Ray McGovern: "Case Closed" on WH fabrication

[G_j]

Case Closed
by Ray McGovern
     The threads of the White House's fabricated case for war have finally come undone.
http://tompaine.com/feature2.cfm/ID/9991

  Ray McGovern, a 27-year career analyst with the CIA, is co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity and co-director of the Servant Leadership School, an outreach ministry in the inner city of Washington, DC.
--
Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive. But when we've practiced for a while, we markedly improve our style.

A time-honored aphorism. And the second-sentence Karl-Rove-corollary has been applied with consummate skill—until now. The web is unraveling.

...more..

[nostamj]

1. wow! utterly damning!

Tenet picked his most trusted—and malleable—aide, Robert Walpole, to chair an NIE that left honest intelligence analysts holding their noses. That NIE became the centerpiece of an incredibly cynical campaign playing on the trauma of 9/11 to deceive our elected representatives into forfeiting to the president their constitutional prerogative to declare war.

One is left wondering: How did they think they could get away with it?

The answer is embarrassingly simple. Don’t you remember? It was to be a cakewalk. The vice president and others assured us that U.S. troops would be welcomed as liberators. They would be met with cut flowers, not roadside bombs. The "evil dictator" would be gone. And then who would care if it were eventually discovered that the case for war was manufactured out of whole cloth?

[G_j]

4. "embarrassingly simple "

sort of losing track of the forest for the trees.

[radfringe]

2. but will the rest of the lapdogs

go after this story or be content to munch on a bisquit and take dictation?

[Malva Zebrina]

3. nice essay

I too was puzzled by Powell's performance before the UN. Unlike TP, though I would not describe it as "masterful" At the time I thought it actually quite a badly acted first act. The removal of the replica of Picasso's Guernica was one of those outside touches that foreshadowed the invasion and it's results. I watched Tenet at Georgetown and after it was over I wondered exactly what it was he actually said--was he propping George and his lies or was he feebly trying to defend his organisation, and his job, I wondered. I could not find too much in depth analysis on the net about it also.:shrug:

As far as the web unraveling, it is hard to predict. In my area there seems to be a great groundswell of "ABB" with people coming out of their homes to see to it that they support throwing the bum out.

But, I know there are people out there who will defend "their president" to their last dying day, without giving a thought to the dangers of such nationalistic blind loyalty. Either that or they are so embarrassed by this "compassionate conservative" that they do not want to admit they actually hated Clinton so much they voted in a dumb, inarticulate boondoggling sot who thinks the presidency is all about his next part in his grade B movie.

[G_j]

5. perhaps we could

leave anonymous messages around to the effect of "if you are too afraid to speak up, vote against Bush in secret, your buddies don't really have to know"

[TacticalPeek]

6. "nowhere to turn for an objective assessment of the challenges ahead"

"Now, bogged down in the sands of Iraq with over 500 troops already killed, the White House is without a clue as to what to
do next.

Perhaps worst of all, since the president has condoned big-time politicization of the intelligence community, he now has
nowhere to turn for an objective assessment of the challenges ahead."


'Objective assessment? We don't need no steenkin objective assessment? We're safe in the White House. HA HA HA!'

[reprehensor]

7. Bump! McGovern rocks. n/t/