On the Second Day of Fitzmas...

There may be twelve days yet: Fitzgerald is convening a new grand jury.
- posted by Joshua @ 5:52 PM (0) comments

 
The Zeal for War With Iraq

As the past history tries to get erased and rewritten by the Administration, just when the public is about to finally learn the truth, about why and how we went to war with Iraq, it's important to remember how badly this Administration wanted to attack Iraq. Here's what Richard Clarke told 60 Minutes about what happened the day after 9/11:

Clarke then tells Stahl of being pressured by Mr. Bush.

"The president dragged me into a room with a couple of other people, shut
the door, and said, 'I want you to find whether Iraq did this.' Now he never
said, 'Make it up.' But the entire conversation left me in absolutely no doubt
that George Bush wanted me to come back with a report that said Iraq did this."

I said, 'Mr. President. We've done this before. We have been looking at
this. We looked at it with an open mind. There's no connection.'

"He came back at me and said, "Iraq! Saddam! Find out if there's a
connection.' And in a very intimidating way. I mean that we should come back
with that answer. We wrote a report."

Clarke continued, "It was a serious look. We got together all the FBI
experts, all the CIA experts. We wrote the report. We sent the report out to CIA
and found FBI and said, 'Will you sign this report?' They all cleared the
report. And we sent it up to the president and it got bounced by the National
Security Advisor or Deputy. It got bounced and sent back saying, 'Wrong answer.
... Do it again.'

"I have no idea, to this day, if the president saw it, because after we did
it again, it came to the same conclusion. And frankly, I don't think the people
around the president show him memos like that. I don't think he sees memos that
he doesn't-- wouldn't like the answer."

Now the person who bounced it back was Rice's Deputy National Security Adviser, Stephen Hadley. So what did Hadley have to say in this very report about Clarke's charges:

As for the alleged pressure from Mr. Bush to find an Iraq-9/11 link, Hadley
says, "We cannot find evidence that this conversation between Mr. Clarke and the
president ever occurred."

When told by Stahl that 60 Minutes has two sources who tell us
independently of Clarke that the encounter happened, including "an actual
witness," Hadley responded, "Look, I stand on what I said."

And, of course, later on the White House conceded that such a meeting did occur, just like it ultimately admitted that the Niger piece shouldn't have been in the SOTU, but counterargued that it was entirely appropriate for Bush to inquire if Iraq had been involved. As Josh Marshall rightly pointed out in subsequent posts in the spring of 2004, Hadley could have gotten his initial denial of the incident from only a few people, including Rice, but the most likely person was Bush himself.

Thus, the whole picture painted of Hadley in the incident is this: Clarke is told by Bush to look and see if Saddam is behind 9/11. Clarke tells Bush no way, it was Al Qaeda. Bush says Look again. Clarke reports back to Hadley that Iraq was not involved and is told "Wrong answer… Do it again."

Then when Clarke goes public with the story, Hadley passes on a lie from Bush denying that the meeting ever happened, only to backtrack once the evidence is irrefutable. Sounds a lot like Niger.

Just keep that in mind as you evaluate what the Bush Administration and Hadley say in the weeks to come about Iraq. The lies simply do not end.
- posted by Joshua @ 7:11 PM (0) comments

 
Caught Red Handed

I think it's pretty important to play close attention to what happens in the next few weeks, as the media and public seem to finally be coming to terms with the fact that this Administration badly misled Congress and the country in order to ensure that its path to war was clear. The White House is desperately trying to avoid this reassessment and is trying to block the truth at all-costs, calling it "rewriting history." No matter how hard Ken Mehlman, the right wing media and conservative bloggers try to push their talking points, they place the unpleasant problem of "facts." Kevin Drum has done a nice initial run-down:

The case for manipulation is pretty strong. It relies on several things,
but I think the most important of them has been the discovery that the
administration deliberately suppressed dissenting views on some of the most
important pieces of evidence that they used to bolster their case for war. For
future reference, here's a list of five key dissents about administration
claims, all of which were circulated before the war but kept under wraps until
after the war:

The Claim: Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, an al-Qaeda prisoner captured in
2001, was the source of intelligence that Saddam Hussein had trained al-Qaeda
members to use biological and chemical weapons. This information was used
extensively by Colin Powell in his February 2003 speech to the UN.

What We Know Now: As early as February 2002, the Defense Intelligence
Agency circulated a report, labeled DITSUM No. 044-02, saying that it was
"likely this individual is intentionally misleading the debriefers." Link.
This assessment was hidden from the public until after the war.

The Claim: An Iraqi defector codenamed "Curveball" was the source of
reporting that Saddam Hussein had built a fleet of mobile biowarfare labs.
Curveball's claims of mobile bio labs were repeated by many administration
figures during the runup to war.

What We Know Now: The only American agent to actually meet with Curveball
before the war warned that he appeared to be an alcoholic and was unreliable.
However, his superior in the CIA told him it was best to keep quiet about this:
"Let's keep in mind the fact that this war's going to happen regardless of what
Curveball said or didn't say, and the powers that be probably aren't terribly
interested in whether Curveball knows what he's talking about." Link.
This dissent was not made public until 2004, in a response to the SSCI
report that was written by Senator Dianne Feinstein. Link.

The Claim: Iraq had purchased thousands of aluminum tubes to act as
centrifuges for the creation of bomb grade uranium. Dick Cheney said they were
"irrefutable evidence" of an Iraqi nuclear program and George Bush cited them in
his 2003 State of the Union address.

What We Know Now: Centrifuge experts at the Oak Ridge Office of the
Department of Energy had concluded long before the war that the tubes were
unsuitable for centrifuge work and were probably meant for use in artillery
rockets. The State Department concurred. Link. Both of these dissents were omitted from the CIA's declassified National Intelligence Estimate, released on October 4, 2002. Link. They were subsequently made public after the war, on July 18, 2003. Link.

The Claim: Saddam Hussein attempted to purchase uranium yellowcake from
Africa as part of his attempt to reconstitute his nuclear program. President
Bush cited this publicly in his 2003 State of the Union address.

What We Know Now: The primary piece of evidence for this claim was a
document showing that Iraq had signed a contract to buy yellowcake from Niger.
However, the CIA specifically told the White House in October 2002 that the
"reporting was weak" and that they disagreed with the British about the
reliability of this intelligence. Link. At the same time, the State Department wrote that the documents were "completely implausible." Link.

Three months later, in January 2003, Alan Foley, head of the CIA's
counterproliferation effort, tried to persuade the White House not to include
the claim in the SOTU because the information wasn't solid enough, but was
overruled. Link. Five weeks later, the documents were conclusively shown to be forgeries. Link. In July 2003, after the war had ended, CIA Director George Tenet admitted publicly that that the claim should never have been made. Link.

The Claim: Saddam Hussein was developing long range aerial drones capable
of attacking the continental United States with chemical or biological weapons.
President Bush made this claim in a speech in October 2002 and Colin Powell
repeated it during his speech to the UN in February 2003.

What We Know Now: The Iraqi drones had nowhere near the range to reach the
United States, and Air Force experts also doubted that they were designed to
deliver WMD. However, their dissent was left out of the October 2002 NIE and
wasn't made public until July 2003. Link.

It's pretty hard to argue with this evidence. But the groups on the right will try as hard as they can throw as much dust in the air to cloud things. Heck, they may even ressurect the post-Katrina talking point about not playing the "blame game."
- posted by Joshua @ 5:39 PM (0) comments