Bush Knowingly Lied About Aluminum Tubes in 2003 SOTU
A new article by Murray Waas in the National Journal shows that President Bush's 2003 State of the Union claims about Iraq's aluminum tubes being for nuclear weapons production was known to him to be a highly disputed piece of intelligence.
A dissent (or alternate view) from the State and Energy Department's intelligence arms saying that the tubes could not be used in a uranium enrichment centrifuge was included in the one-page President's Summary of the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE).
Karl Rove, President Bush's chief political adviser, cautioned other White House aides in the summer of 2003 that Bush's 2004 re-election prospects would be severely damaged if it was publicly disclosed that he had been personally warned that a key rationale for going to war had been challenged within the administration. Rove expressed his concerns shortly after an informal review of classified government records by then-Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen J. Hadley determined that Bush had been specifically advised that claims he later made in his 2003 State of the Union address -- that Iraq was procuring high-strength aluminum tubes to build a nuclear weapon -- might not be true, according to government records and interviews.
Hadley was particularly concerned that the public might learn of a classified one-page summary of a National Intelligence Estimate, specifically written for Bush in October 2002. The summary said that although "most agencies judge" that the aluminum tubes were "related to a uranium enrichment effort," the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research and the Energy Department's intelligence branch "believe that the tubes more likely are intended for conventional weapons."...
For one, Hadley's review concluded that Bush had been directly and repeatedly apprised of the deep rift within the intelligence community over whether Iraq wanted the high-strength aluminum tubes for a nuclear weapons program or for conventional weapons.
For another, the president and others in the administration had cited the aluminum tubes as the most compelling evidence that Saddam was determined to build a nuclear weapon -- even more than the allegations that he was attempting to purchase uranium...
"Presidential knowledge was the ball game," says a former senior government official outside the White House who was personally familiar with the damage-control effort. "The mission was to insulate the president. It was about making it appear that he wasn't in the know. You could do that on Niger. You couldn't do that with the tubes."
On July 18, the Bush administration declassified a relatively small portion of the NIE and held a press briefing to discuss it, in a further effort to show that the president had used the Niger information only because the intelligence community had vouched for it. Reporters noted that an "alternate view" box in the NIE stated that the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research (known as INR) believed that claims of Iraqi purchases of uranium from Africa were "highly dubious" and that State and DOE also believed that the aluminum tubes were "most likely for the production of artillery shells."
But White House Communications Director Dan Bartlett suggested that both the president and Rice had been unaware of this information: "They did not read footnotes in a 90-page document." Later, addressing the same issue, Bartlett said, "The president of the United States is not a fact-checker."
Because the Bush administration was able to control what information would remain classified, however, reporters did not know that Bush had received the President's Summary that informed him that both State's INR and the Energy Department doubted that the aluminum tubes were to be used for a nuclear-related purpose...
Later that summer, the Senate Intelligence Committee launched an investigation of intelligence agencies to determine why they failed to accurately assess that Saddam had no viable programs to develop chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons at the time of the U.S. invasion.
As National Journal first disclosed on its Web site on October 27, 2005, Cheney, Libby, and Cheney's current chief of staff, David Addington, rejected advice given to them by other White House officials and decided to withhold from the committee crucial documents that might have shown that administration claims about Saddam's capabilities often went beyond information provided by the CIA and other intelligence agencies. Among those documents was the President's Summary of the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate.
No wonder that the Senate Intelligence Committee, chaired by the odious Sen. Pat Roberts, has refused to conduct the Phase II investigation of the administration's misuse of intelligence to lure the nation into war on false pretenses.
Murray Waas also indicates in his fine article that the bizarre behavior of the administration in Plamegate can be logically explained as their energetic efforts to muddy the waters with the Niger uranium issue in order to obfuscate the more blatant cherry-picking of intelligence about the aluminum tubes.
A dissent (or alternate view) from the State and Energy Department's intelligence arms saying that the tubes could not be used in a uranium enrichment centrifuge was included in the one-page President's Summary of the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE).
Karl Rove, President Bush's chief political adviser, cautioned other White House aides in the summer of 2003 that Bush's 2004 re-election prospects would be severely damaged if it was publicly disclosed that he had been personally warned that a key rationale for going to war had been challenged within the administration. Rove expressed his concerns shortly after an informal review of classified government records by then-Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen J. Hadley determined that Bush had been specifically advised that claims he later made in his 2003 State of the Union address -- that Iraq was procuring high-strength aluminum tubes to build a nuclear weapon -- might not be true, according to government records and interviews.
Hadley was particularly concerned that the public might learn of a classified one-page summary of a National Intelligence Estimate, specifically written for Bush in October 2002. The summary said that although "most agencies judge" that the aluminum tubes were "related to a uranium enrichment effort," the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research and the Energy Department's intelligence branch "believe that the tubes more likely are intended for conventional weapons."...
For one, Hadley's review concluded that Bush had been directly and repeatedly apprised of the deep rift within the intelligence community over whether Iraq wanted the high-strength aluminum tubes for a nuclear weapons program or for conventional weapons.
For another, the president and others in the administration had cited the aluminum tubes as the most compelling evidence that Saddam was determined to build a nuclear weapon -- even more than the allegations that he was attempting to purchase uranium...
"Presidential knowledge was the ball game," says a former senior government official outside the White House who was personally familiar with the damage-control effort. "The mission was to insulate the president. It was about making it appear that he wasn't in the know. You could do that on Niger. You couldn't do that with the tubes."
On July 18, the Bush administration declassified a relatively small portion of the NIE and held a press briefing to discuss it, in a further effort to show that the president had used the Niger information only because the intelligence community had vouched for it. Reporters noted that an "alternate view" box in the NIE stated that the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research (known as INR) believed that claims of Iraqi purchases of uranium from Africa were "highly dubious" and that State and DOE also believed that the aluminum tubes were "most likely for the production of artillery shells."
But White House Communications Director Dan Bartlett suggested that both the president and Rice had been unaware of this information: "They did not read footnotes in a 90-page document." Later, addressing the same issue, Bartlett said, "The president of the United States is not a fact-checker."
Because the Bush administration was able to control what information would remain classified, however, reporters did not know that Bush had received the President's Summary that informed him that both State's INR and the Energy Department doubted that the aluminum tubes were to be used for a nuclear-related purpose...
Later that summer, the Senate Intelligence Committee launched an investigation of intelligence agencies to determine why they failed to accurately assess that Saddam had no viable programs to develop chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons at the time of the U.S. invasion.
As National Journal first disclosed on its Web site on October 27, 2005, Cheney, Libby, and Cheney's current chief of staff, David Addington, rejected advice given to them by other White House officials and decided to withhold from the committee crucial documents that might have shown that administration claims about Saddam's capabilities often went beyond information provided by the CIA and other intelligence agencies. Among those documents was the President's Summary of the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate.
No wonder that the Senate Intelligence Committee, chaired by the odious Sen. Pat Roberts, has refused to conduct the Phase II investigation of the administration's misuse of intelligence to lure the nation into war on false pretenses.
Murray Waas also indicates in his fine article that the bizarre behavior of the administration in Plamegate can be logically explained as their energetic efforts to muddy the waters with the Niger uranium issue in order to obfuscate the more blatant cherry-picking of intelligence about the aluminum tubes.
posted by Effwit at 8:16 PM
16 Comments:
This is like running a race, reaching the finish line, and then waiting 3 years for the rest of the field to complete reach the run - and be expected to cheer the stragglers across the line.
It's not like this shit wasn't exposable with 2 or 3 follow up questions by journalists back when this kind of info had some relevance in affecting which course of action could justifiably be taken by the Admin.
Now this info is just a matter of curiousity at best - at worst it's journalists pretending to be bloodhounds so they won't hang for their complicity as primaries in war crimes.
The lying Admin fucks never expected to fool everyone forever...just long enough to get the nation embroiled in their schemes. And to that end the journalists who had access to the Admin gave them all the help they needed to obfuscate the electorate with radar jamming chaff.
Journalists get no cookies from Batman & Robin for exposing false claims now that could have been maligned with extreme prejudice back when maligning would have saved us hundreds of thousands dead, crippled, and doomed.
M1:
You are right that the dissents in the full NIE were known three years ago. But the admin had been saying all along that Bush hadn't read the whole document.
When dealing with Bush, one could easily understand that this might be true.
To the best of my knowledge, the detail about the President's summary containing INR and Energy's caveat was not publicly known.
I doubt that even pointed questions from journalists (not that this would have happened) would have achieved success in discovering what Bush knew when. Especially when Rove was mucking about in there with his helpful advice to stonewall until after re-election.
The Washington press corps are indeed heavily complicit in the crimes of the warmongers. Viz, the NYT covering up the NSA scandal until after the election.
And the cheerleading for war.
But, even in the hypothetical, if the press had played up the lies back in 2002-2003, I doubt that the terrified American sheep would have turned on Bush. I suspect that the press knew this, and didn't risk their access to enlighten a bunch of people who wouldn't do anything about the outrages if they knew about them.
Just like in 2006. The public knows about the crimes now, and there is still no critical mass of opposition to the crooks and murderers.
What else is there to say? And yet, 30-40% - give or take - of Americans will never admit that their President lied his way into taking the nation to war in Iraq. Re-elected in 2004? He should have been impeached and indicted. He still should be. And these people, even though they KNOW that he lied his way into a war, still are willing to trust him when it comes to unwarranted and uncontrolled surveillance of Americans.
It never ceases to amaze me. Never.
DrewL:
The attitude of the sheeple toward "our leader" becomes more comprehensible when you recall Abe Lincoln's famous equation describing the distribution of gullibility among a randomly selected population.
The people still supporting Bush fall into the category of "You can fool some of the people all of the time."
QED
It's easy to see how the media is complicit, when they had specialized news theme and graphic packages prepared and at the ready the day the deal went down.
By the way, I still remember the night it started--I was working at a cable company; we had the televisions on. At around 9:40pm EST, the first pictures of Baghdad showed up, and it was on from there. And then came the CBS "America at War" theme, the GE BloomMobile, the Ambush on the Sadler Convoy (which I had the pleasure--or the horror--of seeing live as it happened), Arnett getting run from the airwaves again...all the way up to the Navy warship off the coast of San Diego, the Greatest Lie Ever Told. And yet, we're still talking about this as it happens.
Sigh.
By the way, Brent Sadler and that CNN crew had to be the stupidest people on the face of the planet. To think you're just going to roll up on Saddam's hometown, and not get shot at? Idiots.
"Re-elected in 2004? He should have been impeached and indicted. He still should be. And these people, even though they KNOW that he lied his way into a war, still are willing to trust him when it comes to unwarranted and uncontrolled surveillance of Americans."
That's because it isn't about "the truth" anymore; it's become about winning. "Cause I still remeber all these people during the impeachment charade eight years ago, and all that hollering about "rule of law" this, "ethics" that. It was bullshit then, and it's bullshit now. All it is to them is a game--except they've got the rulebook. Personally, I don't care to hear anything these people have to say about ethics, rules of law, or integrity.
VCIII:
Exactly right. I'm thinking that it was never about the truth.
Back in 1998, when they impeached Clinton. many of the Rethuglicans insisted that impeachment was the only course of action available. Censure of the President was brought up and the Democrats would have been willing to go for that. But the Republicans said no, you can't legally censure a sitting President (which is BS), you have to impeach him.
Now with Sen. Russ Feingold's censure resolution, the GOP is laughing it off.
Impeachment is the third rail right now.
All going to show that truth is like silly-putty for these criminals in power.
Witty F
You wrote...To the best of my knowledge, the detail about the President's summary containing INR and Energy's caveat was not publicly known.
Absolutement
To be more precise, I mean the following: When I hear these Admin scoundrels and their mouthpieces delivering speeches and making brazen claims I weigh their every uttered word right down to the microgram.
If they appear to be making a definitive claim but in fact do not actually make that claim with definitive wordings and phraseologies then that discrepancy in itself says the whole world and more to me. That very discrepancy is not a result of the neurophysiological impediment communicado retardo but of precise and calculated consideration.
Journalists with access to these Dons have if anything an impeccable mastery of lingua precisa et brevitas and I harbor absolutely zero, zilcho, zippo doubt that they pick up immediately on the discrepancy between an eloquently implied certainty and a certainty actually expressed with all the I's symmetrically dotted and T's crossed at precisely 90 degrees.
When I look back at 'claims' made by these mobsters to justify this or that I can grant them the following: Yes in fact, it is difficult to find a statement that was a bold lie if you pick apart their exact words and phrases. They do in fact appear to still fear the power of being caught in an outright lie and have therefor near mastered the art of perfect implication.
Admitted, seldom is there a follow-up question that can hone in on the implicatory nature of their expressed certainties that these pros can't weasle out of. They could probably weasle out of 5 wicked follow-ups but what would at least become glaringly apparent with each attempted uncloaking volley of querry is the claimants obstinate non-committal stance. And that is tantamount to getting a confession of skullduggerous verbiage.
And I would for once like to read a journalist's report from a press conference which, instead of conveying the implied certainties and thereby transforming them into certainties (thereby saving the politicos the prosecutable inconvenience of lying outright themselves), reported the implied nature of any claim and the compact refusal of the claimant to eradicate any sly caveatishness from their language.
Then when Downing St memos and their likes do eventually pop up we can simply say, "Oh that's why they wouldn't commit outright - they were trying to hoodwink us without risking perjuring themselves. They were trying to bait the journalists into putting the icing on the poisonous cake. Golly I'm glad we don't have a Goebbelesque corps de journalists that engages in such symbiotic skullduggery for which hanging is a codified punishment".
Vaguery shit like this goes on all the time in private life as well as in corporate negotiations and in the corporate world you never let vagueries go unchecked or you lose big money and your job.
A vaguery is a screeching alarm that there is something to be explored before anything is signed. A vaguery is a flag that herein lies something that probably is against your best interests.
The journalists honored to sit in at White House press conferences aren't idiots. If something slides it's 'cause they let it slide. And if journalists let shit slide then why should politicians take the chance of lying outright themselves. Let Mikey do it instead.
There was a chance to expose these bastards in their precise vagueries when exposure might have meant something. Getting the raison d'etre on their vagueries now is just a risk the Admin factored in from vaguerizing scratch - getting called is gonna inevitably happen but by the time it happens it won't mean dick.
And while we are revelling in the scoops on events of old the shakers and movers are already on to their next illicit conquest according to perfect formula. Winning isnt' always about crossing the finish line way ahead of your competitors. Often it's enuff to win by but a nose.
I have no uncertainties about who should be warming defendant's pews at the next Nuremburg trial and Newsweek's Friedman alongside Miller would make handsome bookendings on the frontrow bench stuffed with our generation's most vicious war criminals.
The pen is mightier than the sword and that power cuts 2 ways.
But none of what I said above means that I don't agree with everything all of ya said. I just don't buy into the journalist corp's present air of indignancy that they're hard pitching now. I see it as them feigning self-sacrificing diligence to cover up their criminal complicity. That's all.
M1:
That comment belongs in the Hall of Fame of Blog Comments.
I am not being facetious. I have never seen a more eloquently expressed criticism of the role that the media has played in our national catastrophe of the last few years.
If anything, I hold a harsher opinion of the stooges than you just showed. You just do it better.
You are right that they know what they are doing. However, their slickness with the currency of language falls far short of what we witness from you on even a bad night.
You may have overdone it though on the "vaguery" bit. You be the man on the prohibition of vagueness in the business world. But "vaguery" is the métier of many a good political operative. Well, not good...and maybe not many...but a few. And not only for this repellent administration.
I did notice that both Batman and Micrograms have been mentioned in the same comment section. This must mean something.
LOL. You be a most generous Buddhy
And where are my manners? First sign my toilet has clogged up and I'm caught running over to your blog to take a giant dump. I'm working on my Eurotrashed manners. I really am. I wanna be a better meatball.
M1:
Worry not.
I felt inadequate not being able to make a cogent response to your outstanding comment.
This insubstantial feeling, as all transitory emotions do, passed like a shadow--without any real damage.
Except to my once vaunted literary ego.
What to do with a Meatball like Effwit?
I just don't buy into the journalist corps' present air of indignancy that they're hard pitching now. I see it as them feigning self-sacrificing diligence to cover up their criminal complicity.
Excellent. Because...yeah, they were in on it the whole time. And that's my point on the media's role in the war. At the time it started, it wasn't so much a war, as it was a unilateral television show, with every other network having its own gadget (i.e., the GE BloomMobile).
Nobody bothered to question anything that was being put forth by the Administration, lest the truth divert them from the use of gadgest appropriated about 1-3 years in advance...because anyone with a brain foresaw this seige on Iraq the minute Bush arrived on the scene as a White House candidate. It was written all over his face, and the media knew that. They've been drinking so much of the Bush Kool-Aid, they're hyperglycemic of the sweet, sugary spin of it all--to the point where they're diabetics, searching for their doses of insulin (truth) at this point.
Yeah VC, a television show was indeed what it was now that you frame it as such. The dramaturgy underpinning the Bush narrative in the lead-up to war offered too many cliff hanger moments for the soap-selling journalists to let pass them by - and not help fuel.
Ethics are always fine and dandy to flaunt when they don't significantly displace financial results. Corporations are fair weather friends to ethics when push comes to shove. I haven't found an exception yet. If you have let me know. I
VCIII:
You are right about Bush gunning for war with Iraq from the getgo. That's what former Treasury secretary Paul O'Neill said was mentioned at the very first cabinet meeting of the Bush administration back in late January 2001.
And I can see another motive too for the media's complicity.
Profits. War has got to be good for the ratings.
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