Anyone else care to contact the media about the Office of Special Plans?

[redqueen]

I'm outraged everyone is silent about this... heck even Jon Stewart! IMO this needs to be covered while the Senate Intelligence Committee is still in the news for their whitewash... er, um, report.

If anyone else is, and wants to start rubbing noses in it... you can find a contact list here:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=1800534

And of course this link is also handy for shaming them about the story of children being held prisoner in Iraq, failure to cover the story about Jeb trying to rig the election for his brother again, or any other of the myriad outrages the press refuses to adequately cover.

[ElsewheresDaughter]

1. gladly done

[redqueen]

2. Kick!

:kick:

[wicket]

3. kick!

:kick:

[Poiuyt]

4. The OSP and Karen Kwiatkowski

She would be able to tell the press what has been going on.

[redqueen]

15. Quoting her in a letter would be a good idea!

:kick:

[Beam Me Up]

5. So many issues, so many letters to write . . .

I for one would find it realy HELPFUL if you -- and anyone suggesting such an action -- would write a short suggested letter which I can then put into my own words. That takes a quarter of the time of writing it from scratch. I know what the OSP is and some of what it has done but it hasn't been THE focus of my interest and outrage, as have other issues.

Thanks in advance.

BMU

[redqueen]

6. My pleasure!

Of course I wouldn't just cut & paste... they hate form letters. :)


Dear XXXX:

I am writing to you today to ask about why there has been no mention of the role of the Office of Special Plans while investigating the intelligence failures that led up to the invasion of Iraq. It has been reported in the media that this office (set up by Donald Rumsfeld, and headed by Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith, and others) was the primary source of much of the now discredited information.

It was this office which informed the National Security Council that Iraq's attempt to purchase the aluminum tubes was part of a secret nuclear weapons program. It was this office which briefed George Tenet about Iraq intelligence. Several current and former intelligence officials have told the New York Times that they felt pressure to alter their reports in order to better support the administration's views, "particularly the theories Feith's group developed."

It has also been reported that the Office of Special Plans regularly rewrote the intelligence estimates from the CIA on Iraq's weapons programs, removing important qualifiers such as, "likely", "probably", and "may", allegedly as a way of making the threats seem more imminent than they actually were.

In October of 2002, the New York Times reported that Donald Rumsfeld had set up this intelligence operation “to search for information on Iraq’s hostile intentions or links to terrorists” that might have been overlooked by the C.I.A.

It was reported in Capitol Hill Blue that, "Powell come away from briefings by the Pentagon's office of special plans, set up by Mr Wolfowitz, "apprehensive" about what he called, at best, circumstantial evidence tilted in favor of assessments drawn from the office itself, rather than actual raw intelligence."

Capitol Hill Blue also reported the following:

"The former head of worldwide intelligence gathering for the US Defense Intelligence Agency, Patrick Lang, said the organization had been "exploited and abused and bypassed" in the process of making the case for war in Iraq based on the presence of weapons of mass destruction."

I'm sure your staff is quite capable of researching all this and more. There is no shortage of information about the apparent manipulation of intelligence data that people in this office indulged in.

The failure to discuss the role this office played in deceiving both Congress and the American people does a grave disservice to our country while her people are preparing to cast their ballots in November.

Thank you sincerely for your time and attention. I implore you to convey this information to the American people. Anything less is an abdication of your responsibility to keep the public adequately informed.

Regards,

xxxxx

[redqueen]

7. kick

:kick:

[LunaC]

10. Feel free

to use my post #8 if you like.

[LunaC]

8. Just submitted a LTTE today!

RE: "Creating a war on false information" - July 12, 2004 - James O. Goldsborough

At the press conference announcing the release of the Pre-War Intelligence
Assessments, Sen. Jay Rockefeller revealed that the ideologues in the Bush
Administration had "a predetermination" going back to 1998 that they were going to
go to war with Iraq. (1)(2)

When Phase Two of the report is completed the public will finally learn about the
"Office of Special Plans" (OSP). The OSP was a secret group of analysts and policy
advisors with no status in the intelligence community. Nevertheless they reported
directly to the White House and National Security office with cherry-picked
intelligence from questionable sources to support the case for invading Iraq. The
OSP circumvented formal, well-established oversight procedures, ignored
intelligence that didn't further their agenda, expanded the intelligence on weapons
beyond what was justified and over-emphasized the national security risk. They
became more influential than the C.I.A. or the Defense Intelligence Agency who
didn't even know the ultra-secret OSP existed for at least a year.

Because they were based in the Pentagon, it was assumed that the OSP was an
intelligence-gathering agency that was second-guessing the C.I.A. but in actuality
it was the White House Military Marketing Machine charged with the task of writing
the "Get Saddam" sales pitch for the public. Shading and bending reality to suit
their own purpose, it wasn't important for the OSP's stories about Saddam to be
factual, only that the average American believed them to be - in true Hollywood
fashion. (3)

There can be no doubt that the Bush Administration intentionally deceived and
manipulated the public to further their own agenda. History will remember them as
the most corrupt and evil group ever to occupy the White House.

1 - http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A38650-2004Jul9?language=printer
2 - http://www.newamericancentury.org/iraqclintonletter.htm
3 - http://www.newyorker.com/printable/?fact/030512fa_fact

[redqueen]

11. Yay you!

:yourock:

And thanks for sharing your letter, too!

[LunaC]

13. When Rockefeller alluded to the PNAC

my letter was already written. All I needed was Goldsborough's commentary as my opening and I was ON it! heh-heh

Oh yeah.....kick!

[redqueen]

14. I'm using *anything* written about the Intelligence report

as a reason to blast them for failing to discuss this. :)

[frank frankly]

9. I have got to write some letters tonight

I must!!!

Good idea, redqueen!

:hi:

[redqueen]

12. Thank you!

:hi: