Bush supporters' aftermath thread

Ticomaya's comment regarding Scowcroft leads inevitably to the statement made by Robert Einhorn, CLINTON'S ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF STATE FOR NON PROLIFERATION, to the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee in 2002.

quote

"How close is the peril of Iraqi WMD? Today, or at most within a few months, Iraq could launch missile attacks with chemical or biological weapons...Within four or five years it could have the capacity to threaten most of the Middle East and parts of Europe with missiles armed wtiht nuclear weapons containing fissile materials produced indigeneously--and to threaten US territory with such weapons delivered by non-conventional means, such a commercial shipping containers"

end of quote.

Who said this? Clinton's Assistant Secretary of State for non-proliferation--Robert Einhorn.

What Robert Einhorn said:

Robert Einhorn, Clinton's deputy assistant secretary of state, told the Senate Governmental Affairs committee in March 2002 that Saddam could have nukes and the missiles capable of striking Europe "within four to five years" and would be able to deliver nukes in America via "non-conventional means."

"If Iraq managed to get its hands on sufficient quantities of already produced fissile material," he said, "these threats could arrive much earlier."

This was in 2002. It was up to the Bush's administration that intelligence was confirmed and reconfirmed to make sure these statements were true to justify going to war. Failure to ensure that this information was up to date and confirmed by our own intelligence can't be faulted against the previous administration.

Any administration better make damn sure their intelligence about WMDs and their ability to use it better be without errors or omissions if it will mean the exposure of our military to war. Anything short of 100 percent confidence is not acceptable.

You are mistaken, CI

quote- Chicago Tribune- What we know today- Nov. 30, 2005

The Bush Administration INHERITED from President Clinton's administration a US Policy of regime change in Iraq and multiple intelligence warnings that Saddam Hussein had designs on nuclearn weaponry.

In March 2002, Robert Einhorn, CLINTON'S ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF STATE FOR NON-PROLIFERATION( if he does not have the latest and the best information on hand, WHO DOES???) described for the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee the alarming assessment of Iraq that THE INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE WAS RELAYING TO THE WHITE HOUSE DURING CLINTON'S SECOND TERM:

"How close is the peril of Iraqi WMD? Today, or at most within a few months, Iraq could launch missle attacks with chemical or biological weapons against its neighbors...Within four or five years it could have the capability to threaten most of the Middle East and parts of Europe with missles armed with nuclear weapons containing fissle material produced indigeneously--and to threaten US territory with such weapons delivered by non-conventional means,such as commercial shipping containers.
...The Consensus of the agencies(such as the non-proliferation office) was that Baghdad had been reconstituting its nuclear program since 1998 and that, with fissle material, Iraq could have a workable bomb in short order."

end of quote

If I were mistaken, our military would have found WMDs and chemical weapons when Bush initiated the war. None were found.

Our intelligence agencies have stated since then that Bush used unconfirmed information to start his war.

Is lying about the reason for a war an impeachable offense?
By John W. Dean
FindLaw Columnist
Special to CNN.com
Friday, June 6, 2003 Posted: 5:17 PM EDT (2117 GMT)



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(FindLaw) -- President George W. Bush has got a very serious problem. Before asking Congress for a joint resolution authorizing the use of U.S. military forces in Iraq, he made a number of unequivocal statements about the reason the United States needed to pursue the most radical actions any nation can undertake -- acts of war against another nation.

Now it is clear that many of his statements appear to be false. In the past, Bush's White House has been very good at sweeping ugly issues like this under the carpet, and out of sight. But it is not clear that they will be able to make the question of what happened to Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) go away -- unless, perhaps, they start another war.

That seems unlikely. Until the questions surrounding the Iraqi war are answered, Congress and the public may strongly resist more of President Bush's warmaking.

Presidential statements, particularly on matters of national security, are held to an expectation of the highest standard of truthfulness. A president cannot stretch, twist or distort facts and get away with it. President Lyndon Johnson's distortions of the truth about Vietnam forced him to stand down from reelection. President Richard Nixon's false statements about Watergate forced his resignation.

Frankly, I hope the WMDs are found, for it will end the matter. Clearly, the story of the missing WMDs is far from over. And it is too early, of course, to draw conclusions. But it is not too early to explore the relevant issues.

President Bush's statements on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction
Readers may not recall exactly what President Bush said about weapons of mass destruction; I certainly didn't. Thus, I have compiled these statements below. In reviewing them, I saw that he had, indeed, been as explicit and declarative as I had recalled.

Bush's statements, in chronological order, were:

"Right now, Iraq is expanding and improving facilities that were used for the production of biological weapons."

United Nations address, September 12, 2002

"Iraq has stockpiled biological and chemical weapons, and is rebuilding the facilities used to make more of those weapons."

"We have sources that tell us that Saddam Hussein recently authorized Iraqi field commanders to use chemical weapons -- the very weapons the dictator tells us he does not have."

Radio address, October 5, 2002

"The Iraqi regime . . . possesses and produces chemical and biological weapons. It is seeking nuclear weapons."

"We know that the regime has produced thousands of tons of chemical agents, including mustard gas, sarin nerve gas, VX nerve gas."

"We've also discovered through intelligence that Iraq has a growing fleet of manned and unmanned aerial vehicles that could be used to disperse chemical or biological weapons across broad areas. We're concerned that Iraq is exploring ways of using these UAVS for missions targeting the United States."

"The evidence indicates that Iraq is reconstituting its nuclear weapons program. Saddam Hussein has held numerous meetings with Iraqi nuclear scientists, a group he calls his "nuclear mujahideen" -- his nuclear holy warriors. Satellite photographs reveal that Iraq is rebuilding facilities at sites that have been part of its nuclear program in the past. Iraq has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes and other equipment needed for gas centrifuges, which are used to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons."

Cincinnati, Ohio speech, October 7, 2002

"Our intelligence officials estimate that Saddam Hussein had the materials to produce as much as 500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agent."

State of the Union Address, January 28, 2003

"Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised."

Address to the nation, March 17, 2003

It is a tricky affair when, in the case of the Iraq war, one calls for "100 percent confidence;" as it happens more often than not, intelligence is intentionally misconstrued for the sake of extensional policy- a propaganda slight of hand, if you will. The facts do not support the action, the action must proceed for the sake of your constituency etc, and so the intelligence on the matter is revised and perfected for the action. In short, it is a difficult demand to meet when the primary ingredient in the action is i., to have at hand a true and "100 percent" reliable intelligence assessment of the boundaries for the action in order to ii., demonstrate and carry out your case with a (published) twenty-five percent reliability rating to muster congressional support.

I would love nothing more than to view the first intelligence assessment of Iraq's weapons capabilities.

Ex - Powell Aide Criticizes Bush on Iraq By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

11/29/05 "New York Times" -- -- WASHINGTON (AP) -- Former Secretary of State Colin Powell's chief of staff says President Bush was ''too aloof, too distant from the details'' of post-war planning, allowing underlings to exploit Bush's detachment and make bad decisions.

In an Associated Press interview Monday, former Powell chief of staff Lawrence Wilkerson also said that wrongheaded ideas for the handling of foreign detainees after Sept. 11 arose from a coterie of White House and Pentagon aides who argued that ''the president of the United States is all-powerful,'' and that the Geneva Conventions were irrelevant.

Wilkerson blamed Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and like-minded aides. Wilkerson said that Cheney must have sincerely believed that Iraq could be a spawning ground for new terror assaults, because ''otherwise I have to declare him a moron, an idiot or a nefarious bastard.''

Wilkerson suggested his former boss may agree with him that Bush was too hands-off about Iraq.

''What he seems to be saying to me now is the president failed to discipline the process the way he should have and that the president is ultimately responsible for this whole mess,'' Wilkerson said.
He said Powell now generally believes it was a good idea to remove Saddam Hussein from power, but may not agree with either the timing or execution of the war. Wilkerson said Powell may have had doubts about the extent of the threat posed by Saddam Hussein but was convinced by then-CIA Director George Tenet and others that the intelligence girding the push toward war was sound.

Powell was widely regarded as a dove to Cheney's and Rumsfeld's hawks, but he made a forceful case for war before the United Nations Security Council in February, 2003, a month before the invasion. At one point, he said Saddam possessed mobile labs to make weapons of mass destruction that were never found.

Wilkerson criticized the CIA and other agencies for allowing mishandled and bogus information to underpin that speech and the whole administration case for war.

He said he has almost, but not quite, concluded that Cheney and others in the administration deliberately ignored evidence of bad intelligence and looked only at what supported their case for war.

A newly declassified Defense Intelligence Agency document from February 2002 said that an al-Qaida military instructor was probably misleading his interrogators about training that the terror group's members received from Iraq on chemical, biological and radiological weapons. Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi reportedly recanted his statements in January 2004.

A presidential intelligence commission also dissected how spy agencies handled an Iraqi refugee who was a German intelligence source. Codenamed Curveball, this man who was a leading source on Iraq's purported mobile biological weapons labs was found to be a fabricator and alcoholic.

On the question of detainees picked up in Afghanistan and other fronts on the war on terror, Wilkerson said Bush heard two sides of an impassioned argument within his administration. Abuse of prisoners, and even the deaths of some who had been interrogated in Afghanistan and elsewhere, have bruised the U.S. image abroad and undermined fragile support for the Iraq war that followed.

Cheney's office, Rumsfeld aides and others argued ''that the president of the United States is all-powerful, that as commander in chief the president of the United States can do anything he damn well pleases,'' Wilkerson said.

On the other side were Powell, others at the State Department and top military brass, and occasionally then-national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, Wilkerson said.

Powell raised frequent and loud objections, his former aide said, once yelling into a telephone at Rumsfeld: ''Donald, don't you understand what you are doing to our image?''

Wilkerson also said he did not disclose to Bob Woodward that administration critic Joseph Wilson's wife worked for the CIA, joining the growing list of past and current Bush administration officials who have denied being the Washington Post reporter's source.

Copyright 2005 The Associated Press

What part of "The consensus of those agencies was that Baghdad had been reconstituting its nuclear programs since 1998 and that, with fissile materials, Iraq could have a workable bomb in short order: do you fail to understand?

Bill Clinton HIMSELF said OnDec. 16th 1998 that:
"Saddam Hussein must not be allowed to threaten the world with NUCLEAR ARMS, poison gas, or biological weapons."

It was Clinton who, because of his glandular eccentricities, did not pay attention to the growing threat.

CBS News reported on Apr. 16, 2004 that:

Six years before the Sept. 11 attacks,the CIA warned in a classified report that Islamic extremists likely would strike on US soil at landmarks in WASHINGTON OR NEW YORK, or through the Airline industry.."

CIA disputes Bush's Iran-9/11 connection
"We will continue to look and see if the Iranians were involved."



Edwin Chen and Greg Miller
Los Angeles Times
July 20, 2004

President Bush said Monday that his administration was investigating possible links between Iran and the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, a statement that distanced the president from acting CIA Director John McLaughlin, who had downplayed a possible connection a day earlier.

"As to direct connections with Sept. 11, we're digging into the facts to determine if there was one," Bush said of Iran.

In a second sign of a potential rift between the White House and the intelligence agency, White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan told reporters that McLaughlin was not speaking for the president when he said it was unnecessary to create a new, more powerful intelligence czar, despite faulty information before the Iraq war.

"The president is very much open to ideas that build upon the reforms that we're already implementing," McClellan said. "I think [McLaughlin] was expressing his view."

McClellan's comments indicated that the White House was receptive to the idea of fundamental reform in the intelligence community, rather than the "modest changes" McLaughlin had endorsed in an appearance on a Sunday talk show.

The White House-CIA differences emerged as the independent Sept. 11 commission prepared to release its final report Thursday on the 2001 terrorist attacks. The report is expected to contain recommendations that could touch off a contentious drive toward reforming the nation's intelligence-gathering bureaucracy.

The independent commission is widely expected to report that some of the Sept. 11 hijackers had traveled freely between Iran and Afghanistan during 2000 and 2001. Last month, the panel's chairman, former New Jersey Gov. Thomas H. Kean, said in a television interview that Al Qaeda had "a lot more active contacts, frankly, with Iran and with Pakistan than there were with Iraq."

Iran's emerging prominence in the Sept. 11 investigations looms as a potentially difficult issue for the White House, because it could raise new questions about why Bush led a war against Iraq but so far has taken a distinctly less bellicose stance toward Iran.

McClellan argued that the United States indeed had been "confronting" the threat from Iran, which Bush in 2002 listed, along with Iraq and North Korea, as part of an "axis of evil." He added, however, that Iraq was "a unique situation" because it had invaded its neighbors and had possessed and used weapons of mass destruction.

McClellan also said the White House was eager to learn what the Sept. 11 commission knew about any connections between the hijackers and Iran. "Apparently it's something that's evolved over time," he said.

The Iranian government has denied knowledge or involvement in the Sept. 11 plot.

McLaughlin had said Sunday that although "about eight" of the Sept. 11 hijackers may have passed through Iran before their mission, the CIA had "no evidence that there is some sort of official connection between Iran and 9/11."

Bush on Monday noted McLaughlin's comments, but said: "We will continue to look and see if the Iranians were involved."

The president also renewed his accusation that Iran's rulers were "harboring Al Qaeda leadership," and urged Tehran anew to dismantle its nuclear weapons program. The United States has asked Iran to turn over Al Qaeda members to their respective countries.

The president's spokesman dismissed weekend media reports that Bush may delay naming a new CIA director until after the Nov. 2 election as having "no basis in fact."

In brief remarks to reporters after meeting with Chilean President Ricardo Lagos, Bush said that he was "still taking a good, hard look" at potential successors to George J. Tenet as CIA director. Tenet left the agency July 11.

As for the reforming the intelligence-gathering apparatus, the president said he was looking forward to seeing the Sept. 11 commission's recommendations.

"They share the same desires I share, which is to make sure that the president and the Congress get the best possible intelligence," Bush said.

"Some of the reforms, I think, are necessary: more human intelligence, better ability to listen or to see things, and better coordination amongst the variety of intelligence-gathering services," he said. "And so we'll look at all their recommendations, and I will comment upon that, having studied what they say."

The commission is expected to recommend the creation of a single Cabinet-level position overseeing the 15 agencies that make up the nation's intelligence-gathering community.

McLaughlin acknowledged on "Fox News Sunday" that "a good argument" could be made for such consolidation, but added that it was unnecessary because the CIA already had taken steps toward reform since Sept. 11 and because a restructuring would impose additional bureaucracy on the system.

White House officials have described McLaughlin as a capable leader, but have also indicated that they do not see him as a permanent replacement.

That may be in part because McLaughlin was in a senior position at the agency during a stretch that included the failure to prevent the Sept. 11 attacks and the erroneous assessments that Iraq had stockpiles of biological and chemical weapons and had restarted its nuclear weapons program.

But it also appears that the professorial McLaughlin, who came up through the analytical side of the CIA, doesn't have the sort of rapport with Bush that the backslapping, gregarious Tenet did.

An anecdote in a recent book by Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward describes McLaughlin giving a key briefing to Bush and other senior White House officials on the evidence against Iraq before the war. Bush was unimpressed by the presentation and complained that the evidence was weak, prompting Tenet to call the case against Iraq a "slam dunk."

McClellan said Monday that McLaughlin was "someone who is very capable and is doing a good job at the CIA."

Don't you people get anythihng straight?

CBS News reported on Apr. 16, 2004 that:

Six years before the Sept. 11 attacks,the CIA warned in a classified report that Islamic extremists likely would strike on US soil at landmarks in WASHINGTON OR NEW YORK, or through the Airline industry.."

DUH, FYI it was al Qaida that was responsible for the attack in New York and Washington DC - NOT SADDAM!

Senior CIA Spy Criticizes Bush


August 20, 2004

CIA senior intelligence officer Mike Scheuer has published a book attacking America's political establishment. His book "Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror" denounces US counter-terrorism policy, and calls Bush's attack on Iraq "an avaricious, premeditated, unprovoked war against a foe who posed no immediate threat but whose defeat did offer economic advantage".

But perhaps the most chilling tales are those of the several missed opportunities to assassinate Osama Bin Laden. Scheuer has a unique perspective here - he was head of the Bin Laden station for years. In this book he vents his frustrations that despite several planned operations and opportunities to terminate Osama, Washington politics prevented the plans from moving forward.

For more on the interview with Scheuer see this story

Dunce Bush and his incompetent administration has fostered greater terrorism around the world, and the recruitment for terrorists rather than being stopped has increased diametrically.

Of course, It was AL Qaeda. BUT CLINTON MISSED IT.

Clinton did not miss it; Bush was in charge when it happened. Why not blame Abe Lincoln? When you are the 'manager' of anything, you can't keep blaming your predecessor. They're gone! You're responsible when anything happens on your watch if you're the president/manager/supervisor.

I will repost:

FROM CBS NEWS:


CIA WARNED OF US ATTACK IN '95

Six years before the Sept. 11th attacks, the CIA warned in a classified report that Islamic extremists likely would strike at US soil at landmarks in Washington or New York or through the airline industry."

YOU WILL NOTE THE DATE---1995

YOU WILL NOTE THE SPECIFICITY OF THE WARNING-

Islamic extremists

likely would strike

US soil

Washington or New York
'
airline industry

Of course, given that the WH neither cares about nor views polling data nor sets policies and speeches in any relation to such polling data (and possibly does not even know what the term 'focus group' means) then foxfyre's predicted result will be lucky indeed.

Optional reality available to foxfyre...she could stop making and/or believing claims quite so silly.

My god, george. Roses as far as the eye can see. You know, I think that if you were over in the middle east now and on some dark evening after too much scotch crookedly heading home but making a wayside stop at one of those outhouse style latrines which a couple of other drunk soldiers had moved a bit just for fun...and you fell in...that you'd only get much exercised if it weren't an American latrine.

Likely, some of you folks caught the exciting news yesterday from the LA Times that a lot of Iraqi news ain't news - it's propaganda produced by a Washington PR company being paid multi-millions to pretend they are actually Iraqi people saying nice things about, you know, progress and American occupation. If you missed the LAT piece, this will fill you in. We know you'll read it because what is more important than the truth, after all.

But golly, don't go thinking that this kind of propaganda is happening here in America. Well, ok, so we know that it has been and the GAO is on it and Bush has promised to stop it.

So that is that and there is now absolutely NO reason to think that some of the "soldiers" accounts that end up on your favored sites (then get transplanted here) are manufactured out of some propaganda operation. There's no reason to wonder how many of those propaganda stories planted in Iraqi media THEN got picked up or steered to Fox and broadcast/published here as if they were actually true. No reason to wonder about that, fer sure.

Hell, that would be just about as foolish as thinking that Pat Tillman died the way the Pentagon said he died. Or as foolish as believing that Jessica Lynch "shot her way out".

When was the last time an anti-war democrat gave a speech to a military crowd?