President Bush: Is He a Liar?

FreeDuck wrote:

Foxfyre wrote:

The qualifiers such as 'angrily' could be disputable, but the facts themselves are not.

Sometimes it is useful to review the facts as reported by the MSM and that is in the official record:

1.) Wilson Insisted That The Vice President's Office Sent Him To Niger:

Wilson Said He Traveled To Niger At CIA Request To Help Provide Response To Vice President's Office. "In February 2002, I was informed by officials at the Central Intelligence Agency that Vice President Dick Cheney's office had questions about a particular intelligence report. The agency officials asked if I would travel to Niger to check out the story so they could provide a response to the vice president's office." (Joseph C. Wilson, Op-Ed, "What I Didn't Find In Africa," The New York Times, 7/6/03)

Joe Wilson: "[W]hat They Did, What The Office Of The Vice President Did, And, In Fact, I Believe Now From Mr. Libby's Statement, It Was Probably The Vice President Himself ..." (CNN's "Late Edition," 8/3/03)
Vice President Cheney: "I Don't Know Joe Wilson. I've Never Met Joe Wilson. And Joe Wilson - I Don't [Know] Who Sent Joe Wilson. He Never Submitted A Report That I Ever Saw When He Came Back." (NBC's "Meet The Press," 9/14/03)

CIA Director George Tenet: "In An Effort To Inquire About Certain Reports Involving Niger, CIA's Counter-Proliferation Experts, On Their Own Initiative, Asked An Individual With Ties To The Region To Make A Visit To See What He Could Learn." (Central Intelligence Agency, "Statement By George J. Tenet, Director Of Central Intelligence," Press Release, 7/11/03)

Oh my. (Covers mouth with hand.) These quotes look they could be... could they? ...no, it can't be that they are taken out of context. Let's take them one by one.

The first one is accurate and supports Wilson's contention that he never said the VP sent him.

The second one is out of context and incomplete. Here's a snippet from the actual transcript.

Quote:
BLITZER: Is that true?

WILSON: Well, look, it's absolutely true that neither the vice president nor Dr. Rice nor even George Tenet knew that I was traveling to Niger.

What they did, what the office of the vice president did, and, in fact, I believe now from Mr. Libby's statement, it was probably the vice president himself...

BLITZER: Scooter Libby is the chief of staff for the vice president.

WILSON: Scooter Libby.

They asked essentially that we follow up on this report -- that the agency follow up on the report. So it was a question that went to the CIA briefer from the Office of the Vice President. The CIA, at the operational level, made a determination that the best way to answer this serious question was to send somebody out there who knew something about both the uranium business and those Niger officials that were in office at the time these reported documents were executed.

http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0308/03/le.00.html

He never actually finishes that sentence, but goes on to clarify that the VPs office asked for clarification from the CIA, which is totally consistent with what he has always said.

The quotes after that essentially support Wilson's assertion that he never said it was the VPs office that sent him and that it was the CIA who sent him in order to respond to a request for more information.

From the Washington Post 10-25-05

Quote:

On another item of dispute -- whether Vice President Cheney's office inspired the Wilson trip to Niger -- Wilson had said the CIA told him he was being sent to Niger so they could "provide a response to the vice president's office," which wanted more information on the report that Iraq was seeking uranium there. Tenet said the CIA's counterproliferation experts sent Wilson "on their own initiative."

Wilson said in a recent interview: "I never said the vice president sent me or ordered me sent."

SOURCE

There is room to speculate that Wilson did not intend to misrepresent the situation or that it is George Tenet and not Wilson who is lying. However, Tenet had no particular dog in this fight so far as I can see, so logically he is the less likely culprit. I will say that I don't know in this case. And yes, all the quotes I posted are not in context, but it was widely reported, even by those on Wilson's side, that he did say the Vice President or the Vice President's office asked for the trip to Niger.

There is plenty in the Senate testimony and report, however, to trip Wilson up on more major things and the issue of what he said about who sent him is not particularly important in my opinion. I only responded to that because Parados seems so convinced of Wilson's veracity and that everybody else is lying about Wilson.

My quarrel with Wilson was his unfounded attacks on the administration and the Democrats' attempts to make the Administration the guilty party in the affair.

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Foxfyre wrote:

From the Washington Post 10-25-05

Quote:
On another item of dispute -- whether Vice President Cheney's office inspired the Wilson trip to Niger -- Wilson had said the CIA told him he was being sent to Niger so they could "provide a response to the vice president's office," which wanted more information on the report that Iraq was seeking uranium there. Tenet said the CIA's counterproliferation experts sent Wilson "on their own initiative."

Wilson said in a recent interview: "I never said the vice president sent me or ordered me sent."

SOURCE

There is room to speculate that Wilson did not intend to misrepresent the situation or that it is George Tenet and not Wilson who is lying. However, Tenet had no particular dog in this fight so far as I can see, so logically he is the less likely culprit. I will say that I don't know in this case. And yes, all the quotes I posted are not in context, but it was widely reported, even by those on Wilson's side, that he did say the Vice President or the Vice President's office asked for the trip to Niger.

I'll try not to beat this to death, but where do you see a contradiction between what Tenet said and what Wilson said? Neither are saying that he was sent by the VP. If you can find a quote by Wilson where he said he was sent by the VP, I will be happy to concede that point. What I think is that someone interpreted his very specific comments in order to make him out to be a liar, which he might be, but not according to anything you've posted. The fact is, what he said is true.

senate report on pre-war intelligence wrote:

m)Officials from the CIA's DO CounterproliferationDivision (CPD) told Committee staff that in response to questions from the Vice President's Office and the -Departments of State and Defense on the alleged Iraq-Niger uranium deal, CPD officials discussed ways to obtain additional information.[blacked out]who could make immediate inquiries into the reporting, CPD decided to contact a former ambassador to Gabon who had a posting early in his career in Niger.

Foxfyre wrote:

There is plenty in the Senate testimony and report, however, to trip Wilson up on more major things and the issue of what he said about who sent him is not particularly important in my opinion. I only responded to that because Parados seems so convinced of Wilson's veracity and that everybody else is lying about Wilson.

Well, I just read section 2 of the report, of which only the first several paragraphs talk about Wilson and there's nothing there calling Wilson a liar. There is a highly partisan addendum, though, where there might be accusations that were not agreed upon by the whole panel. I'm sure there are plenty of things in there that would make you happy, but they don't hold the weight of the conclusions of the full panel.

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There is no reason to think that the CIA personnel that testified to Congress would lie is there Fox?

As I pointed out, they said almost the exact same thing Wilson did.

Either the claim about what Wilson said is a lie or you have to provide the quote where he actually said it.

This is from factcheck.org

Quote:

Contrary to later statements by White House officials, Wilson does not claim that Cheney sent him on the Niger trip, only that he was sent to answer questions from Cheney's "office." He also doesn't claim that Cheney was told of his findings, only that it would be "standard operating procedure" for the CIA to brief Cheney's office on the results of his mission.

factcheck also gives links to the statements.

The upshot of this is that this statement is not factual -

Quote:

This is the "lie" Wilson bragged of having "debunked" after being sent by the CIA to Niger in 2002 to check out the intelligence it had received to that effect. Wilson would later angrily deny that his wife had recommended him for this mission, and would do his best to spread the impression that choosing him had been the Vice President's idea. But Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times, through whom Wilson first planted this impression, was eventually forced to admit that "Cheney apparently didn't know that Wilson had been dispatched."

On further examination the claim that Kristof was forced to admit something is also over the top hyperbole that takes words out of context.

This is the quote from Kristof in context. He never says Wilson told him Cheney sent him.

Quote:

The envoy is, of course, Ambassador Wilson, and he has outed himself as one of the sources for that column (yes, there were others). One of the criticisms from the right is that I say that the vice president dispatched Wilson to Niger, but that's incorrect. The wording in the column is simply that Cheney asked for more information about the uranium deal, and then the former ambassador was dispatched. And that's what happened.
In fairness, though, it is true that Cheney apparently didn't know that Wilson had been dispatched. If I'd known that I would have said so. And in a later column I said Wilson had been dispatched "at the behest" of Cheney's office; it's true that he was sent in response to Cheney's prodding, but that wording wasn't choice because it can easily be read to mean that Cheney asked for the trip.

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parados wrote:

There is no reason to think that the CIA personnel that testified to Congress would lie is there Fox?

As I pointed out, they said almost the exact same thing Wilson did.

Either the claim about what Wilson said is a lie or you have to provide the quote where he actually said it.

This is from factcheck.org

Quote:
Contrary to later statements by White House officials, Wilson does not claim that Cheney sent him on the Niger trip, only that he was sent to answer questions from Cheney's "office." He also doesn't claim that Cheney was told of his findings, only that it would be "standard operating procedure" for the CIA to brief Cheney's office on the results of his mission.

factcheck also gives links to the statements.

The upshot of this is that this statement is not factual -

Quote:
This is the "lie" Wilson bragged of having "debunked" after being sent by the CIA to Niger in 2002 to check out the intelligence it had received to that effect. Wilson would later angrily deny that his wife had recommended him for this mission, and would do his best to spread the impression that choosing him had been the Vice President's idea. But Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times, through whom Wilson first planted this impression, was eventually forced to admit that "Cheney apparently didn't know that Wilson had been dispatched."

On further examination the claim that Kristof was forced to admit something is also over the top hyperbole that takes words out of context.

This is the quote from Kristof in context. He never says Wilson told him Cheney sent him.

Quote:
The envoy is, of course, Ambassador Wilson, and he has outed himself as one of the sources for that column (yes, there were others). One of the criticisms from the right is that I say that the vice president dispatched Wilson to Niger, but that's incorrect. The wording in the column is simply that Cheney asked for more information about the uranium deal, and then the former ambassador was dispatched. And that's what happened.
In fairness, though, it is true that Cheney apparently didn't know that Wilson had been dispatched. If I'd known that I would have said so. And in a later column I said Wilson had been dispatched "at the behest" of Cheney's office; it's true that he was sent in response to Cheney's prodding, but that wording wasn't choice because it can easily be read to mean that Cheney asked for the trip.

Sorry, I prefer other sources to Wikipedia or FactCheck.org though I have both favorited. If it comes down to who had the most to gain by lying, it would have to be Wilson hands down. He was seeking publicity and, by virtue of subsequent behavior, was seeking favor with the Democratic Party. It was politically and professionally embarrassing for George Tenet to give the reports that he did, and therefore it is more likely he was telling the truth.

Here's a few other sources that I think are telling (most are excerpted):

Joe Wilson:

Quote:

In February 2002, I was informed by officials at the Central Intelligence Agency that Vice President Dick Cheney's office had questions about a particular intelligence report. While I never saw the report, I was told that it referred to a memorandum of agreement that documented the sale of uranium yellowcake ?-?- a form of lightly processed ore ?-?- by Niger to Iraq in the late 1990's. The agency officials asked if I would travel to Niger to check out the story so they could provide a response to the vice president's office

http://www.ccmep.org/2003_articles/Iraq/070903_wilson.htm

by Chris Hitchins:

Quote:

Two recent reports allow us to revisit one of the great non-stories, and one of the great missed stories, of the Iraq war argument. The non-story is the alleged martyrdom of Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Wilson, supposed by many to have suffered cruel exposure for their commitment to the truth. The missed story is the increasing evidence that Niger, in West Africa, was indeed the locus of an illegal trade in uranium ore for rogue states including Iraq. . . .

The Senate's report on intelligence failures would appear to confirm that Valerie Plame did recommend her husband Joseph Wilson for the mission to Niger. In a memo written to a deputy chief in the CIA's Directorate of Operations, she asserted that Wilson had "good relations with both the Prime Minister and the former Minister of Mines [of Niger], not to mention lots of French contacts." This makes a poor fit with Wilson's claim, in a recent book, that "Valerie had nothing to do with the matter. She definitely had not proposed that I make the trip." (It incidentally seems that she was able to recommend him for the trip because of the contacts he'd made on an earlier trip, for which she had also proposed him.)
Wilson's earlier claim to the Washington Post that, in the CIA reports and documents on the Niger case, "the dates were wrong and the names were wrong," was also false, according to the Senate report. The relevant papers were not in CIA hands until eight months after he made his trip. Wilson now lamely says he may have "misspoken" on this. (See Susan Schmidt's article in the July 10 Washington Post.)

http://www.slate.com/id/2103795/

From George Tenet's statement 7-11-03

Quote:

An unclassified CIA White Paper in October made no mention of the issue, again because it was not fundamental to the judgment that Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear weapons program, and because we had questions about some of the reporting. For the same reasons, the subject was not included in many public speeches, Congressional testimony and the Secretary of State's United Nations presentation in early 2003.

The background above makes it even more troubling that the 16 words eventually made it into the State of the Union speech. This was a mistake.

Portions of the State of the Union speech draft came to the CIA for comment shortly before the speech was given. Various parts were shared with cognizant elements of the Agency for review. Although the documents related to the alleged Niger-Iraqi uranium deal had not yet been determined to be forgeries, officials who were reviewing the draft remarks on uranium raised several concerns about the fragmentary nature of the intelligence with National Security Council colleagues. Some of the language was changed. From what we know now, Agency officials in the end concurred that the text in the speech was factually correct -- i.e. that the British government report said that Iraq sought uranium from Africa. This should not have been the test for clearing a Presidential address. This did not rise to the level of certainty which should be required for Presidential speeches, and CIA should have ensured that it was removed.

http://www.globalsecurity.org/intell/library/news/2003/intell-030711-cia01.htm

Quote:

""In February 2002, I was informed by officials at the Central Intelligence Agency that Vice President Dick Cheney''s office had questions about a particular intelligence report. The agency officials asked if I would travel to Niger to check out the story so they could provide a response to the vice president''s office."" (Joseph C. Wilson, Op-Ed, ""What I Didn''t Find In Africa,""

The New York Times, 7/6/03)

Joe Wilson:

Quote:

""[W]hat They Did, What The Office Of The Vice President Did, And, In Fact, I Believe Now From Mr. Libby''s Statement, It Was Probably The Vice President Himself ...""

(CNN''s ""Late Edition,"" 8/3/03)

Oh, here's a reference to the ?'angrily' statement:, so we can rule that characterization as an exaggeration.

Quote:

In an interview with TIME, Wilson, who served as an ambassador to Gabon and as a senior American diplomat in Baghdad under the current president's father, angrily said that his wife had nothing to do with his trip to Africa. "That is bulls__t. That is absolutely not the case," Wilson told TIME. "I met with between six and eight analysts and operators from CIA and elsewhere [before the Feb 2002 trip]. None of the people in that meeting did I know, and they took the decision to send me. This is a smear job."

, , , ,and then there's this:

Quote:

A source close to the matter says that Wilson was dispatched to Niger because Vice President Dick Cheney had questions about an intelligence report about Iraq seeking uranium and that he asked that the CIA get back to him with answers. Cheney's staff has adamantly denied and Tenet has reinforced the claim that the Vice President had anything to do with initiating the Wilson mission. They say the Vice President merely asked routine questions at an intelligence briefing and that mid-level CIA officials, on their own, chose to dispatch Wilson.

In an exclusive interview Lewis Libby, the Vice President's Chief of Staff, told TIME: "The Vice President heard about the possibility of Iraq trying to acquire uranium from Niger in February 2002. As part of his regular intelligence briefing, the Vice President asked a question about the implication of the report. During the course of a year, the Vice President asked many such questions and the agency responded within a day or two saying that they had reporting suggesting the possibility of such a transaction. But the agency noted that the reporting lacked detail. The agency pointed out that Iraq already had 500 tons of uranium, portions of which came from Niger, according to the International Atomic Energy Administration (IAEA). The Vice President was unaware of the trip by Ambassador Wilson and didn't know about it until this year when it became public in the last month or so. " Other senior Administration officials, including National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, have also claimed that they had not heard of Wilson's report until recently

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,465270,00.html

In short, there is a whole lot more evidence to support those who say Wilson distorted the truth or flat out lied than there is evidence to support Wilson's claims.

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You've quoted Wilson and he says exactly what the senate report says that CIA officials say. He didn't say that Cheney sent him. He may have the most to gain by lying (that's questionable) but you haven't established that he lied.

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Foxfyre- May I commend you on your fine evidence. The quotations that I took from Podhoretz' article makes it clear that the Butler Report showed that Saddam HAD TRIED TO BUY ENRICHED URANIUM FROM NIGER and'

that Cheney had nothing to do with the choice of Wilson for the mission to Niger.

Quote from WHO IS LYING ABOUT IRAQ.

Which brings us to Joseph C. Wilson, IV and what to my mind wins the palm for the most disgraceful instance of all.

The story begins with the notorious sixteen words inserted?-after, be it noted, much vetting by the CIA and the State Department?-into Bush's 2003 State of the Union address:

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

This is the "lie" Wilson bragged of having "debunked" after being sent by the CIA to Niger in 2002 to check out the intelligence it had received to that effect. Wilson would later angrily deny that his wife had recommended him for this mission, and would do his best to spread the impression that choosing him had been the Vice President's idea. But Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times, through whom Wilson first planted this impression, was eventually forced to admit that "Cheney apparently didn't know that Wilson had been dispatched." (By the time Kristof grudgingly issued this retraction, Wilson himself, in characteristically shameless fashion, was denying that he had ever "said the Vice President sent me or ordered me sent.") And as for his wife's supposed non-role in his mission, here is what Valerie Plame Wilson wrote in a memo to her boss at the CIA:

My husband has good relations with the PM [the prime minister of Niger] and the former minister of mines . . . , both of whom could possibly shed light on this sort of activity.

More than a year after his return, with the help of Kristof, and also Walter Pincus of the Washington Post, and then through an op-ed piece in the Times under his own name, Wilson succeeded, probably beyond his wildest dreams, in setting off a political firestorm.

In response, the White House, no doubt hoping to prevent his allegation about the sixteen words from becoming a proxy for the charge that (in Wilson's latest iteration of it) "lies and disinformation [were] used to justify the invasion of Iraq," eventually acknowledged that the President's statement "did not rise to the level of inclusion in the State of the Union address." As might have been expected, however, this panicky response served to make things worse rather than better. And yet it was totally unnecessary?-for the maddeningly simple reason that every single one of the sixteen words at issue was true.

That is, British intelligence had assured the CIA that Saddam Hussein had tried to buy enriched uranium from the African country of Niger. Furthermore?-and notwithstanding the endlessly repeated assertion that this assurance has now been discredited?-Britain's independent Butler commission concluded that it was "well-founded." The relevant passage is worth quoting at length:

a. It is accepted by all parties that Iraqi officials visited Niger in 1999.

b. The British government had intelligence from several different sources indicating that this visit was for the purpose of acquiring uranium. Since uranium constitutes almost three-quarters of Niger's exports, the intelligence was credible.

c. The evidence was not conclusive that Iraq actually purchased, as opposed to having sought, uranium, and the British government did not claim this.

As if that were not enough to settle the matter, Wilson himself, far from challenging the British report when he was "debriefed" on his return from Niger (although challenging it is what he now never stops doing6), actually strengthened the CIA's belief in its accuracy. From the Senate Intelligence Committee report:

He [the CIA reports officer] said he judged that the most important fact in the report [by Wilson] was that Niger officials admitted that the Iraqi delegation had traveled there in 1999, and that the Niger prime minister believed the Iraqis were interested in purchasing uranium.

And again:

The report on [Wilson's] trip to Niger . . . did not change any analysts' assessments of the Iraq-Niger uranium deal. For most analysts, the information in the report lent more credibility to the original CIA reports on the uranium deal.

This passage goes on to note that the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research?-which (as we have already seen) did not believe that Saddam Hussein was trying to develop nuclear weapons?-found support in Wilson's report for its "assessment that Niger was unlikely to be willing or able to sell uranium to Iraq." But if so, this, as the Butler report quoted above points out, would not mean that Iraq had not tried to buy it?-which was the only claim made by British intelligence and then by Bush in the famous sixteen words.

The liar here, then, was not Bush but Wilson. And Wilson also lied when he told the Washington Post that he had unmasked as forgeries certain documents given to American intelligence (by whom it is not yet clear) that supposedly contained additional evidence of Saddam's efforts to buy uranium from Niger. The documents did indeed turn out to be forgeries; but, according to the Butler report,

[t]he forged documents were not available to the British government at the time its assessment was made, and so the fact of the forgery does not undermine [that assessment].7

More damning yet to Wilson, the Senate Intelligence Committee discovered that he had never laid eyes on the documents in question:

[Wilson] also told committee staff that he was the source of a Washington Post article . . . which said, "among the envoy's conclusions was that the documents may have been forged because ?'the dates were wrong and the names were wrong.'" Committee staff asked how the former ambassador could have come to the conclusion that the "dates were wrong and the names were wrong" when he had never seen the CIA reports and had no knowledge of what names and dates were in the reports.

To top all this off, just as Cheney had nothing to do with the choice of Wilson for the mission to Niger, neither was it true that, as Wilson "confirmed" for a credulous New Republic reporter, "the CIA circulated [his] report to the Vice President's office," thereby supposedly proving that Cheney and his staff "knew the Niger story was a flatout lie." Yet?-the mind reels?-if Cheney had actually been briefed on Wilson's oral report to the CIA (which he was not), he would, like the CIA itself, have been more inclined to believe that Saddam had tried to buy yellowcake uranium from Niger.

So much for the author of the best-selling and much acclaimed book whose title alone?-The Politics of Truth: Inside the Lies that Led to War and Betrayed My Wife's CIA Identity?-has set a new record for chutzpah.

But there is worse. In his press conference on the indictment against Libby, Patrick Fitzgerald insisted that lying to federal investigators is a serious crime both because it is itself against the law and because, by sending them on endless wild-goose chases, it constitutes the even more serious crime of obstruction of justice. By those standards, Wilson?-who has repeatedly made false statements about every aspect of his mission to Niger, including whose idea it was to send him and what he told the CIA upon his return; who was then shown up by the Senate Intelligence Committee as having lied about the forged documents; and whose mendacity has sent the whole country into a wild-goose chase after allegations that, the more they are refuted, the more they keep being repeated?-is himself an excellent candidate for criminal prosecution.

And so long as we are hunting for liars in this area, let me suggest that we begin with the Democrats now proclaiming that they were duped, and that we then broaden out to all those who in their desperation to delegitimize the larger policy being tested in Iraq?-the policy of making the Middle East safe for America by making it safe for democracy?-have consistently used distortion, misrepresentation, and selective perception to vilify as immoral a bold and noble enterprise and to brand as an ignominious defeat what is proving itself more and more every day to be a victory of American arms and a vindication of American ideals.

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The two items most important in that last post were

l. The quotes from the Butler Report-QUOTES- that British Intelligence had assured the CIA that Saddam had tried to buy enriched Uranium from the country of NIGER and

2. that the Senate Intelligence Committee stated that the claims made by Wilson that the documents may have been forged since the dates and the names were wrong when HE(WILSON) had never seen the CIA reports and had no knowledge of what names and dates were in the reports>

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Keep whistling, Bernard, you may someday figure out how to carry a tune.

You ignore the other two US inquiries into the Niger claims (again... and again... and again....).

I can post this as many times as you can re-post your Wilson article.

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So is it possible that someone "in the VP's office" asked for the report,and not the VP himself?

Or,does someone "in the VP's office" automatically mean the VP?

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All right, Mr. Drew Dad, sir--Here is evidence from another direction:

Last Updated: Wednesday, 14 July, 2004, 16:14 GMT 17:14 UK

Uranium claim: 'Well-founded'
Find out what Lord Butler said about key issues and people by using the links below

John Scarlett
JIC chairman
The Niger uranium claim
Lord Goldsmith
Attorney General

The uranium claims were first made public in the September dossier
Pre-war assessments that Iraq sought uranium from Niger were "well-founded on intelligence", the Butler report has concluded.

The controversial claims were first made in a dossier compiled by the British intelligence services on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, made public in September 2002.

Nuclear watchdog the International Atomic Energy Agency, had subsequently said some documents supporting the uranium claim were forgeries.

But Lord Butler said the government had intelligence from "several different sources".

"The forged documents were not available to the British government at the time its assessment was made and so the fact of the forgery does not undermine it," the report said.

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According to CNN, British intelligence claim was seriously flawed:

Iraq WMD claims 'seriously flawed'
Spy chief should keep job, says report

LONDON, England (CNN) -- An official inquiry into the quality of British intelligence used to justify the Iraq war has found that some of the sources were "seriously flawed."

However, former senior civil servant Lord Butler said there was no evidence of deliberate distortion or culpable negligence by the spy services.

Shortly after Butler's report into intelligence on Iraq was published on Wednesday, UK Prime Minister Tony Blair told MPs: "No one made up the intelligence."

But Blair admitted that evidence of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program was "less certain" than was stated before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003.

Butler's report dismissed calls for the resignation of John Scarlett, who, as chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee drew up a key government dossier on the threat posed by Iraqi WMDs.

"We have a high regard for his abilities and his record," he said. Butler told a news conference on Wednesday that failures were "collective" and Scarlett should not bear sole responsibility.

The report's findings echoed last week's Senate committee report that criticized U.S. intelligence services for exaggerating the threat from Iraq. But it found no sign President George W. Bush had put pressure on them. (Full story)

However, CNN European Political Editor Robin Oakley said Butler's criticisms were less severe than those in the Senate report.

As a result the report contained no "silver bullet" which the opposition could use to bring down Blair, Oakley added.

Butler was commissioned by Blair in February to investigate the intelligence on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, following the failure to find any such arms.

His inquiry said when ministers started to consider military action against Iraq in March 2002, the intelligence was "insufficiently robust" to justify claims that Iraq was in breach of U.N. resolutions requiring it to disarm.

But Butler said the dossier published on September of that year on the threat posed by former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein pushed the government's case to the limits of available intelligence.

And Opposition Conservative Party leader Michael Howard noted that the report said the intelligence services' assessment included "serious caveats, qualifications and cautions," but they were not included in Blair's pronouncements.

Howard said "qualified judgments" became Blair's "unqualified certainties" and the prime minister must give an explanation.

Butler said the dossier should not have included its controversial claim that Saddam could deploy WMD within 45 minutes.

And it said a statement by Blair to MPs possibly "reinforced the impression" that there was "fuller and firmer" intelligence behind the assessments in the dossier than was actually the case.

Three British inquiries have already been held on events surrounding the Iraq war -- two by parliamentary investigators, one by the judge Lord Hutton into the death of weapons scientist David Kelly.

Butler: No undue pressure
Blair and his government have so far been cleared of "sexing up" intelligence but observers say the controversy caused their popularity to plummet and deeply damaged the prime minister's credibility.

The two main UK opposition parties did not support the inquiry, arguing it would examine only "structures, systems and processes," and not the political decision to join the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

However, Lord Butler dashed hopes by political opponents that he would endorse their view that ministers put undue pressure on spy chiefs to exaggerate the Iraqi threat.

Blair later told the House of Commons that Butler found that "no one lied. No one made up the intelligence. No one inserted things into the dossier against the advice of the intelligence services."

"That issue of good faith should now be at an end."

"But I have to accept: as the months have passed, it seems increasingly clear that at the time of the invasion Saddam did not have stockpiles of chemical or biological weapons ready to deploy."

Blair said that although evidence of WMD was "less certain, less well founded than was stated at the time", Saddam retained "strategic intent on WMD."

CNN's Oakley said Blair was finding it difficult to move the agenda on from Iraq because of the way he had made the case for war.

"He insisted that Iraq had military plans for the use of chemical and biological weapons which could be activated within 45 minutes ... someone blundered."

Gary Samore, of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, told CNN: "In the case of Iraq the quality of intelligence and the analysis of that intelligence was abysmally bad."

"The most difficult thing for leaders of the intelligence community is to tell the political leadership that they're really not sure, that they really don't have good information and therefore they're in the realm of guesswork," Samore said.

The Stop the War campaign group was more blunt: "However many reports Tony Blair and his government commission on the Iraq war, one indisputable fact remains -- Tony lied and thousands died," it told Reuters.

Find this article at:
http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/europe/07/14/butler.blair/index.html

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Bernard, try to keep up.

First came the information from British intelligence.

Then came the US attempts to verify.

Three attempts, to be exact, all of which disagreed with the British report.

Bush then ignored the US findings and chose to quote the (discredited) British report.

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I am very much afraid that you are the one not keeping up, Mr. Drew Dad. Read the following and, if you can, show where it is incorrect. PLEASE PAY SPECIAL ATTENTION TO THE SECTION ON THE BUTLER COMMISSION.

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The story begins with the notorious sixteen words inserted?-after, be it noted, much vetting by the CIA and the State Department?-into Bush's 2003 State of the Union address:

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

This is the "lie" Wilson bragged of having "debunked" after being sent by the CIA to Niger in 2002 to check out the intelligence it had received to that effect. Wilson would later angrily deny that his wife had recommended him for this mission, and would do his best to spread the impression that choosing him had been the Vice President's idea. But Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times, through whom Wilson first planted this impression, was eventually forced to admit that "Cheney apparently didn't know that Wilson had been dispatched." (By the time Kristof grudgingly issued this retraction, Wilson himself, in characteristically shameless fashion, was denying that he had ever "said the Vice President sent me or ordered me sent.") And as for his wife's supposed non-role in his mission, here is what Valerie Plame Wilson wrote in a memo to her boss at the CIA:

My husband has good relations with the PM [the prime minister of Niger] and the former minister of mines . . . , both of whom could possibly shed light on this sort of activity.

More than a year after his return, with the help of Kristof, and also Walter Pincus of the Washington Post, and then through an op-ed piece in the Times under his own name, Wilson succeeded, probably beyond his wildest dreams, in setting off a political firestorm.

In response, the White House, no doubt hoping to prevent his allegation about the sixteen words from becoming a proxy for the charge that (in Wilson's latest iteration of it) "lies and disinformation [were] used to justify the invasion of Iraq," eventually acknowledged that the President's statement "did not rise to the level of inclusion in the State of the Union address." As might have been expected, however, this panicky response served to make things worse rather than better. And yet it was totally unnecessary?-for the maddeningly simple reason that every single one of the sixteen words at issue was true.

That is, British intelligence had assured the CIA that Saddam Hussein had tried to buy enriched uranium from the African country of Niger. Furthermore?-and notwithstanding the endlessly repeated assertion that this assurance has now been discredited?-Britain's independent Butler commission concluded that it was "well-founded." The relevant passage is worth quoting at length:

a. It is accepted by all parties that Iraqi officials visited Niger in 1999.

b. The British government had intelligence from several different sources indicating that this visit was for the purpose of acquiring uranium. Since uranium constitutes almost three-quarters of Niger's exports, the intelligence was credible.

c. The evidence was not conclusive that Iraq actually purchased, as opposed to having sought, uranium, and the British government did not claim this.

As if that were not enough to settle the matter, Wilson himself, far from challenging the British report when he was "debriefed" on his return from Niger (although challenging it is what he now never stops doing6), actually strengthened the CIA's belief in its accuracy. From the Senate Intelligence Committee report:

He [the CIA reports officer] said he judged that the most important fact in the report [by Wilson] was that Niger officials admitted that the Iraqi delegation had traveled there in 1999, and that the Niger prime minister believed the Iraqis were interested in purchasing uranium.

And again:

The report on [Wilson's] trip to Niger . . . did not change any analysts' assessments of the Iraq-Niger uranium deal. For most analysts, the information in the report lent more credibility to the original CIA reports on the uranium deal.

This passage goes on to note that the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research?-which (as we have already seen) did not believe that Saddam Hussein was trying to develop nuclear weapons?-found support in Wilson's report for its "assessment that Niger was unlikely to be willing or able to sell uranium to Iraq." But if so, this, as the Butler report quoted above points out, would not mean that Iraq had not tried to buy it?-which was the only claim made by British intelligence and then by Bush in the famous sixteen words.

The liar here, then, was not Bush but Wilson. And Wilson also lied when he told the Washington Post that he had unmasked as forgeries certain documents given to American intelligence (by whom it is not yet clear) that supposedly contained additional evidence of Saddam's efforts to buy uranium from Niger. The documents did indeed turn out to be forgeries; but, according to the Butler report,

[t]he forged documents were not available to the British government at the time its assessment was made, and so the fact of the forgery does not undermine [that assessment].7

More damning yet to Wilson, the Senate Intelligence Committee discovered that he had never laid eyes on the documents in question:

[Wilson] also told committee staff that he was the source of a Washington Post article . . . which said, "among the envoy's conclusions was that the documents may have been forged because ?'the dates were wrong and the names were wrong.'" Committee staff asked how the former ambassador could have come to the conclusion that the "dates were wrong and the names were wrong" when he had never seen the CIA reports and had no knowledge of what names and dates were in the reports.

To top all this off, just as Cheney had nothing to do with the choice of Wilson for the mission to Niger, neither was it true that, as Wilson "confirmed" for a credulous New Republic reporter, "the CIA circulated [his] report to the Vice President's office," thereby supposedly proving that Cheney and his staff "knew the Niger story was a flatout lie." Yet?-the mind reels?-if Cheney had actually been briefed on Wilson's oral report to the CIA (which he was not), he would, like the CIA itself, have been more inclined to believe that Saddam had tried to buy yellowcake uranium from Niger.

END OF QUOTE

Those who wish to read the entire Podhoretx article can find it by entering Who is lying in Iraq? Norman Podhoretz

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BernardR wrote:
a. It is accepted by all parties that Iraqi officials visited Niger in 1999.

b. The British government had intelligence from several different sources indicating that this visit was for the purpose of acquiring uranium. Since uranium constitutes almost three-quarters of Niger's exports, the intelligence was credible.

c. The evidence was not conclusive that Iraq actually purchased, as opposed to having sought, uranium, and the British government did not claim this.

DUH!

Let's see; I go to the shoe store in another city to see if I want to buy shoes in my size. The store refuses to sell shoes to me, because I'm Asian.

Somebody later learns I tried to buy shoes, and even though I wasn't able to purchase those shoes, they bomb my home and kill everybody in it. Can anybody tell me what's wrong with this picture? Except BernardR, ofcoarse! He wouldn't understand.

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cicerone, nobody bombed Hussein for trying to buy shoes, duh! He was bombed for trying to buy materials to make WMD.

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God, even okie can't "see" the picture. Hopeless.

Going shopping is quite different from buying, you godd.... ignoramous!

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Go ahead, act amazed. Shopping for WMD demonstrates an active program to produce WMD. Get it? If you had no intent to walk soon, there would be no need to shop for shoes.

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okie, How many countries do you think now have an "active program" to produce wmd's? Where's the evidence Saddam had an active program? Just because somebody claims he went shopping for yellow cake? Are we ready to go start a war with all the countries that has the potential to produce wmd's?

You're dumber than most ten year olds.

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DrewDad wrote:

Bernard, try to keep up.

First came the information from British intelligence.

Then came the US attempts to verify.

Three attempts, to be exact, all of which disagreed with the British report.

Bush then ignored the US findings and chose to quote the (discredited) British report.

[singsong voice]
I can repost, too.
I can repost, too.
[/singsong voice]

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cicerone imposter wrote:

Are we ready to go start a war with all the countries that has the potential to produce wmd's?

You're dumber than most ten year olds.

The answer to your question is no. We don't go to war with everybody that has WMD unless we think they are particularly more dangerous, as evidenced by their past actions, and because they present not only a threat as a nation, but also a threat to be in cahoots with terrorists. Iraq fit that description. Bush made the case. Congress agreed. Get over it. Lets win the war and quit trying to tear each other apart for what has already been chosen, not by just Bush, but by the country through our duly electied leaders.

We also do not go to war unless that country has shown agression toward us, which Iraq also fit that description. Not everyone agrees on this, but the President and Congress did. Thats where the decision was made. We need to live with it and go from here.

And even if a situation or country deserves to be made war on, we still have to make a decision as to whether a war between us is wise, prudent, or winnable. Iraq was judged by the President and Congress to fit that description as well.

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President Bush: Is He a Liar?

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