempt to muzzle criticism of the administration’s rationale for war, questions have resurfaced in the halls of Congress about whether the president and his close advisers manipulated intelligence in an effort to dupe lawmakers and the American public into believing Saddam Hussein was a grave threat. The White House insists that such a suggestion is ludicrous and wholly political. It has launched a full-scale public relations effort to restate its case for war by saying Democrats saw the same intelligence as their Republican counterparts prior to the March 2003 invasion. But as a bipartisan investigation into prewar intelligence heats up, some key Democratic lawmakers, including Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI), have unearthed unreported evidence that indicates Congress was misled. This evidence includes Tenet’s testimony before Congress, dissenting views from the scientific community and statements made by members of the administration in early 2001. Tenet told Congress in February 2001 that Iraq was “probably” pursuing chemical and biological weapons programs but that the CIA had no direct evidence that Iraq had actually obtained such weapons. However, such caveats as “may” and “probably” were removed from intelligence reports by key members of the Bush administration immediately after 9/11 when discussing Iraq. “We do not have any direct evidence that Iraq has used the period since (Operation) Desert Fox to reconstitute its WMD programs,” Tenet said in an agency report to Congress Feb. 7, 2001. “Moreover, the automated video monitoring systems installed by the UN at known and suspect WMD facilities in Iraq are still not operating… Having lost this on-the-ground access, it is more difficult for the UN or the U.S. to accurately assess the current state of Iraq’s WMD programs.” In fact, more than two dozen pieces of testimony and interviews of top officials in the Bush administration, including those given by former Secretary of State Colin Powell, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz prior to 9-11, show that the U.S. never believed Saddam Hussein was an imminent threat to anyone other than his own people. Powell said the U.S. had successfully “contained” Iraq in the years since the first Gulf War. Further, he said that because of economic sanctions, Iraq was unable to obtain WMD. “We have been able to keep weapons from going into Iraq,” Powell said during a Feb. 11, 2001 interview with “Face the Nation.” “We have been able to keep the sanctions in place to the extent that items that might support weapons of mass destruction development have had some controls.” “It's been quite a success for ten years,” he added. During a meeting with German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer in February 2001, Powell said the UN, the U.S. and its allies “have succeeded in containing Saddam Hussein and his ambitions.” Saddam’s “forces are about one-third their original size. They don't really possess the capability to attack their neighbors the way they did ten years ago,” Powell said. Powell added that Iraq was “not threatening America.” Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld seemed to agree with Powell’s assessment. In a Feb. 12, 2001 interview with the Fox News Channel, Rumsfeld said, “Iraq is probably not a nuclear threat at the present time.” Ironically, just five days before Rumsfeld’s Fox News interview, Tenet told Congress that Osama bin Laden and his al-Qa’ida terrorist network remained the single greatest threat to U.S. interests. Tenet eerily describes in the report a scenario that six months later would become a grim reality. “Terrorists are also becoming more operationally adept and more technically sophisticated in order to defeat counter-terrorism measures,” the former CIA director said. “For example, as we have increased security around government and military facilities, terrorists are seeking out "softer" targets that provide opportunities for mass casualties.” “Osama bin Laden and his global network of lieutenants and associates remain the most immediate and serious threat,” he added. Between 1998 and early 2002, the CIA’s reports on the so-called terror threat offered no details on what types of chemical and biological weapons Iraq had obtained. After 9/11, however, these reports radically changed. In October 2002, the agency issued another report, this time alleging Iraq had vast supply of chemical and biological weapons. Much of that information turned out to be based on forged documents and unreliable Iraqi exiles. The October 2002 CIA report stated that Iraq had been stockpiling sarin, mustard gas, VX and numerous other chemical weapons. This was in stark contrast to Tenet’s earlier reports which said the agency had no evidence to support such claims. And unlike testimony Tenet gave a year earlier, in which he said the CIA had no direct evidence of Iraq’s WMD programs, Tenet said the intelligence information in the 2002 report was rock solid. “It comes to us from credible and reliable sources,” Tenet said during a 2003 CIA briefing. “Much of it is corroborated by multiple sources.” The intelligence sources turned out to be Iraqi exiles supplied by then-head of the Iraqi National Congress Ahmed Chalabi, who was paid $330,000 a month by the Pentagon to provide intelligence on Iraq. The exiles’ credibility and the veracity of their reports came under scrutiny by the CIA but these reports were championed as smoking gun proof by President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and other members of the Bush administration. Unanswered questions remain. Democrats are increasingly suggesting that the Administration may have known their intelligence was bad. Sen. Levin’s office directed RAW STORY to a statement the senator released Friday, claiming that the administration’s assertion that al-Qaeda was providing Iraq with chemical and biological weapons training was based on bogus evidence and a source who knowingly lied about al-Qaeda’s ties to Iraq. The Michigan Democrat also released a newly declassified report from the Defense Intelligence Agency to back up his allegations that the Bush administration misled the public. “The CIA’s unclassified statement at the time was that the reporting was ‘credible,’ a statement the Administration used repeatedly,” he said. “What the Administration omitted was the second half of the CIA statement: that the source was not in a position to know whether any training had taken place.” That issue, along with other reports, is now the cornerstone of the bipartisan investigation into prewar intelligence. Levin’s office said the senator is going to provide the committee investigating prewar intelligence with reports from experts who warned officials in the Bush administration before the Iraq war that intelligence reports showing Iraq was stockpiling chemical and biological weapons were unreliable. http://rawstory.com/news/2005/Rediscovered_testimony_given_by_CIA_director_1114.html
An important tidbit from the Silbarman commission basso quoted: So it was the intelligence community that withheld information casting doubt on the intelligence from the administration? It was the intelligence community that gave the administration the impression that there was a grave and impending threat through repeated headlines on paltry sources? Man, they sure got suckered. The rest of the drumbeating on the commission finding no evidence of political pressure is not relevant to the charge of cherrypicking the information the WHIG had access to in order to manipulate the country into supporting the war. The commission hasn't gotten to phase 2 which is the point here.
no one is suggesting there weren't intelligence failures, there clearly were. but bush acted on essentially the same information Clinton had in 1998. try googling "clinton iraq 1998" and see what you come up with.
Okee dokey January 26, 1998 The Honorable William J. Clinton President of the United States Washington, DC Dear Mr. President: We are writing you because we are convinced that current American policy toward Iraq is not succeeding, and that we may soon face a threat in the Middle East more serious than any we have known since the end of the Cold War. In your upcoming State of the Union Address, you have an opportunity to chart a clear and determined course for meeting this threat. We urge you to seize that opportunity, and to enunciate a new strategy that would secure the interests of the U.S. and our friends and allies around the world. That strategy should aim, above all, at the removal of Saddam Hussein’s regime from power. We stand ready to offer our full support in this difficult but necessary endeavor. The policy of “containment” of Saddam Hussein has been steadily eroding over the past several months. As recent events have demonstrated, we can no longer depend on our partners in the Gulf War coalition to continue to uphold the sanctions or to punish Saddam when he blocks or evades UN inspections. Our ability to ensure that Saddam Hussein is not producing weapons of mass destruction, therefore, has substantially diminished. Even if full inspections were eventually to resume, which now seems highly unlikely, experience has shown that it is difficult if not impossible to monitor Iraq’s chemical and biological weapons production. The lengthy period during which the inspectors will have been unable to enter many Iraqi facilities has made it even less likely that they will be able to uncover all of Saddam’s secrets. As a result, in the not-too-distant future we will be unable to determine with any reasonable level of confidence whether Iraq does or does not possess such weapons. Such uncertainty will, by itself, have a seriously destabilizing effect on the entire Middle East. It hardly needs to be added that if Saddam does acquire the capability to deliver weapons of mass destruction, as he is almost certain to do if we continue along the present course, the safety of American troops in the region, of our friends and allies like Israel and the moderate Arab states, and a significant portion of the world’s supply of oil will all be put at hazard. As you have rightly declared, Mr. President, the security of the world in the first part of the 21st century will be determined largely by how we handle this threat. Given the magnitude of the threat, the current policy, which depends for its success upon the steadfastness of our coalition partners and upon the cooperation of Saddam Hussein, is dangerously inadequate. The only acceptable strategy is one that eliminates the possibility that Iraq will be able to use or threaten to use weapons of mass destruction. In the near term, this means a willingness to undertake military action as diplomacy is clearly failing. In the long term, it means removing Saddam Hussein and his regime from power. That now needs to become the aim of American foreign policy. We urge you to articulate this aim, and to turn your Administration's attention to implementing a strategy for removing Saddam's regime from power. This will require a full complement of diplomatic, political and military efforts. Although we are fully aware of the dangers and difficulties in implementing this policy, we believe the dangers of failing to do so are far greater. We believe the U.S. has the authority under existing UN resolutions to take the necessary steps, including military steps, to protect our vital interests in the Gulf. In any case, American policy cannot continue to be crippled by a misguided insistence on unanimity in the UN Security Council. We urge you to act decisively. If you act now to end the threat of weapons of mass destruction against the U.S. or its allies, you will be acting in the most fundamental national security interests of the country. If we accept a course of weakness and drift, we put our interests and our future at risk. Sincerely, Elliott Abrams Richard L. Armitage William J. Bennett Jeffrey Bergner John Bolton Paula Dobriansky Francis Fukuyama Robert Kagan Zalmay Khalilzad William Kristol Richard Perle Peter W. Rodman Donald Rumsfeld William Schneider, Jr. Vin Weber Paul Wolfowitz R. James Woolsey Robert B. Zoellick Oh and BTW, stop ripping off other peoples blogs... http://junkyardblog.net/archives/week_2005_10_30.html November 01, 2005 At the Risk of Sounding Like a Broken Record
The point is he complied. His missle which was banned by the UN was by a small number of kilometers, 20 I believe. This was not a grave threat, this was not a reason to go to war. He even destroyed them, as documented by the UN. He had a dossier for the nation's military projects. As much as I disliked the man, he was playing fair and he still got the shaft. I am sorry, but the destruction of an entire nation should not be acceptable under these conditions.
A few things. First the argument isn't that Bush saw the same intel that Clinton did, but that Bush saw the same intel as congress. What Nolen and others have posted shows that clearly Bush saw more information, and didn't present the parts that cast doubts on the reliability of the intel. Second Even if Clinton believed they had WMD's he was able to judge that Saddam was not a threat the United States. My niece in Indiana was in exactly zero danger from Saddam's Iraq. Clinton wanted to get rid of Saddam but knew that he wasn't enough of a threat to warrant the kind of invasion W went forward with. Yes Bush acted, and he acted without sharing all the intel and information about the reliability of that intel with the folks in congress.
Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Powell, Libbey, etc. all worked under the first George Bush and had their plan back then with some alterations as time went on. It was just a matter of time...
Emphasis mine. FB always says what I want to say, but better. Many countries and different administrations had the same info (not all of the same info though.) Our current administration had decided to go to war as early as 2001, and would use and/or exclude whatever intelligence would help them get there. They picked emphasized and reapeated only the most hyped-up dangerous, fear-inducing 'evidence' they could find, no matter how shabby or unsupported. Even if it only came from the lips of a single tortured prisoner, that was presented to us (and the house and senate) as hard evidence. They de-emphasized or completely omitted anything that would take away from the case for going to war, and there was plenty. That included personally attacking people who dared challenge them on it.
Anything that comes from Bush himself (pretty much) and starts off like that being pushed on as facts is utter ridiculousness. MY GOD DID IT MAKE ME LAUGH THOUGH. THANKS.
