Stones Cry Out

Don Sensing should know better.

The Senate investigation was explicitly not authorized to investigate whether the administration misused the intelligence developed by the CIA and other intelligence agencies.

He almost certainly knows this, but he never mentions it. One wonders why.

The White House itself fisked a NY Times article on the whole pre-war intelligence subject. In it you'll see where the case is made that the intelligence as passed on to Congress was not manipulated, citing Tenet himself as well as the Robb-Silberman Commission.

So the CIA wasn't pressured before delivering the intelligence, and the intelligence wasn't fiddled with after delivery.

The White House is not disputing the issue at hand. They are simply throwing up a lot of disinformation to obfuscate matters.

They say...

1) But Even Foreign Governments That Opposed The Removal Of Saddam Hussein Judged That Iraq Had Weapons Of Mass Destruction (WMD).

They were wrong. Many of them were gulled by the same forgeries that suckered the Americans.

2) But The Presidential Daily Brief (PDB) Was Judged Not To Have Different Intelligence Than The National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) Provided To Congress, Which Represented The Collective Opinion Of The Intelligence Community.

Nice misdirection there. The NIE provided to Congress did not include the classified portion that explained how the unclassified portion was utter baloney. The Congress did not have the complete picture. That's the point.

3) But The Weapons Inspectors Concluded That Saddam Hussein Sought A Nuclear Capability.

So? They also concluded he was years and years away from possessing a nuclear capability, and that he could be effectively prevented from attaining such a capability with measures short of invasion.

But The President Never Connected Iraq To The 9/11 Attacks While Other Politicians And Independent Commissions Judged That There Were Contacts Between Iraq, Al-Qaeda And Other Terrorist Groups.

p1. No, the President didn't do that. He let his spokesmen and other senior administration officials do it. Does the President's spokesmen not speak for the President?

p2. Nobody found an operational relationship. Many of the rumored "contacts" turned out to be easily debunked, but administration officials continued to aggressively sell them.

4) But Congressional And Independent Committees Have Repeatedly Found No Political Pressure To Change Intelligence.

None of them were authorized to investigate whether the intelligence produced by the CIA and other agencies was manipulated by the administration. That investigation has been held up in the Senate. It remains for the Senate to even begin to hold hearings on the subject.

Doug Payton writes: So the CIA wasn't pressured before delivering the intelligence, and the intelligence wasn't fiddled with after delivery.

The link to the screed at the White House you provide offers no dispute whatsoever to the claim that intelligence was manipulated by the administration after it was delivered to them by intellgence agencies.

They were wrong. Many of them were gulled by the same forgeries that suckered the Americans.
Assuming this is so (and the British still stand behind their alternate sources), it serves to show Bush didn't lie; he just had bad intelligence reports, as has been said all along.

Nice misdirection there. The NIE provided to Congress did not include the classified portion that explained how the unclassified portion was utter baloney. The Congress did not have the complete picture. That's the point.
Actually, it did include the caveats, and some Democrats are now complaining that the caveats weren't big enough. Thus we have the quote from the Robb-Silberman report saying that what was given to Congress was not "marked different" than what was given to the President. That report does apparently cover the possibility of administration manipulation, and it finds nothing significant.

So? They also concluded he was years and years away from possessing a nuclear capability, and that he could be effectively prevented from attaining such a capability with measures short of invasion.
Those assessments had always been too optimistic (Russia, N. Korea), and would you really rather have waited to be surprised by the appearance of a nuke in the hands of Saddam? Then we'd be in the same blackmail situation we find ourselves in with N. Korea. Don't see how this would be a better outcome.

p1. No, the President didn't do that. He let his spokesmen and other senior administration officials do it. Does the President's spokesmen not speak for the President?
p2. Nobody found an operational relationship. Many of the rumored "contacts" turned out to be easily debunked, but administration officials continued to aggressively sell them.
Actually, I find the whole issue of did Hussein and bin Laden have an official working relationship to be inconsequential. This is the Global War on Terror, not the Global War on Al-Qaeda. Iraq was hosing Abu Nidal, and funding Palestinian terrorism, so he was supporting it. And Richard Clarke, Clinton's expert on the subject, believed that bin Laden and Hussein had, if not a working relationship, then at least were on speaking terms, and that bin Laden considered Iraq a safe haven should he need it.

And has all the evidence been debunked? There's quite a lot of it.
None of them were authorized to investigate whether the intelligence produced by the CIA and other agencies was manipulated by the administration. That investigation has been held up in the Senate. It remains for the Senate to even begin to hold hearings on the subject.

Sounds like the Robb-Silberman has been there and done that. Still no evidence that Bush lied.

The link to the screed at the White House you provide offers no dispute whatsoever to the claim that intelligence was manipulated by the administration after it was delivered to them by intellgence agencies
Actually, I think it does. It wasn't "markedly different". What was an issue was the "attention-grabbing headlines and drumbeat of repetition" that made the intelligence sound better than it was. The CIA was selling a "slam dunk", and when Bush gave Congress the information it was substantially the same as what he got.

Assuming this is so (and the British still stand behind their alternate sources), it serves to show Bush didn't lie...

Actually, in the case of the infamous "sixteen words" lie on the SOTU speech, the President doesn't escape from the charge of lying by relying on carefully parsing the syntax. The British, you must admit, did not learn anything like what he said. It's clear to everyone now that the British were gulled. The Bush administration knew at the time that the British were fools. It was a lie. A bald faced lie.

Iraq had not sought uranium from Africa. The British had not learned about anything that the U.S. didn't know. The administration was aware of both of these things. The President went ahead with sixteen words anyway. It was a lie. A lie.

Thus we have the quote from the Robb-Silberman report saying that what was given to Congress was not "marked different" than what was given to the President.

Of course, it was marked different. The NIE given to the Congress was the declassified version. The NIE given to the White House contain a classified addendum, which primarily contained language that cast doubt on the reliability of the intelligence contained in the declassified body. The Robb-Silberman report does not dispute this.

That report does apparently cover the possibility of administration manipulation, and it finds nothing significant.

The committee was explicitly forbidden from investigating that. It found nothing significant, because it wasn't allowed to look for it.

...and would you really rather have waited to be surprised by the appearance of a nuke in the hands of Saddam?

This argument applies to every unsavory regime in the world. It doesn't make the threat posed by Saddam's regime into an "imminent" or "uniquely urgent" threat, as the Bush White House was saying. The White House said the nuclear threat was imminent and uniquely urgent. On multiple occasions. We all know now, and most of this had good reason to believe then, that this was a lie.

The White House knew the nuclear threat was not imminent, and it was not uniquely urgent. They lied.

And Richard Clarke, Clinton's expert on the subject, believed that bin Laden and Hussein had, if not a working relationship, then at least were on speaking terms, and that bin Laden considered Iraq a safe haven should he need it.

Can we make up our minds about whether we think Richard Clarke is an expert on the subject? The idea that Saddam Hussein would provide Al Qaeda with any assistance has always been a complete joke to anyone who knows what they're talking about.

Oh, and by the way... Abu Nidal was an ultra-secularist. Even Saddam Hussein's transparently bogus pandering to Islamism would have offended Abu Nidal. He and Osama bin Laden have nothing in common. Saddam Hussein's support for Palestinian terror is pretty much comparable to the support for Irish terrorism that has traditionally come from the United States of America. The "Global War On Terror" has always been nothing more than a marketing catchphrase. Too bad you fell for it.

The CIA was selling a "slam dunk", and when Bush gave Congress the information it was substantially the same as what he got.

No, the White House was selling a "slam dunk" and the Vice President was pressuring the CIA to cook the National Intelligence Estimate to order. The CIA produced a report that wasn't altogether bogus, so the White House had only the portion that supported their case declassified and left classified the part that Cheney couldn't pressure the CIA to leave out.

The Robb-Silberman Committee reported not finding any evidence of pressure from the Vice President because they couldn't find any CIA analysts who would go on the record with an accusation. There were plenty of off-the-record accusations of pressure and the leaks out of Langley about it were endless. That the Robb-Silberman Committee chose not to report a finding of pressure is not a convincing argument that it didn't happen.

And, again— the classified portion of the NIE is essentially nothing but a collection of all the reasonable arguments for doubting the intelligence contained in the declassified portion.

The Congress did not get the same message as the White House. The White House lied about the intelligence by cherry-picking the intelligence it chose to declassify in the NIE, as well as by many other means. It told official lies to Congress. It told unofficial lies— on the record and off— in media appearances.

The White House lied. Repeatedly. Shamelessly. Malevolently.