VIDEO - 60 Minutes Exposes Bush's Pre-War WMD Lies

Just name one lie, just one lie that Bush told! You can't do it!

Yesterday evening I noted the Tyler Drumheller inteview on 60 Minutes and asked why little or none of what he had to say had made it into the reports of either the Robb-Silbermann Commission or the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence reports on Iraqi WMD intelligence. As I reported in that post, Drumheller was interviewed by the Robb-Silbermann Commission three times prior to the issuance of its report and twice by the Senate Committee, though in the latter case only after its summer 2004 report came out.

Now, a number of readers have written in to ask whether it might not be the case that only staffers or investigators on the Robb-Silbermann Commission interviewed in Drumheller. In that case, perhaps his information never made its way up to the Commissioners themselves.

Not so.

I called Drumheller back today and asked him who from the Robb-Silbermann Commission interviewed him.

He told me that at his main interview -- where he discussed everything he discussed on 60 Minutes -- he was interviewed by the entire commission. That means Sen. Robb was there, Sen. McCain, Judge Silbermann, everybody. (You can see the complete commission roster here.)

On two other occasions, said Drumheller, he was interviewed by commission staffers. But he estimated that his interview before the full commission went on for between two and three hours. And he assured me that they heard everything that 60 Minutes viewers heard yesterday evening and more.

Why his account didn't get into their report is something they can answer. But they can't say they didn't hear it.

Just name one lie, just one lie that Bush told! You can't do it!

Quote:

Just name one lie, just one lie that Bush told! You can't do it!

Roxxxanne, have you been out drinking with Brandon9000 ?

freedom4free wrote:

Quote:

Just name one lie, just one lie that Bush told! You can't do it!

Roxxxanne, have you been out drinking with Brandon9000 ?

No, I believe Gunga is Brandon's drinking partner....

"We No Longer Believe"

Both the Butler report and the Senate Intelligence Committee report make clear that Bush's 16 words weren't based on the fake documents. The British didn't even see them until after issuing the reports -- based on other sources -- that Bush quoted in his 16 words. But discovery of the Italian fraud did trigger a belated reassessment of the Iraq/Niger story by the CIA.

Once the CIA was certain that the Italian documents were forgeries, it said in an internal memorandum that "we no longer believe that there is sufficient other reporting to conclude that Iraq pursued uranium from abroad." But that wasn't until June 17, 2003 -- nearly five months after Bush's 16 words.

Soon after, on July 6, 2003, former ambassador Wilson went public in a New York Times opinion piece with his rebuttal of Bush's 16 words, saying that if the President was referring to Niger "his conclusion was not borne out by the facts as I understood them," and that "I have little choice but to conclude that some of the intelligence related to Iraq's nuclear weapons program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat." Wilson has since used much stronger language, calling Bush's 16 words a "lie" in an Internet chat sponsored by the Kerry campaign.

On July 7, the day after Wilson's original Times article, White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer took back the 16 words, calling them "incorrect:"

Fleischer: Now, we've long acknowledged -- and this is old news, we've said this repeatedly -- that the information on yellow cake did, indeed, turn out to be incorrect.

And soon after, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice acknowledged that the 16 words were, in retrospect, a mistake. She said during a July 11, 2003 White House press briefing :

Rice: What we've said subsequently is, knowing what we now know, that some of the Niger documents were apparently forged, we wouldn't have put this in the President's speech -- but that's knowing what we know now.

That same day, CIA Director George Tenet took personal responsibility for the appearance of the 16 words in Bush's speech:

Tenet: These 16 words should never have been included in the text written
for the President.

Tenet said the CIA had viewed the original British intelligence reports as "inconclusive," and had "expressed reservations" to the British.

The Senate report doesn't make clear why discovery of the forged documents changed the CIA's thinking. Logically, that discovery should have made little difference since the documents weren't the basis for the CIA's original belief that Saddam was seeking uranium. However, the Senate report did note that even within the CIA the comments and assessments were "inconsistent and at times contradictory" on the Niger story.

Even after Tenet tried to take the blame, Bush's critics persisted in saying he lied with his 16 words -- for example, in an opinion column July 16, 2003 by Michael Kinsley in the Washington Post :

Kinsley: Who was the arch-fiend who told a lie in President Bush's State of the Union speech? . . .Linguists note that the question "Who lied in George Bush's State of the Union speech" bears a certain resemblance to the famous conundrum "Who is buried in Grant's Tomb?"

However, the Senate report confirmed that the CIA had reviewed Bush's State of the Union address, and -- whatever doubts it may have harbored -- cleared it for him.

Senate Report: When coordinating the State of the Union, no Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) analysts or officials told the National Security Council (NSC) to remove the "16 words" or that there were concerns about the credibility of the Iraq-Niger uranium reporting.

The final word on the 16 words may have to await history's judgment. The Butler report's conclusion that British intelligence was "credible" clearly doesn't square with what US intelligence now believes. But these new reports show Bush had plenty of reason to believe what he said, even if British intelligence is eventually shown to be mistaken.

This administration really is lying scum, isn't it?


I knew it, but kind of didn't want to ....but here is the real smoking gun.