PROOF BUSH DECEIVED AMERICA: renewed attention to the Downing Street memos

[kpete]

Proof Bush Deceived America
Ray McGovern
January 13, 2006


The highly revealing Downing Street memo contained the minutes of Dearlove's briefing of Blair and his top advisers upon his return from Washington on July 23. But what the memo left unanswered was the question of who gave Dearlove the confidence to say this to his prime minister:

"Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and the facts were being fixed around the policy."

When the Sunday Times published the minutes of that key briefing on May 1, 2005, it seemed a safe bet that Dearlove’s source was Tenet, and I said so.

Now we have the confirmation. Risen writes that George Tenet was reluctant to receive Dearlove, but acquiesced when the British made clear that Blair considered the back-channel meeting urgent. Tenet then rose to the occasion—with a vengeance. Risen, quoting a former senior CIA official who helped host the British for a session that lasted most of Saturday, July 20, 2002, reports that Tenet and Dearlove had a 90-minute one-on-one conversation, during which Tenet was “very candid.”


Risen adds that by the time of this “intelligence summit,” senior CIA officials had concluded that “the quality of the intelligence on weapons of mass destruction didn’t really matter,” since war was inevitable. That perverse attitude certainly prevailed two months later, when the fabricated National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq and WMD was produced by Tenet’s National Intelligence Council in a successful attempt to deceive Congress into voting for war.

http://www.tompaine.com/articles/20060113/proof_bush_deceived_america.php

[kpete]

1. more

A former CIA official told Risen that after the conversation with Tenet, Richard Dearlove could certainly “figure out what was going on; plus, the MI6 station chief in Washington was in CIA headquarters all the time, with just about complete access to everything.” In any case, we now know that Blair got what he wanted out of the visit—the inside scoop from someone enjoying the complete trust of, and daily access to, President Bush.

The president now says that he does not want his political opposition to dwell on how he lied to Congress and the American people in order to invade a country and kill tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians and more than 2,200 U. S. troops—not to mention the many thousands maimed for life. Perhaps he knows that Risen's book could do as much damage to his administration by calling renewed attention to the Downing Street memos as is likely to be done by the revelations of the secret NSA wiretapping.
http://www.tompaine.com/articles/20060113/proof_bush_de...

[kpete]

2. Is anyone out there - I would love some feed back on this

seems pretty important to me!!!

[The Backlash Cometh]

4. One wonders what kind of investigation board will snare Tenet in and

bring him back into the spotlight.

He does seem like he still has information to divulge, but so did Louis Freeh and they let him slip away without really raking him over the coals for the lousy job he did.

[EVDebs]

15. They're not after OBL...they're more interested in DU Posters. Scary.

NSA spying domestically ties into the 'blanket' warrantless vacuuumcleaner methodology and offshored Global Information Group Ltd.'s operations in the Bahamas. This is were TIA ended up, using database material supplied by ChoicePoint (can you say insecure and unreliable ?). The TIA being offshored, privatized and outsourced is now supposedly plausibly deniable...or at least that may be the upcoming rationale. In any event the dissenters to the current administration's policies are now vulnerable to spying, and the Operations GardenPlot and Cable Splicer detention camps that were proposed, possibly with Samuel Alito's 'sign off' during his tenure in the Reagan era DOJ Office of Legal Counsel to the WH.

Bush's Congress and Judiciary make this nightmare a distinct possibility.

The Global Information Group project utilizes ChoicePoint database information, notoriously errorprone and unsecure, to provide the 'intelligence' agencies data about you that can and will be used against you (without your knowledge or ability to correct said information) without recourse to a court of law.

Also see the book Spychips

see www.spychips.com and article in Motherjones

and article Total Surveillance
www.motherjones.com/interview/2005/12/albrecht.html

which shows us that RFIDs can be used to track just about anything. The budding background check preemployment requirement is now using error-filled database info to prevent people from getting work...

Who is checking the background checkers?
www.csmonitor.com/2005/1128/p13s02-wmgn.html

Now, I ask you, if they can track a pair of underware you bought from Wal-Mart, why oh why can't they track the kidney dialysis equipment OBL needs somewheres up in the Hindu Kush ? Just asking.

[joeunderdog]

10. self delete

[Pryderi]

3. *KICKED AND NOMINATED*

[robbedvoter]

5. "F* Saddam, he's going Down" W was heard yelling in 2001

as reported in a Time article. We all knew of course - Wes Clark told us of the phone cal;ls from the WH asking him to connect 911 to Iraq, Richard Clarke told us W asked him the same. Nothing new here - but nice to see corroboration.
We also know Cheney started his own little CIA (OSP) and kept going to CIA to try to motivate people there to find the "right" results. We know that Tenet refused to take the blame for the "16 words" - as he warned W about going with that particular lie...

[leftchick]

6. how come I wasn't deceived?

I know, it was because I was reading foreign news sources which debunked every one of their WMD LIES! The congress apparently isn't aware of those sources.

[joeunderdog]

11. Ray McGovern wasn'd deceived either. From BEFORE we invaded:

Today we write with an increased sense of urgency and responsibility. Responsibility, because you appear to be genuinely puzzled at the widespread opposition to your policy on Iraq and because we have become convinced that those of your advisers who do understand what is happening are reluctant to be up front with you about it. As veterans of the CIA and other intelligence agencies, the posture we find ourselves in is as familiar as it is challenging. We feel a continuing responsibility to "tell it like it is"- or at least as we see it-without fear or favor. Better to hear it from extended family than not at all; we hope you will take what follows in that vein.

We cannot escape the conclusion that you have been badly misinformed. It was reported yesterday that your generals in the Persian Gulf area have become increasingly concerned over sandstorms. To us this is a metaphor for the shifting sand-type "intelligence" upon which your policy has been built.

Worse still, it has become increasingly clear that the sharp drop in US credibility abroad is largely a function of the rather transparent abuse of intelligence reporting and the dubious conclusions drawn from that reporting- the ones that underpin your decisions on Iraq.

more: http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0319-08.htm

[TheGunslinger]

7. "quality of...intelligence on weapons of mass destruction didn’t...matter"

So, why not spread $40 million to a criminal and his toadies just to put up a good show.


That, my dear friends, is where the treason lies.

[MissWaverly]

8. Play it again Sam!

sing it loud, he's attempting Invasion II with Iran, they are pulling the same crap that they did back in 02 and 03 before we invaded Iraq. The only thing that will stop him is the truth. Rip the flag away from him and he stands in the spotlight as a warlord who profits on the suffering of others.

[EVDebs]

16. Truth and a military that is as fedup as USMC Gen Smedley D. Butler

who discovered that 'war is a racket' and that pretexts for war must be seen for what they may really be.

He also was a victim of America's version of Tienanmen Square, the notorious dispersal of the Bonus Army March of 1932 done at the hands of Hoover and the US military at the time, Ike, Patton, and MacArthur especially. Shameful then and shameful now.

[Sydnie]

9. Kicking to the moon! n/t

[opihimoimoi]

12. Tenent will soon leave the Earth for parts unknown...

[Mossadeq]

13. how many posts do I need till I can recommend?

[EVDebs]

14. The origins of "Slam Dunk ! " are not found on the basketball court