Yet another flat-out lie from the Bush administration: "Condoleezza Rice and other officials asserted this week that the president’s statement was justified.... They said the CIA never told the White House that the [Niger Uranium] claim was suspicious."
Yet we also have: "U.S. officials told NBC News' Andrea Mitchell that Tenet himself advised Rice’s top deputy, Steven Hadley, to remove a reference to the uranium report from a speech Bush delivered Oct. 7 in Cincinnati..."
When the head of the CIA talks to the Deputy Assistant to the President for National Security, that is the CIA talking to the White House.
So are we supposed to believe that Condi Rice doesn't talk to her own deputy? Are we supposed to believe that George W. Bush doesn't care about the state of Iraq's nuclear weapons program?
Posted by DeLong at July 11, 2003 08:18 PM | TrackBackTenet takes blame for uranium claim: ...THE WHITE HOUSE has mounted a spirited defense of Bush’s accusation that Baghdad sought uranium from an African later identified as Niger, even though it subsequently acknowledged this week that making the claim was a mistake.
National security adviser Condoleezza Rice and other officials asserted this week that the president’s statement was justified at the time because the CIA cleared the address in its entirety, including the uranium claim. They said the CIA never told the White House that the claim was suspicious.
But U.S. officials told NBC News’ Andrea Mitchell that Tenet himself advised Rice’s top deputy, Steven Hadley, to remove a reference to the uranium report from a speech Bush delivered Oct. 7 in Cincinnati, establishing that the nation’s top intelligence officials suspected that the allegation was false more than three months before they approved Bush’s repeating it in his nationally televised address on Jan. 28.
The Washington Post reported Friday that the CIA also told British officials about its doubts and passed word along to several U.S. agencies before the State of the Union address...
You can sign an online petition demanding the resignation of anyone in the Administration involved in misleading the public on this issue at Howard Dean's website:
www.deanforamerica.com
It appears that Tenet has covered his ass in a fairly adept manner here. A close reading of the CIA statement (!), including this passage:
"Some of the language was changed. From what we know now, agency officials in the end concurred that the text in the speech was factually correct that the British government report said that Iraq sought uranium from Africa."
reveals that Tenet has contradicted Condi's assertion that NSC didn't know the British report wasn't true - the logical next question from the press becomes WHO pushed the CIA to accept the statement as "factually" correct based on the fact that the British had in fact SAID that Iraq tried to buy uranium from Niger, even though all involved in vetting Bush's SOTU speech in fact knew it wasn't true?
This is highly technical, but it seems likely this game isn't over yet.
Posted by: Chad on July 12, 2003 04:32 AMOops - here is the Tenet/CIA statement for those who haven't seen it.
Posted by: Chad on July 12, 2003 04:34 AMSo are we supposed to believe that Condi Rice doesn't talk to her own deputy? Are we supposed to believe that George W. Bush doesn't care about the state of Iraq's nuclear weapons program?
Yes — yes, in fact we are.
Posted by: Greg Greene on July 12, 2003 07:19 AMSpeaking of lies, how about the one that there's been no Al Qaeda connection shown with Iraq?:
http://www.nypost.com/news/worldnews/37744.htm
--------quote-------
July 12, 2003 -- WASHINGTON - A federal judge helping to rebuild Iraq's judicial system says he's come up with an intriguing document linking Saddam Hussein to Osama bin Laden.
Federal appellate Judge Gilbert Merritt, who is currently in Iraq, said an Iraqi lawyer brought him documents that included the name of an Iraqi officer in that country's embassy in Pakistan who was described as "responsible for the coordination of activities with the Osama bin Laden group."
"It seems to me to be strong proof that the two were in contact and conspiring to perform terrorist acts," Merritt, a Democrat and longtime family friend of Al Gore, wrote in a dispatch for The Tennesseean newspaper - charges similar to those previously reported by The Weekly Standard.
"Until this time, I have been skeptical about these claims," wrote the Cincinnati-based judge. "Now I have changed my mind."
Merritt, who was sent to Iraq by the Justice Department to help rebuild the country's judiciary, recounted the strange history of how the intriguing document came to light.
He said an Iraqi lawyer recently brought him a Nov. 14, 2002, edition of a newspaper controlled by Saddam's sadistic son Uday that included photos of Saddam, bin Laden, and a "List of Honor" - 600 names of "regime persons," including all 55 of the wanted deck-of-card Iraqis.
The lawyer told Merritt that Uday had published the list to make the men more loyal, but Saddam hit the roof when he saw it and sent his henchmen to confiscate the newspapers, even going door to door to force people to turn them over. The lawyer had kept his copy.
On the list was the name of an Iraqi intelligence officer, Abid Al-Karim Muhamed Aswood, who was based in Pakistan and "responsible for the coordination of activities with the Osama bin Laden group."
-----------endquote----------
Ah, Patrick Sullivan, who goes to Coulter and the New York Post for news.
Let me recommend the Washington Times to you, Patrick, I think you'll find its arguments appealing.
Condi Rice is in way over her head. She is a Russian expert, but that is not even close to the problems facing the US. She didn't listen to the advice about al Qaeda from the Clinton administration and she went along with the factually challenged SOTU. Poor political skills and not enough experience. She would have been a good deputy but is clearly not ready for prime time.
Posted by: bakho on July 12, 2003 07:17 PMPatrick R. Sullivan,
The Judge Merritt claims appeared earlier in both a May issue of "The Weekly Standard" and the June 6, 2003 "Tennessean.com." Both publications add a crucial fact, unmentioned in the "N.Y. Post," about the Iraqi newspaper list of 600 "regime persons" including a person coordinating with OBL.
The list was "prefaced by this puzzling passage":
"This is the list of the henchmen of the regime
Our hands will reach them sooner or later.
Woe unto them."
Obviously, some anti-regime element slipped one through in the November 14, 2002 "Babylon Daily Political Newspaper." Apparently, Judge Merritt does not read Arabic or does not read it closely enough for intelligence work.
I would include a link to the Tennessean.com article if I knew how.
Patrick, foolish? He sidetracked the argument from the qualifications of Condoleeza Rice, flunky extrordinarie.
I heard a radio rant by Rice before the 2000 election concerning the Missile Defense Shield. In her little calm voice she was 10x the nut and 1000x times as dangerous to human existence as Ann Coulter. She emphasized that this was a "defense" shield, so how could anyone worry that it would be used as - I don't think she even said "weapon", just that it could only be used for defense, stability, protection, so how could that be a danger? She was just so puzzled. She explained that everyone already knew that we just had to have a missile defense, and the Bush administration was just the party to take care of the little pesky details of cost and treaties.
Have these fools done anything about Iraq or missils defense that has not made us less safe instead of safer? They're taking us to hell.
Here's the Tennessean.com article:
http://tennessean.com/nation-world/archives/03/06/34908297.shtml?Element_ID=34908297
Here's the Tennessean.com article:
http://tennessean.com/nation-world/archives/03/06/34908297.shtml?Element_ID=34908297
Here's the Tennessean.com article:
http://tennessean.com/nation-world/archives/03/06/34908297.shtml?Element_ID=34908297
Here's the Tennessean.com article:
http://tennessean.com/nation-world/archives/03/06/34908297.shtml?Element_ID=34908297