Celebrated by the LA Times this Memorial Day Weekend: Bush was twice warned of Iraq challenges

Holy shit!  You mean he was warned twice that it mightn’t be easy to bring security, democracy and prosperity to Iraq?

These warnings were distributed to senior officials with daily access to President Bush and others at the very top of the administration, the report states.

To officials?!  At the very top?!  Of the administration?!

Hey, what about Congress?  Story doesn’t say.  Whom to turn to for a quote?

Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), said the report demonstrated that “the intelligence community gave the administration plenty of warning about the difficulties we would face if the decision was made to go to war.”

He added: “These dire warnings were widely distributed at the highest levels of government, and it’s clear that the administration didn’t plan for any of them.”

But could he be the same person referred to in Wikipedia?

In 2002, Senator Rockefeller made an official visit to several Middle East countries, during which he discussed his personal views regarding United States military intentions with the leaders of those countries. In October of that year, Senator Rockefellar strongly expressed his concern for Saddam’s alleged Weapons of Mass Destruction program while addressing the U.S. Senate,

“There has been some debate over how “imminent” a threat Iraq poses. I do believe that Iraq poses an imminent threat, but I also believe that after September 11, that question is increasingly outdated. It is in the nature of these weapons, and the way they are targeted against civilian populations, that documented capability and demonstrated intent may be the only warning we get. To insist on further evidence could put some of our fellow Americans at risk. Can we afford to take that chance? We cannot!”

Could he be the same man whose family *GATHP!* made a fortune addicting America to the oil that would, in the future, embroil it in the Middle East?

There are many, many self-serving, two-faced assholes (sorry to mix metaphors that way, but at least both components are somatic) in Congress, but Jay makes a strong claim for Premier Senate Asshole.  Tell us, PSA, how you advised the Bush Administration regarding the occupation.

In November 2005 during a TV interview, Rockefeller stated: “I took a trip…in January of 2002 to Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Syria, and I told each of the heads of state that it was my view that George Bush had already made up his mind to go to war against Iraq, that that was a predetermined set course that had taken shape shortly after 9/11.” Rockefeller noted that this was his personal opinion, and that he was not privy to any confidential information indicating that such action was planned. On October 11 of that year, he was one of 77 Senators who voted for the Iraq Resolution authorizing the Iraq invasion.

Oh.  Well, that explains everything.

The Senate committee approved the release of its report by a vote of 10-5. Republican Sens. Olympia Snowe of Maine and Chuck Hagel of Nebraska joined the Democratic majority in supporting its publication.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), a member of the panel, praised the compilation of the cautions circulated by the intelligence community but said the report should have critiqued more thoroughly how the assessments were handled within the administration.

So, it was bipartisan.  Thanks, LA Times, for another stellar example of agitprop thinly disguised as reporting!  Unfortunately, you are hemorrhaging readership much faster than you can cause Bush to hemorrhage support.  He’s got a year and a half.  Think you’ll outlast him?

UPDATE: Mahablog drops the gauntlet

Real American heroes.  Bloggers?  Notsomuch.

UPDATE x2: Suddenly my comments are being held for moderation over there.  Here, kitty kitty.

“Yeah? What information was Bush privy to that Congress didn’t have? What part of advice and consent was missing, if any? Is there any defense for the tendentiousness of the LA Times article? Is there any defense for the Janus-faced mendacity of Jay Rockefeller? Is it or is it not true that the previous administration stated that Saddam had to be brought to heel one way or another? Did or did not Al Gore say so? Did or did not John Kerry say so? Did or did not Senator Clinton say so?

Bite me.”

***

“Mr. Collins: You ask, I answer.

For the intelligence Bush had that Congress didn’t, see this, this, and this, just for starters. You really need to give up that howler; you’re just embarrassing yourself.

Since Congress didn’t get the truth, they couldn’t really give “advice and consent” could they? This would also explain the “Janus-faced mendacity of Jay Rockefeller.” The boy was fool enough to believe the Bushies. At least he’s wised up; you’ve got a ways to go, I see.

The “tendentiousness of the LA Times article” exists only in your head.

As for,

Is it or is it not true that the previous administration stated that Saddam had to be brought to heel one way or another? Did or did not Al Gore say so? Did or did not John Kerry say so? Did or did not Senator Clinton say so?

“One way or another” was through sanctions, flyovers, unmanned drones, and occasional air attacks, among other things. They didn’t start a bleeping stupid war. Throughout the 1990s after the Gulf War, Saddam was contained in Iraq. He was still contained in Iraq when the Bush ordered the invasion.

Next time you have any questions, use google. I’m not a bleeping encyclopedia.”

***

Thanks, Maha!

Link 1

“Much of the contents of the September 21 PDB were later incorporated, albeit in a slightly different form, into a lengthier CIA analysis examining not only Al Qaeda’s contacts with Iraq, but also Iraq’s support for international terrorism. Although the CIA found scant evidence of collaboration between Iraq and Al Qaeda, the agency reported that it had long since established that Iraq had previously supported the notorious Abu Nidal terrorist organization, and had provided tens of millions of dollars and logistical support to Palestinian groups, including payments to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers.”

Which of the contents, and to whom disclosed?

“In their presentation, the naval reserve briefers excluded the fact that the FBI and CIA had developed evidence that the alleged meeting had never taken place, and that even the Czechs had disavowed it.”

To my knowledge, the Czechs have never disavowed this.  I would like chapter and verse.  I have Czech sources with whom I can double check, as it were.

“This same antipathy toward the CIA led to the events that are the basis of Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald’s investigation of the leak of CIA officer Valerie Plame’s identity, according to several former and current senior officials.”

Bwahahahaha!  Like Larry Johnson?

“Without Cheney’s knowledge, his query led to the CIA-sanctioned trip to Niger by former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, Plame’s husband, to investigate the allegations. Wilson reported back to the CIA that the allegations were most likely not true.”

Wait.  Wasn’t it Cheney’s office that requested the info, before Yellowcake Joe was tapped (at the express non-suggestion of his wife)?  And did lying Joe’s report debunk the allegation?  His debriefers didn’t think so.

Link 2

“President Bush called Democratic critics of how he sold the Iraq war to the world “irresponsible” five times Thursday during a brief news conference in South Korea.”

Well, that opening sentence really bolsters one’s sense of the evenhandedness of what’s going to follow.  “Sold” is the word that ought to be in quotation marks.  Caveat emptor.

“The Senate committee concluded that none of the intelligence analysts it interviewed said they were pressured to change their conclusions on weapons of mass destruction or on Iraq’s links to terrorism.

But the committee’s findings were hardly bipartisan. Committee Democrats said in additional comments to the panel’s July 2004 report that U.S. intelligence agencies produced analyses and the key prewar assessment of Iraq’s illicit weapons in “a highly pressurized climate.”

And the committee found that after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, analysts were under pressure to avoid missing credible threats, and as a result they were “bold and assertive” in making terrorist links.”

Poor babies.  There was a climate of stress in the aftermath of 9/11?  Gosh.

“Yet eight months after the report was published, Bush told the nation that “we’ve learned that Iraq has trained al-Qaida members in bomb-making and poisons and gases.”

This has been pretty well corroborated by internal Iraqi documents and the testimony of captured al-Qaeda.

“Meanwhile, lawmakers didn’t have access to intelligence products that may have been more temperate than what they got, even after they investigated the prewar intelligence assessment. For instance, the Director of Central Intelligence refused to give the Senate committee a copy of a paper drafted by the CIA’s Near East and Southeast Asia Office examining Iraq’s links to terrorism.

Lawmakers didn’t see the main document concerning Iraq and WMD – the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate – until three days before their vote authorizing war. The White House ordered the NIE compiled only after lawmakers, including the then-chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Sen. Bob Graham, D-Fla., demanded it.”

And Bush forced them to vote 3 days after they got the info, how?  Personally, I think that even with only 3 days, I would have forced myself to read it carefully, but perhaps that’s too much for Congresscritters.

“Bush is correct in saying that many intelligence agencies, particularly in Europe, believed that Saddam was hiding some weapons of mass destruction capabilities – not necessarily weapons. But they didn’t agree with other U.S. assessments about Saddam. Few, with the exception of Great Britain, argued that Iraq was an imminent threat, or that it had any link to Islamic terrorism, much less the Sept. 11 attacks.

France, backed by several other nations, argued that much more time and effort should have been given to weapons inspections in Iraq before war was launched.”

And?  Now that Chirac’s out of office, perhaps we can find out a bit about his relations with Oil-for-Food?

“Bush is correct in saying that many intelligence agencies, particularly in Europe, believed that Saddam was hiding some weapons of mass destruction capabilities – not necessarily weapons. But they didn’t agree with other U.S. assessments about Saddam. Few, with the exception of Great Britain, argued that Iraq was an imminent threat, or that it had any link to Islamic terrorism, much less the Sept. 11 attacks.

France, backed by several other nations, argued that much more time and effort should have been given to weapons inspections in Iraq before war was launched.”

“Congress did pass the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998, which stated U.S. support for regime change in Iraq and provided up to $97 million in overt military and humanitarian aid to opposition groups in Iraq.”

*****

“But it didn’t authorize the use of U.S. force against Iraq.

Clinton said his bombing order was based on Iraq’s refusal to comply with weapons inspections, a violation of United Nations Security Council resolutions that ended the 1991 Persian Gulf War.”

Oh, well, then.  That’s not force.

Link 3

Former Sen. Bob Kerrey (D-NE), ex-Senate Intelligence Committee vice chairman: “The president has much more access to intelligence than members of Congress does. Ask any member of Congress. Ask a Republican member of Congress, do you get the same access to intelligence that the president does? Look at these aluminum tube stories that came out the president delivered to the Congress — ‘We believe these would be used for centrifuges.’ — didn’t deliver to Congress the full range of objections from the Department of Energy experts, nuclear weapons experts, that said it’s unlikely they were for centrifuges, more likely that they were for rockets, which was a pre-existing use. The president has much more access to intelligence than any member of Congress.” [10/7/04]

Um.  Look at the date.

Ranking minority member on the Senate Intelligence Committee Jay Rockefeller (D-WV): “[P]eople say, ‘Well, you know, you all had the same intelligence that the White House had.’ And I’m here to tell you that is nowhere near the truth. We not only don’t have, nor probably should we have, the Presidential Daily Brief. We don’t have the constant people who are working on intelligence who are very close to him. They don’t release their — an administration which tends not to release — not just the White House, but the CIA, DOD [Department of Defense], others — they control information. There’s a lot of intelligence that we don’t get that they have.” [11/04/05]

Um.  Look at the date.  Can we find out what was included in the Daily Briefings that wasn’t shared with Congress?

What did they rely on from Chalabi & other “outside sources”?

Bullshit.  Occam’s razor, man.  Bush & company were operating out of the same kind of confirmation bias that the left does when it publishes crap like this.  The only difference is they’re not blaming everybody else about it.