My Head’s Spinning
So with the King out of the country, the courtiers are scrambling over each other to ascribe blame for the Uranium Forgeries. The CIA are blaming Blair, Blair says he has the real thing, while Bush’s poodle Tenet in the CIA falls on his sword and says it was all his fault. This is despite the fact that the CIA apparently knew themselves that it was bogus. The amount of spin has got even the media barons in a tizzy. Witness the confusion in CBS News. Anyway, compare and contrast:
CIA Asked Britain To Drop Iraq Claim
The CIA tried unsuccessfully in early September 2002 to persuade the British government to drop from an official intelligence paper a reference to Iraqi attempts to buy uranium in Africa that President Bush included in his State of the Union address four months later.
Blame Game Over False WMD Info
On a stop in Africa, President Bush said Friday that the CIA signed off on his using that information in his State of the Union address. “I gave a speech to the nation that was cleared by the intelligence services.
CIA Takes Blame For Bush’s False Iraq Allegation
Bush, Rice Say CIA Gave All-Clear On State Of The Union Speech. CIA Director George Tenet acknowledged Friday his agency wrongly allowed President George W. Bush to tell the American people that Saddam Hussein was seeking nuclear material in Africa.
US “twisted” intelligence on Iraq: investigator for CIA
A former US ambassador who investigated reports that Niger sold uranium to Iraq said Sunday that the US government exaggerated the threat to justify the war in Iraq … The Central Intelligence Agency sent [Joseph] Wilson to Niger to check the charge on behalf of Vice President Dick Cheney. He was a diplomat 1976-1998 with a broad knowledge of Africa.
I was informed by officials at the Central Intelligence Agency that Vice President Dick Cheney’s office had questions about a particular intelligence report. While I never saw the report, I was told that it referred to a memorandum of agreement that documented the sale of uranium yellowcake ? a form of lightly processed ore ? by Niger to Iraq in the late 1990’s. The agency officials asked if I would travel to Niger to check out the story so they could provide a response to the vice president’s office … It did not take long to conclude that it was highly doubtful that any such transaction had ever taken place … Before I left Niger, I briefed the ambassador on my findings, which were consistent with her own. I also shared my conclusions with members of her staff. In early March, I arrived in Washington and promptly provided a detailed briefing to the C.I.A. I later shared my conclusions with the State Department African Affairs Bureau.
The spin on this issue is so incredibly sloppy because the Bush Gang are in a state of panic. Bush made demonstrably false statements not just in many speeches, but in the State of the Union address to Congress. The problematic issue is that the State is the Union isn’t just a whimsical fireside chat, but instead one of the few Constitutionally mandated duties of the office of the President (Article 2, Section 3, He shall from time to time give to the Congress information of the state of the Union). The problem is that as he was sworn in, he had to take the required Oath of Office (I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of the President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the constitution of the United States). By any reasonable analysis, during his performance of the Constitutionally enumerated duties of the President, Bush is under this Oath. If it can be shown that he knew that the information he was providing was false or ambiguous, then he is at least as guilty as the former President Clinton, when he lied during sworn court testimony. Some might argue, indeed, that lying to lawyers is less of a “high crime” than lying during the execution of a Presidential duty. Right now the Bush Gang must be feeling the same kind of desperate panic that engulfed the Reagan Gang when they realised their little heroin- & cocaine-funded terrorist arms dealing racket was becoming exposed. Through massive shredding and denials, they managed to erect their “plausible deniability” shields around Reagan and convinced some minor patsies to take the fall.
In this case, given ex-Ambassador Joseph Wilson’s assertions that his directive came from Dick Cheney’s office, it seems implausible to claim that Cheney was not himself aware that his own office had declared the Uranium documents to be forgeries. So to save Bush from being exposed, it sems as if Cheney will have to take a fall, or admit incompetence, or both. This brings echoes of Nixon’s inept and loathed VP, Spiro Agnew. His removal didn’t give Nixon much wiggle room: he himself was forced to resign within 12 months.
Spiro Agnew became the first U.S. vice president to resign in disgrace … he pleaded no contest to a charge of federal income tax evasion in exchange for the dropping of charges of political corruption … Agnew campaigned on a tough law-and-order platform, and after becoming vice president frequently attacked opponents of the Vietnam War and liberals as being disloyal and un-American.
There’s also the uncomfortable fact that some weasel in the Bush Gang has leaked to journalists everywhere the fact that Wilson’s wife is a covert CIA WMD expert. Most wisely decided not to report it… except for the rather politically motivated Robert Novak. Apparently, unmasking CIA spies is a federal felony.
one thing that worries me is that i can remember all the fuss from the intelligence community before the war. they were distinctly not into an invasion of iraq (fears of a shia-dominated country). rummie, however, was all hot for war. having the cia guy is taking the blame is a huge insult to american intelligence. don’t americans remember the tone of pre-invasion intelligence leaks to the media?
I think Tenet obviously is feuding with his career CIA guys. He wants to take the heat, they don’t want to look like ninnies and keep leaking.