Semi-Daily Journal

I don't see how "They allowed us to lie" is an escape.

When it turns out to be "We tried a whole bunch of different lies out on them, and eventually we ground them down and got them to accept one," it seems to me Condi is revelling in self-incrimination.

There is a special sadness that both Prime Minister Blair and President Bush presented a case for war that was based on self-defense when Iraq appears to have fully contained and no threat to either country. Democratic governments should never never distort the reasons for going to war, for there is no more serious issue for honest debate in a democracy.

Prime Minister Blair should not be excused in the least. The Prime Minister cited "intelligence" that was copied from a California doctoral thesis posted on the internet as a reason for war. This is of course comical, but the result is British and American soldiers dying in Iraq.

Though I hear that Tony Blair is the the most respected of world leaders, I can not begin to understand why.

Interestingly much of the press coverage in Britain and America will not even acknowledge that there have been 87 soldiers killed in Iraq since May 2. The number cited by the BBC yesterday was "just more than 30 American deaths," but there were 77 American deaths. This is a sad comment on the ability of journalists to reaserch a topic clearly.

Where is James Bond when we really need him?

Not to worry. I enjoy being a colonialist, and at $3.9 billion a month vacationing in Iraq seems a bargain.

The Bush administration should be so outraged at Tenet letting them and the country down as to demand his resignation Monday morning (right?). But they won't, they free him and think of all the times he can recount how different versions of this game (how about we lie, no, lie just a little, fine) have played out recently.

How does Tenet keep his job? In a world where he's actually at fault (which is not the world we live in).

He'll keep his job because he's a hell of a lot less likely to talk if he's still employed.

The White House made a critical mistake in how it attempted to extinquish this story. By forcing an apology from Tenet, it raises the question even for an incurious media about who should be admitting to an even greater responsibility for the inclusion of the "uranium from Africa" line in the State of the Union. In attempting to shift the blame to the CIA, it seems likely that Condi Rice will now be in the hot seat.

The other error in the Administration's response is the insistence that the uranium from Niger story was only a minor part of the Administration's case for concluding that Iraq had an ongoing nuclear program. Aside from the fact that it is now clear that Iraq did not have an ongoing nuclear program, it also calls attention to the only other specific piece of intelligence information presented to the public to support this allegation: the now also discredited allegation that Iraq was importing aluminum tubes for centrifuges.

I am reading Seymour Hersh's "The Price of Power" about the Nixon-Kissinger intrigues. Rife with lying to the public.

Deja vu.

Where is the public outrage?

"Though I hear that Tony Blair is the the most respected of world leaders, I can not begin to understand why."

Do read recent commentary in Britain on Tony Blair from both wings of the political spectrum at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/3059903.stm and http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,482-742603,00.html

I've quoted from the first in the previous thread here. The closing lines of the latter read: "What is it about Mr Blair’s court that addles brains, repels talent and grinds people down? I think I know. It is the howling void at its centre."

Well, now that the matter is closed there's no point in continuing this discussion.

"Bush considers the matter closed, said White House spokesman Ari Fleischer. "The president has moved on," he said."

Well, now that the matter is closed there's no point in continuing this discussion.

"Bush considers the matter closed, said White House spokesman Ari Fleischer. "The president has moved on," he said."

Well, the matter is closed. The war was waged, the dead are dead, the money is spent, and we have ourselves a colony.

Two points - even if they didn't know this info was false in January, when the President gave the speech, they DID know when they went to war, and never corrected the public's understanding. By not retracting this they misled the public as surely as if they knew when he gave the speech.

Second - Tenet is saying that the CIA allowed the White House to bully them into letting a bogus report go out, and now the CIA is in a lot of trouble. Translation - if the White House asks you to doctor a global warming report, economic forecast, child abuse study, etc. and you DO it, they're going to make YOU take the fall when it comes out. So don't go along.

JD - It turns out that the previous thread has been moved for some unaccountable reason. Anyway, this is the quote from Clare Short I posted there from: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/3059903.stm

"Tony Blair's troubles are set to worsen - and he should quit as prime minister before things get 'ever nastier', former cabinet minister Clare Short has said. The ex-international development secretary - repeating a warning she made soon after leaving the government - said Mr Blair faced increased 'muttering' among union leaders and was losing support among voters.

"She said an 'elegant handover' of the Labour leadership was in the party's interests.

"Ms Short said the centralisation of power at Downing Street was behind a fall in the prime minister's popularity.

"And, alongside her criticism of Mr Blair over Iraq, she also questioned the prime minister's handling of the debate over the single currency. . . .

"He had been guilty of 'half-truths, slight deceptions, exaggeration' in the run-up to the war, she said. . .

"Ms Short said: 'There's two good years until the next election. We'll see how this plays out. I think the best solution for Tony would be if he planned to move on before it gets ever nastier.' . .

"Ms Short continued: 'I think it would be in the interests of Tony Blair himself and his legacy of the Labour Party, and actually of the country, if he would think of making a voluntary departure and we could have an elegant handover and Labour could renew itself in power.'"

Bush can be rightfully slammed on this. In the election campaign of 2000 he criticized Clinton for saying "I am responsible" without any followthrough that showed he really accepted responsibility - they were just empty words.

If Tenet is responsible for the error, then Tenet must go. If Tenet does not go, then Bush does not accept that Tenet was responsible.

Update - it looks as though Downing Street may be about to wheel out its sacrificial goat too: http://politics.guardian.co.uk/labour/story/0,9061,996685,00.html

Perhaps a columnist and past editor of The [London] Times made the proper deep diagnosis nearly a month back at: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,1052-715136,00.html

1. Clare Short does not have a lot of credibility these days.
2. Evidently Blair's first dossier (the one he likes) was also lifted from the internet. Breaking news.
3. I'm waiting until the 9/11 report comes out next week to see how this game is being played. The leading Democrat on the panel (Roemer, I think) calls it "explosive." I myself am not yet convinced that "falling on his sword" describes Tenet's action.

Condi Rice is in over her head. The SOTU speech is held close to the chest at the WH and is then released to the cabinet on short notice. Tenet would have had to read the speech immediately (maybe a few hours), or hear from his help that the speech was not OK. The person that SHOULD HAVE KNOWN both that the info was false AND that it was in the speech is Condi Rice. If she did not know it was false, she should get the blame. If she didn't know it was in the speech, then Bush and Karl Rove should get the blame. Mr. Bush knows that this one will blow over if they choose to ignore it.

What will not blow over is the daily trickle of soldiers killed in Iraq. Mr. Bush was foolish to fly onto an aircraft carrier and declare the war over. With deaths after he declared the war over rising to totals equalling those killed during the war, Mr. Bush is looking much less credible. If soldiers are still dying in Sept 2004, you can bet we will not see video of Mr. Bush acting like a pilot and landing on an aircraft carrier to declare the war over.

Bob

Thanks for the thoughtful posts, as always.

JD

Bush is "forgiving" Tenet because it focuses attention on whether he should resign, and because it makes him appear to be in a position to be magnanimous -- by its very nature, an in-control position. If Tenet had resigned, then attention could be re-focused on why Bush wanted bogus information included in the first place.

The latest on whether the UK government is sticking by its claims can be found at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3061665.stm.

They're not demanding Tenet's resignation because this puts the focus on whether Tenet should resign, and makes it appear that Bush can afford to be magnanimous (by its very nature, a position of control and confidence). If they demanded his resignation, the next question would focus on Bush's own culpability.

It remains to be seen whether the ploy will work.

"1. Clare Short does not have a lot of credibility these days."

Nor has Blair either, judging by the fall in his personal poll ratings.

His mounting trouble, by accounts, is that a growing number of Labour MPs are starting to go on the media with awkward and unanswered questions about the whereabouts of all those WMDs, which were supposed to be available within "45 minutes" and which Blair put in his signed forward to the September dossier.

The dossier went on to make the same claim with different phrasing three more times in the space of 50 something pages. The claim was also a prominent feature of his March speech to Parliament which then voted to give the government authority for war. Before that, Blair had been relying on the ancient Royal prerogatives, which hardly fits with his endless rhetoric about "modernisation" and "progressive politics."

With British troops already out in the Gulf and that speech making claims about the real and present threat from the WMDs based on claimed intelligence information, most MPs went along even though, for many, that went against the grain absent UN approval.

The yawning gap between what Blair said to the Chicago Economic Club in April 1999, ". . .If we want a world ruled by law and by international co-operation then we have to support the UN as its central pillar. . ." and war with Iraq without UN sanction has become an acute embarrassment to the mainstream view of the Labour Party and, more arguably, wider public opinion in Britain. Whatever else, there is that gap between Blair's rhetoric and what he does, which seems to have become quite a regular feature across his declared policy agenda.

The case made for the war has unravelled with growing doubts on both sides of the Atlantic about reliability of the intelligence when the threat of the WMDs had to be sufficiently real to justify predictable Iraqi civilian casualties - latest estimates put the numbers of Iraqi civilians killed in the course of the war and its aftermath at more than 6,000: http://www.iraqbodycount.net/bodycount.htm?viewCourse=8123

A view gaining ground is that, at the very least, the case for war was oversold, as a past chairman of the UK's Joint Intelligence Committee put it: http://politics.guardian.co.uk/iraq/story/0,12956,995928,00.html

The overselling carries the serious downstream risk in the war against terrorism that subsequent warnings by Blair and his government of impending threats, based on claimed intelligence, will lack credibility with the public. Polls are already showing that trust in Blair's leadership is dropping so Clare Short is correct on the fundamentals that he is becoming an electoral liability for the Labour Party. A nastier interpretation in currency goes something like this: As part of Blair's political agenda to discredit the Conservative Party he wanted to prove that he and a Labour government were capable of running a war so he looked around for an opportunity and selected the evidence to make a case . . .

They're not demanding Tenet's resignation because doing things this way puts the focus on whether Tenet should resign, and makes it appear that Bush can afford to be magnanimous (by its very nature, a position of control and confidence). If they demanded his resignation, the next question would focus on Bush's own culpability.

It remains to be seen whether the ploy will work.

Sorry about the multiple posts...couldn't get the page to load up there for awhile, and when it did, my posts were not appearing.

On the light side, go to google, enter "weapons of mass destruction" and hit the "I feel lucky button." It should take you to this page:
http://www.coxar.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/
(If you don't get it, don't worry it just means you're a MACOS or UNIX user...)

Jonathan, what I do is hit 'post', then kill the comments window. That usually prevents multiple copies. Usually.

Jonathan, what I do is hit 'post', then kill the comments window. That usually prevents multiple copies. Usually.

As I said, 'usually'. Although in this case, I think that I hit the button twice.

Back to the thread topic - one very good reason for Tenet to take the fall is that Bush holds two things over his head - Iraq and 9/11. If Tenet had been uwilling to publicly confess (to a misdemeanor, in effect), Bush coul d have removed him from office. Tenet could have opened up the paper one morning, and read about the new CIA director. At that point, the administration could seriously dump on Tenet, blaming him for 9/11 and the WMD scandal. Tenet would be in a bad position to fight back, particularly if the Bush administration threatened leakers with harsh treatment (e.g., 'enemy combatant' status).

So Tenet cops a plea in the court of scandal, one that's light enough to be let go with a warning, so to speak.

Tenet is also a holdover from the Clinton administration. Mr. Bush needs someone independent from his insiders who have their own agenda. It seem that Tenet tried to keep the SOTU honest but ultimately lost to the insiders. How can Tenet who had maybe a few hours to review the final SOTU get most of the blame when Rice, Cheney, Powell, Rummy and the other insiders are responsible for writing it??

President Clinton could do stupid things, but lying in his SOTU was not one of them.

Anyone see Rumsfeld correct himself this morning on ABC's This Week.

Apparently he knew the nuclear evidence was false months ago and not days ago as he reported to Congress. Also he was adamant that the Administration never made predictions regarding the occupation. In regards to Wolfowitz predicting fewer soldiers needed in the occupation than the Generals predicted Rumsfeld said, "Rumsfeld never said that". Who's running the show in this Administration? Is anyone accountable? Is he not responsible for message of his underlings?

Tenet, in my opinion, is not falling on his sword for anyone here. What he did in the mea culpa is say "I was not successful enough in keeping them from knowingly lying, although I informed them that the Niger report was bullshit" He is taking the knife and parrying the thrust straight into Condi's back. Look at the leaks this morning that the CIA told Condi's deputy to strike the Niger statement from the Cincinatti speech because it was dubious. What is happening is that Tenet is establishing himself in the media as a good guy with plenty of ammo.

Fester