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Today's Must Read
Phase II, the 200+ page Senate intelligence committee's report on pre-war intelligence in Iraq, has revealed the disconnect between what was espoused by Bush Administration officials in the days building up to the war in Iraq, and what was actually known. Besides the simple absence of intelligence, it has also been revealed that the Administration advanced arguments in contradiction of what the intelligence actually showed, in making its case for war.
We've covered Rumsfeld's false testimony to the House Armed Services Committee, and the general outcry from both sides of the aisle over the report.
Today, the LA Times has a good summary of excerpts from the report, which highlight the chasm between what was said by the President and Vice President, and what was actually known:
Statements in dozens of prewar speeches and interviews created the impression that Baghdad and Al Qaeda had forged a partnership. But the report concludes that such assertions "were not substantiated by the intelligence" being shown to senior officials at the time.Claims that Sept. 11 hijacker Mohamed Atta had met with an Iraqi agent in Prague, for example, were dubious from the beginning and subsequently discounted. The idea that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein had provided chemical and biological weapons training to Al Qaeda hinged on intelligence from a source who soon was discredited.
Bush officials strayed even further from the evidence in suggesting that Hussein was prepared to provide weapons of mass destruction to Al Qaeda terrorist groups -- a linchpin in the case for war.
In October 2002, for example, Bush warned in a key speech in Cincinnati that "secretly, and without fingerprints, [Hussein] could provide one of his hidden weapons to terrorists, or help them develop their own." The threat was repeated frequently in the run-up to war but was "contradicted by available intelligence information," the committee says.
On post-war prospects, the report contrasts the rosy scenarios conjured by Cheney and others with more sober intelligence warnings that were being presented to senior officials.
Cheney's prediction that U.S. forces would "be greeted as liberators" was at odds with reports from the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency, which warned nearly a year earlier that invading U.S. forces would face serious resistance from "the Baathists, the jihadists and Arab nationalists who oppose any U.S. occupation of Iraq."
Other findings show that it seems Pentagon officials were duped by known Iranian counterintelligence. From McClatchy:
A small group of Pentagon officials collected dubious intelligence on Iraq and Iran from Iranian exiles whom Defense Department counterintelligence investigators said might have "been used as agents of a foreign intelligence service ... to reach into and influence the highest levels of the U.S. government," the Senate Intelligence Committee reported Thursday.The revelation raises questions about whether Iran may have tried to use a small cabal of officials in the Pentagon and in Vice President Dick Cheney's office to feed bogus intelligence on Iraq and Iran to senior policymakers in the Bush administration who were eager to oust the Iraqi dictator and who remain determined to combat what President Bush this week called an "existential" threat from Iran.
A 2003 report by the Pentagon's Counterintelligence Field Activity, the Senate committee said, concluded that Michael Ledeen, the American civilian who brokered the contacts through Manucher Ghorbanifar, an Iranian exile whom the CIA in 1984 labeled a "fabricator," and other Iranians "was likely unwitting of any counterintelligence issues related to his relationship with Mr. Ghorbanifar." [Emphasis ours.]
Josh
Zachary
Can we impeach now, or does this position still make me "shrill" ...
June 6, 2008 11:10 AM | Reply | Permalink
Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme-chose.
June 6, 2008 11:15 AM | Reply | Permalink
No one could have predicted that a war profiteer would help the Boy King start a war so the war profiteers could profit.
June 6, 2008 11:18 AM | Reply | Permalink
And since the otherwise senseless Iraq war makes sense when viewed as a power grab for that area based in war profiteering, & that fact is provable multiple ways in multiple areas, let's hope to hear the clanging shut of multiple jail cells coming from not so very far in the future. It'll take time, & the truth won't come out easily. I try to have faith it will finally come out & be acted upon accordingly.
June 6, 2008 11:31 AM | Reply | Permalink
... and non of the traitors (who are now complicit in the deaths of thousands of American soldiers) have a desire to prosecute those who lied and connived to make this war possible.
We are now being asked to reelect these same people (the Congressmen and Senators) who care so little about innocent lives (or so much about their own power and security) that they will make no attempt to rectify these crimes.
When we vote for these criminals and their friends, we are doing nothing more that they are... belittling the REAL heros of this nation (many who will never see their loved ones again) and SUPPORTING the ones (or their cronies) who sent them to their graves... IMHO
It is a sad day in this nation when so many of us have turned away from our humanity and morals... and are supporting the scum of the earth to lead us further down the slope...
I am somewhat glad I am getting old and will not see some of the effects of our actions. I am also sad that the children who are just now growing up will reap the consequences of our actions...
June 6, 2008 11:32 AM | Reply | Permalink
I watched Kit Bond and Saxby Chambliss sniveling today about the report. Had the repugs done oversight instead of overlooking we might of had a chance to stop Bush.
Funny that Bill Clinton gets impeached for a blowjob but all these republicans can suck off Cheney and Bush and nobody complains.
June 6, 2008 11:34 AM | Reply | Permalink
May I take the opportunity to apologize for the Chambliss- dirty Rovian tricks got him elected over Max Cleland; we Georgians & the rest of the US have had to listen to a vatload of his ignorant spew & put up w/his rubber stamp "loyalty" to GWB ever since.
June 6, 2008 11:43 AM | Reply | Permalink
The point isn't what they did, but why they did it. $$$$$$$$
June 6, 2008 11:34 AM | Reply | Permalink
$$$$$$$$?
Safe to say.
So how to best
"follow the money..." to its inevitable culprits?
I think it likely the co-conspirators might all be identified in one way or another as a timely investor in, or a convenitently seated board member of, some corporation that was on the receiving end of a large no-bid contract.
Certainly defines and identifies the worst of them. And winnows down the field considerably.
June 6, 2008 12:01 PM | Reply | Permalink
And, they're still at it!
Check this out:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/us-issues-threat-to-iraqs-50bn-foreign-reserves-in-military-deal-841407.html
June 6, 2008 6:55 PM | Reply | Permalink
Phase too late...
June 6, 2008 11:54 AM | Reply | Permalink
Johnnydoughy wrote:
When we vote for these criminals and their friends, we are doing nothing more that they are... belittling the REAL heros of this nation (many who will never see their loved ones again) and SUPPORTING the ones (or their cronies) who sent them to their graves...
Ding! Ding! Ding! We have a winner!
Why vote for anyone who fails to hold these people accountable? We got to this point because Abrams, Ledeen, Cheney, and the rest of this cabal were never held accountable for Iran-Contra. Clearly, the Iranians took note.
What does this tell every cop in the U.S?
What does it tell every teenager?
I have no intention of enabling people who claim they are too powerless to haul these well-paid thugs into court and make them accountable before the law.
June 6, 2008 12:06 PM | Reply | Permalink
The revelation raises questions about whether Iran may have tried to use a small cabal of officials in the Pentagon and in Vice President Dick Cheney's office to feed bogus intelligence on Iraq and Iran to senior policymakers in the Bush administration ...
I've always wondered why Bush took every word or Hussein and bin Laden as the gospel truth. No matter what they said, no matter how outrageous, Bush used it as proof that they must be attacked. They are it up with all the blood lust of the very people they were fighting. Now we come to see that this made them so easy to dupe. Just tell them what they want to hear and let their blood thirsty little minds do the rest.
June 6, 2008 12:06 PM | Reply | Permalink
I hope the Bush/Cheney reality-deflecting bubble is challenged, post administration, like a walnut in a vice . . . may those two criminals never venture in public again without the full derision and disgust they deserve.
June 6, 2008 12:08 PM | Reply | Permalink
Having an objective in mind and deliberately skewing information to justify that objective, while picking and choosing what parts of it they/politicians decided to disregard or accentuate has resulted in the brutal deaths of more than 4000 innocent Americans and 100,000 Iraqi civilians. Murder by any other name.......
Something that seems to have been lost in the declarations that things are "better" in Iraq is the fact that the entire country has been destroyed. Most of their people are living in what most of us would consider abject poverty with no water, little food, no electricity, no transportation, no schools, no safety and no means to protect your family save picking up a gun and fighting. McClellan calls it enforced democracy. I call it the wanton soulless destruction of a country and its people by an imperialist regime of unscrupulous mercenary megalomaniacs.
June 6, 2008 12:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
I love your eloquent verbosity!
June 6, 2008 1:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
Can we impeach them now???
Okay, if not now then how about the day after the November elections? Sounds good to me.
ITMFA
June 6, 2008 12:16 PM | Reply | Permalink
There's a flip side to this story.
In addition to all the lies these guys spouted about Iraqi WMD and links to Al Qaeda, they also persistently and systematically used the power of the presidency to cover-up and conceal evidence implicating those who truly were responsible for the rise of Al Qaeda and the attacks on 9/11:
www.asecondlookatthesaudis.com
I think if people ever wrap their minds around the amount of evidence out there implicating the Saudis, they'll begin to understand that the administration's incessant claims that the Saudis are our "friends and allies" in the War on Terror represent an even bigger lie than all this garbage about Iraqi WMDs.
June 6, 2008 12:21 PM | Reply | Permalink
Call me a conspiracy theorist loon, but after all Bush and Cheney have done and lied in the name of 9/11, why the hell should I believe them on this?
June 6, 2008 1:44 PM | Reply | Permalink
I have finally come to the realization that impeaching Bush is too good for him. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfled, Rice, Feith, et al are WAR CRIMINALS. There needs to be a forum where they are exposed to the world and held accountable. Americans have not seen the pictures of devastation in our press. The photos of the American fallen are family and military portraits, not battle pictures. Everything has been sanitized for our view. These people have committed mass murder for political gain. They has no consciense, remorse or humanity. Their acts need to be exposed in great detail for all the world to see so that nothing like this is ever able to happen again. Not only are they criminals, but in exposing this horrific event in our history, those that simply went along and blindly failed to do their jobs as our advocates need to be highlighted as well. And lastly, the nation owes an apology to and graditude to those that did their homework and opposed this war that were ridiculed and called unpatriotic.
June 6, 2008 12:53 PM | Reply | Permalink
We will have an former president and his veep and his aids unable to set foot in Vermont without being arrested for war crimes. Ditto, a growing number of countries.
We must demand of a constitutional lawyer and president of the Harvard Law Review that his DoJ enforce the rule of law when pardons can help no one.
Indictments Feb 2009.
June 6, 2008 1:41 PM | Reply | Permalink
Agreed. The Rule of Law... or the rule of nothing!
June 6, 2008 3:30 PM | Reply | Permalink
You guys are deluding yourselves.
After Obama wins the '08 election, the country will want to heal and move on from the entire Bush administration. Bush will be marginalized and ignored, and treated like a kind of pathetic uncle by most Americans. The statute of limitations on his crimes (in terms of political will) will pass very quickly away.
Meanwhile the far right will begin to romanticize him and burnish his lovable cowboy myth. Twenty years from now he will be seen as a "controversial maverick" who enjoyed "both the highest and lowest approval ratings of any President in modern history."
The irony is that the ugliest years of the Iraq War are still ahead of us -- and Bush will be gone from office. The most maddening thing is that outlets like Fox News will be all too eager to ask his opinion, and how he would have handled things differently. Though it's almost impossible to imagine it now, a "If George W. were still in charge, things would be different and better" meme will indeed be floated on the right wing margin -- and many people will actually buy it.
This guy has bankrupted companies, crashed numerous cars while driving drunk, put mentally ill people to death and lied about his military service -- and he was rewarded with the highest office in the land.
He has always skated by, and he will skate again.
Accept it and move on.
June 6, 2008 1:52 PM | Reply | Permalink
never. he's earned his enemies, and they will hound him until the day he dies.
June 6, 2008 1:55 PM | Reply | Permalink
Your scenario, based on the resuscitation of Nixon's post-Watergate corpse, is the reason that we must demand of our representatives that they not "forgive and forget."
Thei crimes must be EXPOSED to the entire world so that all Americans get the proof of what they did.
June 7, 2008 12:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
To clarify. I don't begrudge anyone their righteous indignation. Bush and Cheney are criminals. I say these things not out of cynicism and defeatism, but out of practicality--
We have too much work to do as a country after getting these monsters out of office. A war crimes trial would be a circus, a distraction, counterproductive.
We've wasted far too long as it is.
June 6, 2008 2:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
Well, maybe the war criminal process is not really in the cards.
But one can also have quite another opinion:An error done after the McCarthy-years, the Vietnam War and the Iran-Contras trade was the lack of cleaning and purging, the lack of national self-criticism, and the absence of a national consensus never to do the same mistakes again. The width of the done errors and crimes was thus quickly forgotten by the American people.
June 9, 2008 6:06 PM | Reply | Permalink
All of this begs the question of Jell-O J., why back the Administration on telecom immunity when they lied and continue to lie about Iraq and Iran, unless they are blackmailing you, 'cause I don't think you need the money the lobbyists are throwing around.
June 6, 2008 3:31 PM | Reply | Permalink
I've read Phase2B, and I don't think Ledeen was "unwitting."
Yes, a major reason for that is his employment with the American Heritage Institute, but it's not the only one. This guy was no naif. And he started the whole thing rolling by contacting the DoD.
Look at page 5 (document page 6), paragraph 1:
Sorry, with vitae like Ledeen and Ghorbanifar's, I can't see either of them as "unwitting."
And I also can't see the DoD's Messrs. Franklin and Rhode as anything but ambitious opportunists.
The intelligence committee left its own at the door when it made this determination.
June 6, 2008 6:51 PM | Reply | Permalink
jaymay,
There will be an accounting for these criminals . Richard C. Clarke ( "Your Government Failed You " ) suggested a Truth & Reconcilaition Commission - Point in fact there are many ways to hold all of these thugs to account ( my personal favorite is all at trial in the Hague ) .
And jaymay accountability will also be part & parcel of our national healing.
Stay tuned jaymay -and look for Carol Lamm & David Iglesias -among others - to go after these serial wrong doers - the minute President Obama is sworn into office .
Remember jaymay you read it hear first !
June 6, 2008 7:13 PM | Reply | Permalink
jaymay,
There will be an accounting for these criminals . Richard C. Clarke ( "Your Government Failed You " ) suggested a Truth & Reconcilaition Commission - Point in fact there are many ways to hold all of these thugs to account ( my personal favorite is all at trial in the Hague ) .
And jaymay accountability will also be part & parcel of our national healing.
Stay tuned jaymay -and look for Carol Lamm & David Iglesias -among others - to go after these serial wrong doers - the minute President Obama is sworn into office .
Remember jaymay you read it hear first !
June 6, 2008 9:15 PM | Reply | Permalink
Get real people. You are wasting your time. Rockefeller gave us the same lies he is now blaming on Bush. Congress has no shame. They will never impeach. They have no "REAL" proof.
June 6, 2008 9:27 PM | Reply | Permalink
Get real people. You are wasting your time. Rockefeller gave us the same lies he is now blaming on Bush. Congress has no shame. They will never impeach. They have no "REAL" proof.
June 6, 2008 9:27 PM | Reply | Permalink
Impeachment can be over in a matter of days. (Yes, really.)
There is nothing to investigate. No fact witnesses. No "smoking gun" to find. Everything is already on the public record.
A simple up or down House vote for or against torture(ers) and terrorizing The American People with lies of "Mushroom Clouds!!" ought to sail through.
Then a day or two in the Senate for James A. Baker to prattle on about how the WMD were "counted, and recounted, and recounted" and how Plame's WMD-tracking network had to be rolled up so "grown-ups" could take charge of all that yellow cake.
And then, at long last, the DC/Euphemedia Analstocracy might break out of its self-induced coma to DO SOME DAMN THING about the serial treason against our once-great nation, that's been underway since the Felonious Five took the sovereign American People "out of the loop" -- making us fair game for 9-11 and legally and morally liable for nazi-like atrocities worldwide.
Impeachment remains the ONLY moral, patriotic option that can even begin to Redeem Our National Soul.
--
June 7, 2008 5:11 AM | Reply | Permalink
I would propose that anyone who gets on THIS blog and suggests that the damage done Bush and Cheney et al, will/should/can be forgotten or forgiven, is ONE OF THEM!
Don't believe it for a second, and don't think that they will remain immune to world-class laws and the enforcers bound to them, Bush may well be relegated to his Texas ranch simply by default, and Cheney will never be able to fly to his Dubai palm frond if the plane lands anywhere in Europe or parte nearby.
Whether they are actually sent to some sort of prison (West Texas can in some ways be worse than prison for carpetbaggers like Bush) depends on whether The Truth, The Whole Truth, and nothing but The Truth is ever extricated from their cowardly mouths.
Remember what Don Vito Corleone said to Michael just before he died? Whoever comes to you with a deal, they were the traitor all along.
Anyone who gets on here and tries to tamp down our righteous indignation, whether posing as a concern troll or as a Bush partisan, is really a traitor.
They will blame the intelligence community, which was summarily ignored by the neocons, and the American public, for "letting this happen in the first place."
There is no reasonable argument that excuses these rogues, or a legitimate case against sending them to Leavenworth.
Or better yet, lets send them to Gitmo!
Now THAT would be true justice.
June 7, 2008 11:36 AM | Reply | Permalink
It would seem that someone has WAY too much spare time on their hands. I mean lets be real here, who has time to compile a 200+ page report? Gimme a break here!
JT
Is your ISP watching you?
June 7, 2008 3:02 PM | Reply | Permalink
They sit on top of the world's largest major oil reserves. How do we convince the American people to support us taking over the country. With 9/11 it should be relatively easy. We'd be doing the world a favor.
Everything else was made to fit this idea. We now have it confirmed from several sources. Our "leaders" are guilty of mass murder, torture and treason. This is what we already know.
This cannot be left unpunished...too many have died. The longer we wait the greater the chance it will happen again with another country.
It all begins and ends with impeachment, or with one prosecutor bringing charges against Bush and Cheney to begin with.
June 7, 2008 5:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
No healing can occur without accountability.
Obama better not pull a Clinton and letting all warmongering perps go free.
ITMFA would send a signal about a wind of accountability rising up.
June 7, 2008 5:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
Why focus on this issue if in the end, Reid and Pelosi won't move on it. Much more pertinent are developments on the ground in Iraq. In particular, most Iraqi representatives want foreign troops to leave and are averse to establishing a security agreement with the U.S. - after New Years. Most particularly, there is the matter of fifty billion Iraq dollars now held by the U.S. government and reports have it that this money is now hostage to the negotiations. But one doesn't read about such things on TPM. Perhaps AIPAC might not approve.
June 7, 2008 6:27 PM | Reply | Permalink
John Crandall -
One surefire way to keep Team Bush/ McCain from establishing the fifty permanent US bases in Iraq would be to impeach , and or prosecute all or most of the gwb 43 administration for war crimes . ( But to get there we will have to remove Pelosi - )
And John if you weren't a total toady you would know that TPM is not a tool of the American Likud - like AIPAC is - so ixnay on attacking Joshay ,otay ??
And John just asking you aren't a buddy of james dd or gsb327 are you ?/
June 7, 2008 7:08 PM | Reply | Permalink
Our President and his minions have continued to tout high scores in their war games by killing ---"insurgents"
While they all do so in unabated glee -- they are confessing their war crimes for each time they tout death of an insurgent.
Here is why:Webster's Dictionary definition of INSURGENT:
1: a person who revolts against civil authority or an established government; especially : a rebel not recognized as a belligerent
2: one who acts contrary to the policies and decisions of one's own political party
So who can pretend that our President is not a war criminal when HE HIMSELF tells the nation, time and again, that he has ordered the DEATHS OF NON BELLIGERENT (insurgent) people?
Seems his motivations for removing our nation from the International Courts the first weeks after swearing his oath on a bible on the White House steps - that he was setting up his evasion to war crimes tribunals long before we had any impetus manufacturing his war(s) - --- and preparing to commit PRE-MEDITATED FIRST DEGREE MURDER of "insurgents"?
Like most serial killers, his very public confessions are no different than serial killers that WANT to be caught.
Bush, his cohorts, enablers and the press keeps giving the clues to criminal acts in the very public use of "insurgent" and yet . . .
Did other war eras use the word "insurgents" when claiming victorious body counts of our soldiers victims?
June 8, 2008 4:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
As I understand it, there is NO statue of limitations on murder. BushCos lies resulted in the unnecessary deaths of hundreds of thousands. Certainly War Crimes can be charged.
June 9, 2008 3:49 PM | Reply | Permalink