Senate "Report" White-Washes
"Bad Intelligence" Story for the White House
Former
CIA Director Tenet Set Up as "Patsy" as Media Ignore
Real Culprits.
By Mike Hersh
07/10/04: -- Katherine Pfleger Shrader of
the Associated Press reports on the Senate Committee
"Report" that White-Washes the "Bad
Intelligence" Story for the White House. Her take?
"Report: War Rationale Based on CIA Error."
What error did the CIA make? Again from the
AP: "In the unanimously approved report, senators
concluded that the CIA kept key information from its own and
other agencies' analysts; engaged in "group think"
by failing to challenge the assumption that Iraq had weapons
of mass destruction; and allowed President Bush and Secretary
of State Colin Powell to make false statements."
From this, it seems the CIA schemed to
trick Bush and Powell into lying to Americans and the world in order to scare
us if not other nations into attacking Iraq. Is this true? Of
course not. But before we debunk this facile cover story,
let's consider the other key verdict, from the same AP story:
"Following release of the 511-page review Friday, the
panel's top Democrat, West Virginia Sen. Jay Rockefeller, said
three-quarters of senators would not have voted to authorize
the invasion if they had known how weak the intelligence
was."
See: "Report: War Rationale Based on
CIA Error" by Katherine Pfleger Shrader, Associated
Press, July 10, 2004
Bush, Cheney and others evaluated the
"weak" and "bad" CIA intelligence, or
supposedly from the CIA. Then, these two and others rushed to
war.
Didn't the Bush team seek a second opinion
or even a third before claiming they knew Iraq had weapons of
mass destruction? Of course they did.
They ignored warnings from the CIA and
former Bush I Ambassador to Iraq Joe Wilson that
"intelligence" claiming Iraq sought "yellow
cake"
uranium from Africa was wrong. Even Colin
Powell and Condoleezza Rice concluded Iraq represented no
threat to the USA. How is the CIA to blame for buffaloing a
purportedly reluctant warrior Bush and the ostensibly peaceful
Cheney into this rash and tragic mistake?
Consider this report from Mother Jones:
"The reports, virtually all false, of Iraqi weapons and
terrorism ties emanated from an apparatus that began to
gestate almost as soon as the Bush administration took power.
In the very first meeting of the Bush national-security team,
one day after President Bush took the oath of office in
January 2001, the issue of invading Iraq was raised, according
to one of the participants in the meeting -- and officials all
the way down the line started to get the message, long before
9/11. Indeed, the Bush team at the Pentagon hadn't even been
formally installed before Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy secretary
of Defense, and Douglas J. Feith, undersecretary of Defense
for policy, began putting together what would become the
vanguard for regime change in Iraq." The entire
public-relations basis for Bush's rush to war came not from
the CIA, but from a hand-picked flock of Neo-Con chicken
hawks.
See: "The Lie Factory" by Robert
Dreyfuss and Jason Vest in which "Late last year, a
special Mother Jones investigation detailed how, only weeks
after 9/11, the Bush administration set up a secret Pentagon
unit to create the case for invading Iraq [for] the inside
story of how they pushed disinformation and bogus intelligence
and led the nation to war.
Mother Jones magazine, January/February 2004
- http://www.mojones.com/news/feature/2004/01/12_405.html
If the media were left-leaning, this
information would get at least as much attention as Monica
Lewinsky. It didn't and still hasn't. Not even on the day the
Senate Intelligence Committee issued a white-washed
"report" trying to blame the CIA for "bad
intelligence." Unmentioned remains the "Office of
Special Plans" established specifically to massage if not
bypass CIA intelligence to concoct "support" for an
Iraq War planned long before 9/11/01, and plotted in earnest
while the WTC wreckage still smoldered.
The Bush administration rushed into war
killing nearly 1000 Americans in uniform (and counting),
wounding 1000s more, costing 100s of $BILLIONS (again, and
counting) on "bad intelligence." Not just according
to the majority Republican Senate Committee. Also according to
Bush's Secretary of State, the same once-trusted official
designated to make the fabricated case to the UN and the
world. This is one of the stories of the century. Yet all the
networks - broadcast and cable news alike - ignore the real
culprits.
Why would a "liberal media" help
the Bush team blame the CIA and not even mention the OSP? It's
not like no one reported on the OSP. In addition to muck
raking Mother Jones, Seymour Hersh (no relation) reported
about this in-house White House "bad intelligence"
factory in detail:
"[A]ccording to former and present Bush
Administration officials, their operation, which was conceived
by Paul Wolfowitz, the Deputy Secretary of Defense, has
brought about a crucial change of direction in the American
intelligence community. These advisers and analysts, who began
their work in the days after September 11, 2001, have produced
a skein of intelligence reviews that have helped to shape
public opinion and American policy toward Iraq. They relied on
data gathered by other intelligence agencies and also on
information provided by the Iraqi National Congress, or I.N.C.,
the exile group headed by Ahmad Chalabi.
By last fall, the operation rivaled both the
C.I.A. and the Pentagon's own Defense Intelligence Agency, the
D.I.A., as President Bush's main source of intelligence
regarding Iraq's possible possession of weapons of mass
destruction and connection with Al Qaeda. As of last week, no
such weapons had been found. And although many people, within
the Administration and outside it, profess confidence that
something will turn up, the integrity of much of that
intelligence is now in question."
Yes, self-proclaimed national security
expert Richard Cheney and all the other top Bush officials
relied on Ahmad Chalabi for "intelligence." The same
convicted felon Chalabi (Jordanian law) currently suspected of
spying against America for Iran. The Bush team welcomed this
suspected spy into their inner circle and shared with him our
most crucial and sensitive national security secrets. Not
because he offered any real or even plausible information
about Iraq. Just because he eagerly told the Bush team the
lies they wanted to hear and needed to scare America into war.
How is any of this the CIA's fault? How is
this not the fault of Bush, Cheney, Rice, Powell, and Rumsfeld?
Even if the CIA reports were erroneous, the men and women
entrusted with keeping us safe and making sound, essential
decisions exacerbated any CIA errors, rushed into war based on
this, assured us they knew exactly where the Iraqi weapons of
mass destruction were, and got 100s of our troops killed based
on their errors. Bush, Cheney, Rice, Powell, and Rumsfeld all
kept lying. It all worked well while it was just Karl Rove
public relations BS intended to help Republicans win seats in
Congress. Until the attacks began and Americans started dying.
Americans are still dying and top level Bush administration
officials are still lying. Where is the accountability?
It's no mystery how all this happened.
Former Bush Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill confirms the Bush
administration planned to attack Iraq long before 9/11/01.
Greg Palast uncovered evidence of detailed plans to seize and
sell Iraqi assets to Washington insiders and Bush campaign
contributors drafted mere weeks after Bush's tainted
inauguration.
All these plans were in the works, and
Former Bush Anti-Terror Czar Richard Clarke testified under
oath that Bush, Rumsfeld and others pressed him to blame Iraq
and Saddam for the 9/11 attacks even though Clarke told them
repeatedly al Qaeda was to blame. So Bush fired Clarke, made a
half-hearted stab at Osama bin Laden with 11,000 troops in
Afghanistan, and sent nearly 200,000 American to kill and die
in Iraq.
This is especially damning: "According
to the Pentagon adviser, Special Plans was created in order to
find evidence of what Wolfowitz and his boss, Defense
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, believed to be true - that Saddam
Hussein had close ties to Al Qaeda, and that Iraq had an
enormous arsenal of chemical, biological, and possibly even
nuclear weapons that threatened the region and, potentially,
the United States." According to the Senate Committee,
none of that was true. See: "SELECTIVE INTELLIGENCE"
by SEYMOUR M. HERSH, Donald Rumsfeld has his own special
sources. Are they reliable? The New Yorker Magazine,
2003-05-12, http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?030512fa_fact.
Unfortunately the Senate chose to blame the
CIA and ignore the Bush administration's and OSP's active role
in this willful deception - at least until after the November
2 election. How convenient. Now reconsider the Senate
"report" and the eager beaver media cover-up in lieu
of real coverage.
Bush and most of his top-level national
security team are guilty of manufacturing lies about Iraqi
nuclear and other weapons programs to frighten Americans into
backing his war. Bush himself certified dishonest
"intelligence" under oath in his presentation to the
Congress.
This remains largely unreported, left to
small magazines and muckraking books. Not even Michael Moore's
Fahrenheit 9-11 mentioned these facts, and of course they have
never seen the light of a cathode ray tube.
ABC, CBS, NBC and the "Clinton News
Network" just blithely blame the CIA and sit back as Bush
and Cheney question others' national security credentials.
Anyone who considers the media "liberal" is raving.
Bush is only in office now - getting away with his selection
rather than election, and not impeached for high crimes before
and after seizing office - because the corporate media
ardently protect Bush and his corrupt, inept administration.
All while the mass media prevent the public from knowing the
truth.
Mike Hersh is a writer, lawyer and
activist living in the Washington, DC area. He graduated from
Cornell University and the Washington College of Law, founded
two small businesses, and then became a full-time writer and
activist. He is the webmaster of MikeHersh.com and several
political online communities.
By Mike Hersh (c) 2004 ( MikeHersh@MikeHersh.com
)
