Today's 'Blame the CIA' report is a GOOD thing

[troublemaker]

There's a lot of consternation about the Republicans trying to pin all pre-war errors on the CIA in today's Senate Intel Committee report. The prevailing sentiment is that Bush is getting away with something.

In actuality the release of this report is a disaster for the WH.

In a Republican controlled Senate there was zero chance of a pre-election demolition of Bush, so that was not an option. Given that, Democrats on the committee could have probably gotten a lame broad investigation that would conclude the usual political "plenty of blame to go around" horse-shit. Or they could get a more vigorous investigation with findings about the WH delayed until after the election.

What committee Democrats seem to have realized (and the WH not realized) is that the most important political consideration wasn't who to blame, but certifying the very existence of the problem. Look at what was accomplished today. A majority Republican committee just admitted there the Iraq War was a massive and unambiguous fuck-up. The question has now been resolved and the answer placed into the realm of "TV facts;" all those things you cannot sensibly go on TV to dispute.

Remember when David Kay told Congress there were no WMD in Iraq? Everybody already knew there were no Iraqi WMD, but it was a kind of knowledge that develops day by day, building pressure that's eventually relived through the journalistic version of a paradigm shift. David Kay was the catalyst, confirming the obvious while on television in a formal setting and as the President's own weapons inspector. The statement "there are no WMD" could now be sourced to a named credible non-partisan. At that moment Iraqi WMD became a fringe concept. (It's like when someone's on trial that everyone knows is guilty, but only when he's convicted does the "alleged" disappear from in front of his name.) After Kay's statement everything changed in about a day. There would be no more TV debates (except on Fox, of course) about whether there were weapons to be found, only about what happened to them.

In light of the Kay statement on WMD, here is what happened today. Republican Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee Pat Roberts went on TV and said the United States of America started a war based on false premises. Pretty much everybody had already figured that out but it wasn't a flat certified TV FACT. Now it is. There will be no more TV debates about whether the Iraq war was a fuck-up, only debates about who fucked it up.

The fact Senate Intel foisted all the blame on the CIA is neither here nor there. In my experience most voters don't really care who committees blame for things. I also doubt they think of the President and the CIA as distinct entities.

It is politically impossible to separate Bush from the Iraq War. After establishing that blame is warranted there's no political question as to who gets the blame.

[donhakman]

1. its a good thing

reminds me of martha stewart

[BeatleBoot]

2. You mean

That the majority will think that the buck stops with the president.

I sure hope so. Because it does.

And he's doing his best to try to run away from responsibility.

Take this issue and couple it with the "my military records were inadvertently destroyed" story today about the Bush/AWOL fiasco, and one can clearly see that Bush is trying to shield blame from himself before November.

Its NOT how true leaders behave.

Its a politically calculated, cowards way out.

[ParisFrance]

3. Scapegoat CIA

I agree this is a good thing. I have questions concerning why would not only the CIA report bad intelligence , but England and Russia too. Unless you have midly retarded incompetent intelligence agencies that are not able to use reason then how could each of these fail so badly. Why would George Bush coerce Richard Clarke to find something to go to war with , if the CIA had all this intelligence about WMDS.

[muriel_volestrangler]

8. British intelligence was subject to the same political pressures

as the CIA was. The evidence to the Hutton report showed this, and the leaks from the Butler report (due out next week) confirm this.

What reports did Russian intelligence issue on Iraqi WMDs? How sure was their language? Did they change, as the American and British estimates did, between March 2002 and September 2002?

[muriel_volestrangler]

13. In fact, Russia denied there were any WMD

http://www.guardian.co.uk/russia/article/0,2763,810611,00.html

October 12, 2002

Vladimir Putin yesterday rejected Anglo-American claims that Saddam Hussein already possesses weapons of mass destruction and told Tony Blair that the best way to resolve the conflict of evidence is not war, but the return of UN inspectors to Iraq.

With a tense Mr Blair alongside him at his dacha near Moscow, the Russian president took the unusual step of citing this week's sceptical CIA report on the Iraqi military threat to assert: "Fears are one thing, hard facts are another".
...
But his scepticism about the US-led drive for military action was palpable. After confirming his foreign ministry's assessment that No 10's Iraqi dossier "could be seen as a propagandistic step" to sway public opinion, he made it plain.

"Russia does not have in its possession any trustworthy data that supports the existence of nuclear weapons or any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and we have not received any such information from our partners as yet. This fact has also been supported by the information sent by the CIA to the US Congress."

Looks like Putin called this one right. Don't let anyone tell you that Russia thought Iraq had WMD.

And the French had no evidence either:

AMANPOUR: Do you believe that Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction; for instance, chemical or biological weapons?

CHIRAC: Well, I don't know. I have no evidence to support that. But what we can say today, listening to what ElBaradei is saying and his expert team, it seems that there are no nuclear weapons or no nuclear programs that would lead to the construction of nuclear weapons. That is something that the inspectors seem to be sure of.

As for weapons of mass destruction, bacteriological, biological, chemical, we don't know. And that is precisely what the inspectors' mandate is all about. They have to go with their work to find these weapon if there are any and then destroy them. And the inspectors are telling us that they can do that work. So when at one point or another they tell us that they can't or can't anymore go on doing so, then we will have to consider other options, including war. But it just isn't the case today.

http://edition.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/europe/03/16/sprj.irq.amanpour.chirac/

[Media_Lies_Daily]

4. Very nice analysis of today's events with a few exceptions/additions....

When it becomes completely clear who was responsible for exposing CIA operative Valerie Plame and her WMD-tracking global network, people should begin to question WHY the CIA, and the CIA alone, is getting blamed for the "poor intelligence" in Iraq. They may also start to question WHY the White House chose to compromise Plame's global network when tracking WMD materials is of vital national security importance. If we do suffer another terrorist attack, certain individuals in the White House should come under intense scrutiny because of the fact that they completely neutralized one of our most important WMD surveillance networks.

Remember also that Tenet made the formal request to the DoJ on behalf of the CIA to investigate the White House for the leaks that eliminated Plame's network and destroyed her CIA career. Tenet would NEVER have made that request unless he ALREADY knew who was involved in the leaks.

People should also begin asking questions about WHY George Tenet was forced out of his position at the CIA. Tenet repeatedly told Bush and Powell to leave any mention of Iraqi WMDs out of their State of the Union address and UN speech, respectively. The CIA had also been on record for quite some time stating that Iraq did not have ANY WMDs. The CIA was proven correct, but now they're being blamed for the fiasco in Iraq?? The group that the Commission should have gone after was the Pentagon-based OSP who relied on extremely faulty intelligence from Iraqi sources willing to do anything to get us into Iraq.

One final point. Bob Woodward stated in his book that his source, or sources, told him that during a meeting in Crawford, TX, Tenet had made a bold statement about Iraq having WMDs and that the information he had was a "slam dunk". I find it interesting that the only people that could have been the source of that comment were also up to their eyeballs in pushing the phony WMD stories. How better to protect themselves than to plant a false story, with or without Bob Woodward's help, to pin it on the only individual that had not supported the party line. Woodward has done this type of thing in the past when he reported that CIA Director Casey had told him certain things from his hospital bed. Those things were later denied by Casey's family who claimed Casey was too far gone to talk to anyone.

[Hoping4Change]

9. I've always been suspicious of the "slam dunk" quote.

How conveniently unambiguous. How is it that the CIA took months to confirm who attacked the Cole and then when they presented Bush with their conclusion it had none of that bravado?

[wishlist]

5. Also proves that Cheney is a pathological liar with zero credibility

now that his assertions about the Iraq/Al Queda links have been officially debunked by this report as well as the 911 commission report. If Cheney is discredited even more over Halliburton and treasongate, the pressure will weigh down on Bush to dump him.

Surely the general public is beginning to wonder where the buck stops with this administration when no one is ever held accountable for the screwups. Whether Bush dumps him or not, Bush's reliance on Cheney (and Tenet too who was praised highly by Bush) raises doubts about Bush's judgment and ability to run the country.

[erpowers]

6. Not That Good

I do not think this is such a good thing. It makes Bush look like the nice dupe he and his people have tried to make him out to be. I think many people will be able to forgive Bush for being a complete idiot since they think he is sincere. Many people will blame Clinton and the CIA and say this proves Bush is a good president in that he made a decision based on the evidence that he was given. These people will continue to say that it is not Bush's fault that he was lied to. So I do not think this is a good thing because it takes blame away from Bush. In addition, even though Pat Roberts admitted that the country was lied to, he also said that the report cleared Bush of any wrong doing. He even went as far as to say there should not be any more debate as to whether Bush lied to the country.

[sallyseven]

7. Pat Roberts is a rw nut case

Rockefeller said there would be more information after the election. The town idiot has to know that they won't do anything to upset the election. That is why we only have 1/2 the report. We should all insist that the other half be brought out before the election. they have no right to keep it from us. We should write our congresspeople and the news papers. Demand the full story.

[bvar22]

10. Powell and Rice

...are on record and video tape before 911 stating that Saddam was effectively contained, that he has been unable to develop WMD, and posed NO THREAT to the USA or his neighbors (See MM's F911.) This info MUST HAVE COME from a CIA assessment.

Where is this assessment?

What happened after 911 to immediately change Rice's and Powell's position on Iraq?

The clip of Rice's and Powell's pre911 NO THREAT ASSESSMENT needs to be hammered into the public awareness!

[salin]

11. Add to that... within the report is a DARE to the media and opposition

In lbn there is a thread about a story - on the change in language between the classified NIE - done by the CIA - with language that carefully qualified the claims (and made them very much less "immenent" sounding) and the language in the NIE that was released - which was much more ominous.

the following post, clips from the article - what appears to be interesting in inclusion in the article AND report... the question of how the language changed which could not be answered by the CIA (implication... THEY DIDN'T CHANGE IT).

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=102&topic_id=676963&mesg_id=677204&page=

Why is this important?

We know that Roberts worked to frame the committee work to ONLY look at the CIA and avoid questions of administration use of that intelligence.

We also know that Roberts was trying, as much as possible, to protect the administration - while at the same time responding to growing public concern that there was a REAL problem per the inadequacy of what we(public) were told about said intelligence that was used to sell us on going to war.

So here - within the information - is a DARE to dig into the central question ... how the NIE report that was a more accurate description of the intelligence (noting where things were disputed, where there were questions, why the claims were iffy...) morphed into something definitive - that was then used by the administration to sell the war.

Very big and signficant question. Opens the door that appears to lead to the White House.

Pretty significant that this info is included - when he who directed/controlled the committee worked so hard to (at least on the surface?) protect the administration.

Will the media (or opposition) pick up on the dare - and make it an issue - pushing it hard enough that the question itself penetrates the public psyche?

[JDPriestly]

12. Did Bush control Tenet and the CIA by intimidation?

Ronald Suskind's book, The Price of Loyalty describes two methods through which Bush controlled the opinions of his aides and the discourse within his administration. They are (1) staging or choreographing meetings even on the National Security Council so that each speaker knew in advance what he was to say and how long he had to say it, and (2) firing those who dared to express opinions that deviated from the Bush line (remember the old joke about how the British Navy made one seaman walk the plank just to keep the rest in line). Is there any evidence that Bush also controlled the spokespeople in the CIA through these means?

[IkeWarnedUs]

14. We must demand the second part of the report NOW

In the press conferences Friday Senators Rockefeller and Wyden practically begged people to demand it - and they (plus Feinstein) said it is very doable.

Here's my thread about what they said:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x1970315

We can do this. We have to get all over Congress to stay in DC until their job is done. There is a precident for this. They have worked through the August recess before.

Call Congress toll free - 800-839-5276