For those of you who were understandably busy following the last round of the Democratic Nomination Ultimate Fighting Championship this past week (I won't give away the ending for those who have it TiVo'd), I'd like to call your attention to a major story you may have missed: the Senate Intelligence Committee's 200-page "Phase II" report on how the Bush administration used -- and abused -- pre-war intelligence in the run-up to the war in Iraq.
The Committee's conclusion: the president and his top officials deliberately misrepresented secret intelligence to make the case to invade Iraq. No surprise there.
But it's vitally important that we continue to reiterate and document the truth of what happened and who was responsible for perpetrating this fraud on the American public. And here's why: the war is still going on (and American soldiers continue to die as a result of the deception); the same people responsible for this debacle still have their hands on the wheel; desperate to cover their tracks, they continue to lie about how we got into this mess; and they are currently hitting all the same notes in agitating for war in Iran.
The report is a direct rebuke to the administration's continued claims that it was the intelligence that was faulty, and that Bush and co. were simply presenting what the C.I.A. had given them.
A statement released by committee chairman Jay Rockefeller makes it clear that the administration "on numerous occasions, misrepresented the intelligence and the threat from Iraq...in making the case for war, the administration repeatedly presented intelligence as fact when in reality it was unsubstantiated, contradicted, or even non-existent."
The report doesn't use the word, but we all know what it's called when someone presents something as fact that's directly contradicted by the evidence. A lie. Not a mistake. A lie.
Some specifics from Rockefeller's statement (emphasis mine):
- Statements and implications by the President and Secretary of State suggesting that Iraq and al-Qa'ida had a partnership, or that Iraq had provided al-Qa'ida with weapons training, were not substantiated by the intelligence.
- Statements by the President and the Vice President indicating that Saddam Hussein was prepared to give weapons of mass destruction to terrorist groups for attacks against the United States were contradicted by available intelligence information.
- Statements by President Bush and Vice President Cheney regarding the postwar situation in Iraq, in terms of the political, security, and economic, did not reflect the concerns and uncertainties expressed in the intelligence products.
- Statements by the President and Vice President prior to the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate regarding Iraq's chemical weapons production capability and activities did not reflect the intelligence community's uncertainties as to whether such production was ongoing.
- The Secretary of Defense's statement that the Iraqi government operated underground WMD facilities that were not vulnerable to conventional airstrikes because they were underground and deeply buried was not substantiated by available intelligence information.
- The Intelligence Community did not confirm that Muhammad Atta met an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague in 2001 as the Vice President repeatedly claimed.
So much for the tired claim that "everybody in the world" agreed that Iraq had WMD, was a "grave and gathering threat," was in league with Al Qaeda, etc., etc., etc.
The report also details how a cabal very high up in the Pentagon and the Vice President's office got played by a group of shady Iranian exiles in order, as McCaltchy's John Walcott puts it, to "feed bogus intelligence on Iraq and Iran to senior policymakers in the Bush administration who were eager to oust the Iraqi dictator."
This meeting was brokered by neo-con All-Star Michael Ledeen, who is now one of those desperately agitating for war with Iran. The story reads like a bad spy novel.
In December of 2001, Ledeen and two Pentagon Iran experts met an Iranian named Manucher Ghorbanifar in Rome. Ghorbanifar sketched out his plan to overthrow the Iranian regime on a cocktail napkin. The plan involved, as the Senate report puts it, "simultaneous disruption of traffic at key intersections leading to Tehran," which would "create anxiety, work stoppages and other disruptive measures." Ghorbanifar asked for $5 million in seed money to get started.
This was not the first time Leeden and Ghorbanifar had met. Both are alumni of the Iran-Contra arms scandal. In fact, in 1984, the CIA had said that Ghorbanifar "should be regarded as an intelligence fabricator and a nuisance."
Operation Desert Gridlock never happened, but Ledeen continued to feed his dubious intelligence to an eager Pentagon, including giving Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith a 100-day plan which would provide evidence that Iraqi WMD had been secretly moved to Iran. On this, he was backed up by three Republican senators: Rick Santorum, Jon Kyl and Sam Brownback.
Eventually alarm bells went off in the CIA and State Department and an investigation of the Pentagon's contacts with Ghorbanifar was started. It was shut down after only one month, however, by Stephen Cambone, then Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence.
The reaction of Republicans to the Phase II report has been predictable. They're desperate for the public not to dwell on the truth about this war. And if they can't present contrary evidence to refute the report (and they can't, because it doesn't exist), they can at least sow doubt -- acting as if the report is the result of partisan bickering as opposed to the smoking gun of the Bush administration's tragic acts.
In fact, the committee vote on the report was 10-5, with Republicans Chuck Hagel and Olympia Snow voting with the Democrats.
"It rots the very fiber of democracy when our government is put to these uses," said Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse in response to the report.
It's no coincidence that a war built on lies continues to be conducted using lies ("the surge is working"). Mark Green proposes a way to end the cycle of deception: create a Truth and Reconciliation Commission. "This worked in a very different historical situation of South Africa and can work here as well," wrote Green on HuffPost. "South Africans who engaged in murder and violence were given amnesty if they confessed under oath to their crimes and knowledge -- but would be prosecuted if they didn't.... The largely successful effort led to both truth and reconciliation."
Richard Clarke echoed Green's proposal last week, and also suggested something each of us can do: "I just don't think we can let these people back into polite society and give them jobs on university boards and corporate boards and just let them pretend that nothing ever happened when there are 4,000 Americans dead and 25,000 Americans grievously wounded, and they'll carry those wounds and suffer all the rest of their lives."
If the leaders responsible for that suffering are not held accountable -- both at the ballot box and by being shamed and shunned as Clarke suggests -- we dishonor the sacrifices of the fallen, and make it likely that many more will endure a similar fate.
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What someone once said about Calvin Coolidge applies equally well to Bush: "Once bamboozled, he was impossible to unbamboozle."
Is it any wonder Bush fearfully opposes the US joining the World Court? What with starting an unnecessary war using deception, to using torture, to in essence thwart the very existence of the document which Founded this great nation, the very fabric of this nation is being shattered. I am sure should Bush/Cheney/Feith/Rums/Wolfnowitz/Perle ever be brought before any court on the above charges, even a jury of dummies could only bring one fair verdict.
Scott Ritter. He was the loud truthteller in position to know and I began tivoing him. A curios thing, wherever he was interviewed, be it Wolf Blitzer or Tim Russert, the intro always began, "So, you used to say Saddam WMD was major threat and now you say No. Why did you flip?" He was always presented as a liar. I would contrast what Ritter had actually stated and how it was being played back to him, and always the consistent distortion. Why the consistent trashing of Ritter? it haunted me. It created a crack for me to learn Bush was lying in the leadup to invasion.
Ritter is my hero. The media was complicit. The only two commentators I ever heard, before invasion, say it was a mistake, was, of all people, Buchanan and Matthews. They didn't do it all the time, but I tivoed Matthews (with all his flaws) every day and he said it enough times to help me build on Ritter.
It wasn't a big story because McClellan dominated the news, chipping away at the iceberg first, and the mainstream media is still too lazy, influenced and intimidated to pounce on it. These Bush guys are going down ... quite probably to jail. It will hit a crescendo in 2009. Bush and Cheney are shaking in their Texas and Wyoming boots, respectively.
Shaking???? I doubt it.
"October 15, 2006
US President Bush Makes Massive Land Purchase In Paraguay Ahead Of Expected War Crimes Charges
By: Sorcha Faal, and as reported to her Western Subscribers
Russian Intelligence Analysts are reporting today that the American President"s daughter, Jenna Bush, has secured on behalf of her father, the American President, and the Bush Family, the purchase of nearly 100,000 acres of land in the South American Nation of Paraguay, and which is also confirmed by the Latin American News Service, and as we can read as reported in their article titled "Bush Buys Land in Northern Paraguay", and which says:
"An Argentine official regarded the intention of the George W. Bush family to settle on the Acuifero Guarani (Paraguay) as surprising, besides being a bad signal for the governments of the region. Luis D Elia, undersecretary for the Social Habitat in the Argentine Federal Planning Ministry, issued a memo partially reproduced by digital INFOBAE.com, in which he spoke of the purchase by Bush of a 98,842-acre farm in northern Paraguay, between Brazil and Bolivia."
The American President"s daughter had used the cover of a United Nations group to "cover" her mission to Paraguay to arrange this massive land purchase, and as we can see confirmed by the Associated Press News Service in their article titled "Jenna Bush joins UNICEF program in Paraguay", ".
http://arizona.indymedia.org/news/2006/10/51221.php
Was FDR a liar? Not actually.
Was Lyndon Johnson a liar? Yes, he was.
Was Bush a liar? Yes he was.
The issue is conflict. FDR placed assets in harms way. Johnson trumped up an actual situation, into an artificial incident. Bush, created intelligence, not trumping anything up, and not placing assets in danger.
The desire is to get public support for the effort.
Thank You Arianna for telling it like it is !!
George W. Bush "LIED" to the American citizenry on all the trumped up reasons to jump on Iraq !!
We were in the right area in the beginning, Afghanistan and when we started pulling out, I thought to myself "what the hell are we doing" !!!
Arianna I am still wondering if George W. is going to get a free pass and just walk off into the sunset ????
They weren't assets, they were American soldiers. Their lives had value, maybe not to the powers that was, but to the families they left behind. People have marginalized those fallen soldiers as statics or cliches. People need to wake up to the horror of war, not just for American soldiers, but to the citizens of the country they invade. 4000 soldiers died in Iraq. Over 2 million civilians died. 58,000 soldiers did in Vietnam. 3 million civilians died there as well. Over 500,000 children have died due to sanctions placed on Iraq dyring the 90s. Many more died from the depleted uranium left behind. Depleted uranium is used in American weapon's ammunition, and we are the leading producer of it, dispite its radioactive side effects. People really need to wake up and stop believing everything they see or hear from the coorporate owned news, which is ran by the very same people that profit from the industry of war.
I felt at the time what I was hearing was total BS----not that I am all that smart or anything--but there was a bad smell about what was being said by Bush regime officials in regards to why we had to go to war in Iraq that seemed to me--anyone with half a brain could know that they were full of it and that it was all bald faced lies.
Thanks to The Nation, Mother Jones and other "liberal rags" as some would refer to them, I and other readers understood that all the most important points the Bush administration tried to make about the need for war was clearly refuted in numerous articles that relied on credible evidence from many different sources, some even within our own intelligence agencies. These more "liberal" sources are often ignored by corporate media and the major network news divisions. Look at the reporting before the invasion of Iraq in the more liberal media. Frustratingly, it is a laundry list of refutations that are now more widely reported and accepted as reasons why our nation was duped.
I didnt miss this it just was not reported by corporate media.
The one point I see lost in all of this is the fact the none of the major news outlets have reported on this, not CNN, FOX, MSNBC none of them.
Congress will not act on anything if they are not forced to by the public and if the public doesn"t know about this they won"t be upset.
We all complain that the news outlets don"t report real news and just accept their garbage.
The only way I can see forcing the news outlets to report real news is to hit them in the pocket book by the way of their advertiser"s.
If you are watching CNN or FOX and a commercial comes on go to that advertiser"s web site and tell them that as long as they don"t report the news you will not be buying their product.
This doesn"t have to be true but just the threat of not buying their products will provoke a response.
It"s all about money and if you threaten to take a way their money we can force them to do a better job.
One point that seems to be lost here is the fact that none of the major news outlets have reported on this report, not CNN, FOX, MSNBC, ect. You cannot find any mention of it anyware.
Congress will not do anything if people don't know about it and complain and poeple won't complain if they don't know.
We all complain that the major news outlets don't report real news and just accept the garbage they feed us.
The only way that I can see to get the news outlets to report on real news is to hit them in the pocket book.
Poeple who are upset at the lack of reporting from CNN, FOX, and the rest of them need to go to thier advertiser's and let them know that as long as they don't report real news you will not be buying thier products.
This dosen't have to be true but the threat of not buying thier products will have an effect on the advertiser's.
So if you see a commercial on FOX go to that advertiser's web site and tell them as long as FOX dosen't report real news you will not be buying thier product.
Remembering the good old Clinton Years 73% approval rating
Mrs. Hilary Clinton portrayed falsely in some of the democratic and independent leaning electorate as a neo-con, a baker and a liar.
Nothing could be farther from the truth. The Clinton administration worked vigorously promoting policies of peace in Northern Ireland, the Middle East and Ex-Yugoslavia, while here at home we enjoyed general peace and prosperity.
We enjoyed strong friendships in Europe and around the world as we worked in partnership on peace and an environmental policy such as Kyoto.
She has been portrayed as a liar, as she valiantly went to visit our brave American troops on their peace keeping missions in Bosnia. At a time, when there was tremendous tension and in a place where atrocities a were committed short while earlier. Our brave troops and our diplomats, with effective leadership made a positive difference in this war torn part of the world.
Hilary Clinton is portrayed as having baked and visited while First Lady, but this is very inconsistent with her education and her interest in policy and politics. Bill did tell voters they were getting two for one, so we can be led to believe that she was instrumental, or at the very least garnered some experience from it. Actually she probably started getting her experience in the Governors mansion in Arkansas.
Mc Cain Democrat
So you would vote for McCain and the Republican thugs who villianize the Clintons and distort the Clinton legacy far worse than any Dem or Independent could, who stole the White House in 2000 on the theme that they were going to resort "honesty and integrity" to the White House and gave us George W. Bush, the worst president in modern history of this nation?!?! And you don't yet realize that McCain will simply continue the disastrous policies of George W. Bush and won't advocate any of the major causes that Hillary Clinton stands for like universal health care?!?
I'm an independent and at one time was a huge McCain admirer and would've voted for him had he won the Republican nomination in 2000 - no, I never voted for Bush. But the McCain of 2000 no longer exists, having sold his soul to the neo-cons of the Republican party. So to support him over Obama in 2008 is just plain idiocy when Obama is closer on policy to Clinton than McCain will ever be.
Please don't become agitated by this poser, this self-proclaimed former Clinton supporter. He/she never was. This is just another troll pretending to be a higher life form, a Democrat, when in fact it is a Repuglican trying to sow the seeds of discontent. Nothing to see here. Let's build a better world together.
So, uh, what will it take for congress to do its duty?
Don't you all realize that no one in the Bush administration is ever going to pay for their crimes in office. Bush will simply issue a presidential pardon for each and every one of this rotten bunch before he leaves office. It'll be for "crimes they may have committed" just like Ford's pardon of Nixon. When the Democrats (and the people) complain, the Republicans will invoke Clinton's pardon of known criminal, Marc Rich. Congress has tried to limit the President's power of pardon several times in the past and failed. The only way to prevent this from happening would be to remove Bush and Cheney from office, via impeachment, before the pardons are issued. It's possible that one or another of them might be seized outside the country and tried for torture in the World Court. That will never happen in the U. S., however, because they wrote it into the Military Commissions Act (that the Republican's pushed through just before they lost their majority) that no U. S. judge or court may hear allegations of torture against anyone in the government. Perhaps if enough citizens get angry and fired up about the prospect of the Bush and his cronies just walking away to a future of high-paid speaking engagements and cushy board of director jobs, something can be done to prevent it...but I doubt it.
You are so right, Arianna. There is nothing more important than this story right now.
Not to nitpick, but:
"we all know what it's called when someone presents something as fact that's directly contradicted by the evidence. A lie."
Actually, what you describe is merely being flat wrong. A lie is when the speaker KNOWS that what he/she is saying is directly contradicted by facts and says it anyway.
Nancy and Henry are just as negligent as Mukasey is, neither is willing to do their job! The point is not that impeachment hurts the democrats in november it is that the constitution has been violated and this shld be addressed. Our constitution shld be held in higher regard than this. I have much respect for Kucinich. He is a soldier.
believe the assumption is that, in this case, the ones who were presenting something as "fact" had access to all of the evidence and therefore "knew" that what was being spoken was contradicted by the evidence.
Yes, that is the assumption. And it's what I believe. But what BushCo are hiding behind is the "We didn't know!" "Faulty intelligence, faulty intelligence" line.
Still think I was correct to correct the sentence.
Kucinich has delivered 35 articles of impeachment for Bush and Wexler has already delivered articles of impeachment on Cheney .
The rest of the Bush administration who were accompices to the lies that brought us into this war are also under investigation.
If Pelosi doesn't move on this she should be held accountable as well .
Why should we the tax payers pay for Bush,Cheney and any of the others retirement and secret service after retirement benefits when they never should have been allowed to continue with their corruption of our constitution ,civil rights etc. and should have been impeached long ago.
I say throw them out and don't give them secret service protection or retirement benefits ! In fact send them to Guantanimo prison and put Muslim guards at their cells .Give them a taste of their own medicine !
how do you punish a rich man? make him poor.
can, if criminal charges don't work, civil charges be brought against the members of the bush administration responsible?
i believe the "pants on fire" stigma is not a sufficient deterrent to future bad behavior....
d
Amen and amen...they would rather not risk there political careers by doing their jobs? What kind of twisted logic is that; in order to keep our jobs, we are now going to 'fail to execute' the constitutional obligation we have sworn. That's what Bush is being charged with, and they are just as guilty of NOT upholding their oath of office. Vote them out!
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Posted June 9, 2008 | 08:00 PM (EST)