<\body> Stories in America: NY Times Decodes Bush's Denials

Tuesday, November 15, 2005

NY Times Decodes Bush's Denials

An editorial in today's New York Times does a brilliant job of decoding Bush's denials, including his claim that everyone had access to the same intelligence:
Mr. Bush says everyone had the same intelligence he had - Mr. Clinton and his advisers, foreign governments, and members of Congress - and that all of them reached the same conclusions. The only part that is true is that Mr. Bush was working off the same intelligence Mr. Clinton had. But that is scary, not reassuring. The reports about Saddam Hussein's weapons were old, some more than 10 years old. Nothing was fresher than about five years, except reports that later proved to be fanciful.

Foreign intelligence services did not have full access to American intelligence. But some had dissenting opinions that were ignored or not shown to top American officials. Congress had nothing close to the president's access to intelligence. The National Intelligence Estimate presented to Congress a few days before the vote on war was sanitized to remove dissent and make conjecture seem like fact.

It's hard to imagine what Mr. Bush means when he says everyone reached the same conclusion. There was indeed a widespread belief that Iraq had chemical and biological weapons. But Mr. Clinton looked at the data and concluded that inspections and pressure were working - a view we now know was accurate. France, Russia and Germany said war was not justified. Even Britain admitted later that there had been no new evidence about Iraq, just new politics.
What about Bush's claim that the Senate Intelligence Committee's investigation on Iraq found no evidence of political pressure to change the intelligence?
That is true only in the very narrow way the Republicans on the committee insisted on defining pressure: as direct pressure from senior officials to change intelligence. Instead, the Bush administration made what it wanted to hear crystal clear and kept sending reports back to be redone until it got those answers.

Richard Kerr, a former deputy director of central intelligence, said in 2003 that there was "significant pressure on the intelligence community to find evidence that supported a connection" between Iraq and Al Qaeda. The C.I.A. ombudsman told the Senate Intelligence Committee that the administration's "hammering" on Iraq intelligence was harder than he had seen in his 32 years at the agency.

Mr. Bush and other administration officials say they faithfully reported what they had read. But Vice President Dick Cheney presented the Prague meeting as a fact when even the most supportive analysts considered it highly dubious. The administration has still not acknowledged that tales of Iraq coaching Al Qaeda on chemical warfare were considered false, even at the time they were circulated.

Mr. Cheney was not alone. Remember Condoleezza Rice's infamous "mushroom cloud" comment? And Secretary of State Colin Powell in January 2003, when the rich and powerful met in Davos, Switzerland, and he said, "Why is Iraq still trying to procure uranium and the special equipment needed to transform it into material for nuclear weapons?" Mr. Powell ought to have known the report on "special equipment" - the aluminum tubes - was false. And the uranium story was four years old.

Mr. Bush said last Friday that he welcomed debate, even in a time of war, but that "it is deeply irresponsible to rewrite the history of how that war began." We agree, but it is Mr. Bush and his team who are rewriting history.

8 Comments:

At 11/15/2005 3:33 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Today the White House is checking the New York Times....

http://gatewaypundit.blogspot.com/2005/11/white-house-corrects-old-gray-ladys.html

 
At 11/15/2005 3:51 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Oh wow! Hillary Clinton supports the war! Shocker. She does not represent the anti-war contingent of her own party. The problem with you conservatives is you follow your leader blindly. It's truly pathetic. Hey, Bush is in China. Are you pressuring him to tell the Chinese govt. to free its people? Isn't that what we're doing? Spreading freedom around the world? Or do you all say, "Free Iraqis" one minute and "Kill them" the next?

 
At 11/15/2005 4:53 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Actually, I'm not all that enthused about Bush, so no need to pity me for being pathetic.

Or do you all say, "Free Iraqis" one minute and "Kill them" the next?

Depends on the Iraqis.

 
At 11/15/2005 5:04 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Ok, sorry about the pathetic comment. It infuriates me that the Bushies are playing politics with people's lives. The troops are both Democrat and Republcian and they are dying. The American people and the world deserve to be told the truth about why we went to war in the first place. Hell, if my town was bombed, I'd fight back.

 
At 11/15/2005 8:19 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

"Are you pressuring him to tell the Chinese govt. to free its people?"

There, I did it. Happy now?....

Bush Urges China to Grant More Freedoms
http://www.breitbart.com/news/2005/11/15/D8DT9DS8L.html

 
At 11/15/2005 11:32 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

New York Times editorial deconstructed...

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/11/20051115-1.html

(Did anyone else know Karl Rove had a blog?)


Sorry guys, but if Dems had this same information and didn’t alert their constituents of Bush’s “manipulating” of the evidence—and then they voted to grant the President authority to use force—on what plain of existence are they any less culpable than Bush?

 
At 11/16/2005 8:16 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Actually...unlike Bush supporters, Dems, liberals, progressives, etc...would have called Democratic leaders on their lies. We would have demanded more from our leaders than Bush supporters demand from him.

 
At 11/16/2005 10:07 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Like when Howard Dean urged Clinton to wage a unilateral war in Bosnia without U.N. approval?

Not to mention the deafening silence from the rest of the people you listed.

 

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