Basting Bush's Goose

Even when all the dust settles around Tenet, Powell, Rice, Wolfowitz and others set to take the fall, the buck stops with the 'president'...

Wolfowitz Committee Instructed White House To Use Iraq/Uranium Ref In Pres Speech

By Jason Leopold

07/16/03: (Information Clearing House) WASHINGTON, D.C--A Pentagon committee led by Paul Wolfowitz, the Deputy Secretary of Defense, advised President Bush to include a reference in his January State of the Union address about Iraq trying to purchase 500 tons of uranium from Niger to bolster the case for war in Iraq, despite the fact that the CIA warned Wolfowitz�s committee that the information was unreliable, according to a CIA intelligence official and four members of the Senate�s intelligence committee who have been investigating the issue.

The Senators and the CIA official said they could be forced out of government and brought up on criminal charges for leaking the information to this reporter and as a result requested anonymity. The Senators said they plan to question CIA Director George Tenet Wednesday morning in a closed-door hearing to find out whether Wolfowitz and members of a committee he headed misled Bush and if the President knew about the erroneous information prior to his State of the Union address.

Spokespeople for Wolfowitz and Tenet vehemently denied the accusations. Dan Bartlett, the White House communications director, would not return repeated calls for comment.

The revelations by the CIA official and the senators, if true, would prove that Tenet, who last week said he erred by allowing the uranium reference to be included in the State of the Union address, took the blame for an intelligence failure that he was not responsible for. The lawmakers said it could also lead to a widespread probe of prewar intelligence.

At issue is a secret committee set up in 2001 by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld called the Office of Special Plans, which was headed by Wolfowitz, Abrum Shulsky and Douglas Feith, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, to probe allegations links between Iraq and the terrorist organization al-Qaeda and whether the country was stockpiling a cache of weapons of mass destruction. The Special Plans committee disbanded in March after the start of the war in Iraq.

The committee�s job, according to published reports, was to gather intelligence information on the Iraqi threat that the CIA and FBI could not uncover and present it to the White House to build a case for war in Iraq. The committee relied heavily on information provided by Iraqi defector Ahmad Chalabi, who has provided the White House with reams of intelligence on Saddam Hussein�s weapons programs that has been disputed. Chalabi heads the Iraqi National Congress, a group of Iraqi exiles who have pushed for regime change in Iraq.

The Office of Special Plans, according to the CIA official and the senators, routinely provided Bush, Rumsfeld, Vice President Dick Cheney and National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice with questionable intelligence information on the Iraqi threat, much of which was included in various speeches by Bush and Cheney and some of which was called into question by the CIA.

In the months leading up to the war in Iraq, Rumsfeld became increasingly frustrated that the CIA could not find any evidence of Iraq�s chemical, biological and nuclear weapons program, evidence that would have helped the White House build a solid case for war in Iraq.

In an article in the New York Times last October, the paper reported that Rumsfeld had ordered the Office of Special Plans to �to search for information on Iraq�s hostile intentions or links to terrorists� that might have been overlooked by the CIA.

The CIA official and the senators said that�s when Wolfowitz and his committee instructed the White House to have Bush use the now disputed line about Iraq�s attempts to purchase 500 tons of uranium from Niger in a speech the President was set to give in Cincinnati. But Tenet quickly intervened and informed Stephen Hadley, an aide to National Security Adviser Rice, that the information was unreliable.

I just read William's (or Marvin The Martian's) comments in the continuing impeachment trial of Bill Clinton thread.

I feel I have to defend including this topic now (well not really but just in case):

The misuse of the machinery of government by the Bush administration, including as illustrated by the Wolfowitz Committee, is evidence of the worst conspiracy ever affecting the United States.

ATS could be a vehicle for bringing it to the surface, or it could be a vehicle for the Republican-Democrat mudslinging that William is rightly concerned about.

I intend to focus on the conspiratorial elements, and media manipulation, as tools used to keep information from people. The Bush administration also has a number of 'unpaid workers' here doing exactly the same thing - suppressing information. (Not referring to ATS owners or staff, of course).

Bush: They won't go away. They're onto us. Why can't we just plant those goddamn WMD's?

Cheney: Remember, they can trace them back to us.

Rumsfeld: Don't worry. I've employed an army of Iraqis to come up with seven and a half miles of paper evidence that Hussein had some real nasty WMD's.

Bad joke?
Here's the punchline...


Wednesday July 16, 2003; 4:41 p.m. EDT
Pentagon Bombshell: U.S. Uncovers WMD Document 'Mother Lode'

The Pentagon's chief weapons inspector David Kay has uncovered what is being described as a "mother lode" of documents in Iraq detailing Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction program.

"I've already seen enough to convince me," said Kay, a former U.N. weapons inspector, in an interview aired Tuesday with "NBC Nightly News" anchorman Tom Brokaw.

"We're finding progress reports. [Iraqi scientists] also got financial rewards from Saddam Hussein by breakthroughs, indicating breakthroughs. They actually took--went to Saddam and said 'We have made this progress.'" the top WMD prober explained. "There are records, there are audiotapes of those interviews which give us that."

"According to Kay, the Iraqis seem to keep documents on even the most damning evidence," said Brokaw.

In assessing the scope of Kay's find, the NBC newsman proclaimed, "This is a mother lode, an estimated seven and a half miles of documents, many of them collected by U.S. military from [Iraq's] official buildings, but many others handed over by Iraqi civilians."

Iraq's WMD files are currently undergoing a painstaking analysis, said Brokaw, who explained, "Many of them [are] handwritten, have to be scanned onto a computer in this small, highly secure facility."

Working with Arabic translators, U.S. weapons experts look for certain clues, including personnel records, foreign purchases and lab results.

The Pentagon's chief weapons prober said he didn't want to go public with details of his find until the case is an indisputable lock. "I know if we can't explain the WMD program of Iraq we lose credibility with regard to other states like Iran, Syria and North Korea," he told NBC.

How long will it take before President Bush is able to reveal what could be smoking gun justification of his decision to make war on Iraq?

"I think we will have a substantial body of evidence before six months," Kay told NBC.


There, for all to see, is evidence that Bush and Kay think the American public are idiots.

..like the polls suggest, your audience is dwindling...59% still is a winner. Keep on diggin my bro'.

-6 =donkey love

[Edited on 17-7-2003 by Tyriffic]

Big T

We are reading different polls.

BTW, if I'd ever got 59% in any academic exam, or any other test of my mettle, I would have been ashamed.