June 7, 2008
Intelligence [sic] Committee Re****t
by Gordon Prather
http://www.antiwar.com/prather/?articleid=3D12956
The Senate Intelligence [sic] Committee has finally deemed it safe to
release its re****t on "whether public Statements and re****ts and
testimony regarding Iraq by US Government officials made between the
Gulf War period and the commencement of Operation Iraqi Freedom were
substantiated by intelligence information."
What "intelligence information"?
Well, recall that in the summer of 2002, President Bush ordered
Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet to prepare a National
Intelligence Estimate he could use to "justify" to Congress the war of
aggression against Iraq which, we now know =96 thanks to the Downing
Street Memos =96 he had already decided to launch.
By law, the constitutional powers of the president to "introduce
United States Armed Forces into hostilities" are limited, and can only
be exercised "pursuant to; (a) a declaration of war, (b) specific
statutory authorization, or (c) a national emergency created by attack
upon the United States, its territories or possessions, or its armed
forces."
So, DCI Tenet hurriedly prepared the "slam dunk" NIE on "Iraq's
Continuing Programs for Weapons of Mass Destruction," which was
central to gullible Congresspersons passing, within days of its
receipt, the "Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq"
Resolution of 16 October, 2002.
Years later, the March 2005 re****t of the Commission on Intelligence
contained a scathing chapter on the =91intelligence' Bush used to obtain
his Congressional "authorization."
"As war loomed, the U.S. intelligence community was charged with
telling policymakers what it knew about Iraq's nuclear, biological and
chemical weapons programs. The community's best *****sments were set
out in an October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate, or NIE, a
summation of the community's views."
"These *****sments were all wrong."
[And in its first re****t, the Senate Intelligence Committee had come
to similar conclusions.]
Now, that "specific statutory authorization" provided by Congress was
conditional.
It was contingent upon Bush first pursuing a "diplomatic" or "peaceful
solution" through the United Nations. If diplomacy "failed" to
"disarm" Saddam Hussein, Bush was then to seek a new Security Council
resolution, authorizing the use of "all necessary means," including
force.
If =96 and only if =96 Bush could then get such a new Security Council
resolution, was he authorized to use our armed forces to enforce it.
But, by March, 2003 =96 as a result of months of totally intrusive
inspections, ordered by UN Security Council, and acceded to by Saddam
Hussein =96 it was obvious to everyone that Saddam was "disarmed" and
did not pose an immediate threat to us or to anyone else.
Nevertheless, on 18 March Bush notified Congress that no "further
diplomatic or other peaceful means will adequately protect the
national security of the United States from the continuing threat
posed by Iraq."
That was a lie, of course, and by then, Congresspersons knew =96 or
should have known =96 that it was.
However, this just-issued Committee re****t focuses on five major Bush-
Cheney Administration policy speeches;
VP Cheney, 26 August, 2002, VFW National Convention
President Bush, 12 September, 2002, UN General Assembly
President Bush, 7 October, 2002, Cincinnati, Ohio
President Bush, 28 January, 2003, State of the Union Address
Secretary of State Powell, 5 February, 2003, UN Security Council
The Committee essentially confines itself to re****ting on the extent
to which those speeches accurately reflected the consensus =96 or lack
of it =96 contained within the classified NIE of October 2002.
But, surely, that is not the issue.
Even when Cheney gave that 26 August 2002 =91kickoff' speech, declaring
authoritatively that Saddam Hussein had reconstituted his nuclear
weapons program, the "best intelligence" was to the contrary.
Way back in 1998, Mohamed ElBaradei, Director-General of the
International Atomic Energy Agency, first re****ted to the UN Security
Council that -
"there are no indications that there remains in Iraq any physical
capability for the production of weapon-usable nuclear material of any
practical significance."
Furthermore, ElBaradei's inspectors has visited Iraq several months
prior to Cheney's speech to verify that their IAEA seals and locks
were still intact, and that no attempts had been made to
"reconstitute" those capabilities.
So, how could Cheney make that outrageous claim in August? Well, quoth
Cheney, "ElBaradei is simply wrong."
Then, in November, 2002, Saddam Hussein acceded to a Security Council
request to allow the return of all UN inspectors.
The IAEA re****ted to the UN Security Council on 27 January 2003 that
"In the first eight weeks of inspections, the IAEA has visited all
sites identified by it or by States as significant. No evidence of
ongoing prohibited nuclear or nuclear-related activities at those
locations has been detected to date during these inspections =85 Nor
have the inspections thus far revealed signs of new nuclear facilities
or direct sup****t to any nuclear activity."
Then, on 7 March, 2003, ElBaradei formally re****ted to the Security
Council that
"After three months of intrusive inspections, we have to date found no
evidence or plausible indication of the revival of a nuclear weapon
program in Iraq."
Chairman Hans Blix made a similar, but somewhat less definitive,
re****t on his inspectors' searches for chemical and biological
weapons.
Nevertheless, on March 17, 2003, Bush falsely told us;
"Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt
that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most
lethal weapons ever devised.
And, the next day, Bush notified Congress that he had "determined"
that " reliance by the United States on further diplomatic and
peaceful means" will "not adequately protect the United States against
the continuing threat posed by Iraq."
The day after that, Bush announced that we and our "allies" had
already begun the invasion of Iraq.
"The people of the United States and our friends and allies will not
live at the mercy of an outlaw regime that threatens the peace with
weapons of mass murder."
So, the question for the Committee, then, ought not to have been:
"Did Bush use =96 or misuse =96 that fatally flawed NIE to "build public
sup****t" for his invasion and occupation of Iraq?"
but rather:
"Did Bush deliberately and with malice aforethought launch an invasion
and occupation of Iraq knowing full well that under existing
Congressional Acts and Security Council Resolutions he had no
authority to do so?"
In other words, is Bush a "criminal" under both US and International
law?
On Jun 4, 11:43=A0am, "OrthoNews" <OrthN...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> Party of Defeat
>
> By David Horowitz
> FrontPageMagazine.com | 6/4/2008
>
> Most conversations about the coming elections focus on the question of
whi=
ch
> candidate is most suited to lead the nation as it confronts the
challenges=
> and threats ahead. A better question would be to ask whether there is
one
> party- the Democratic Party -- which has demonstrated in word and deed
tha=
t
> it is unfit to lead the nation in war at all. Criticism of government
poli=
cy
> is essential to a democracy. But in the last five years the Democratic
Par=
ty
> has crossed the line from criticism of war policy to fundamental
sabotage =
of
> the war itself, a position no American party has taken until now.
>
> Starting in July 2003, just three months into the war in Iraq, the
> Democratic National Committee ran a national TV ad whose message was:
"Rea=
d
> his lips: President Bush Deceives the American People. This was the
> beginning of a five-year, unrelenting campaign to persuade Americans and
> their allies that "Bush lied, people died," that the war was
"unnecessary"=
> and "Iraq was no threat." In other words, for five years, the leaders of
t=
he
> Democratic Party have been telling Americans, America's allies and
America=
's
> enemies that their country was an aggressor nation, which had violated
> international law, and was in effect the "bad guy" in the war with the
> Saddam Hussein regime.
>
> The first principle of psychological warfare campaigns is to destroy the
> moral character of the opposing commander-in-chief and discredit his
natio=
n's
> cause. Yet this is a perfect summary of the campaign that has been waged
f=
or
> the length of this war by the entire Democratic Party leader****p, Joe
> Lieberman being an honorable exception who was driven out of his party
as =
a
> result.
>
> The one saving grace for Democrats would be if their charges were true -
i=
f
> they were deceived into sup****ting the war, and if they had turned
against=
> it only because they realized their mistake. But this charge is
demonstrab=
ly
> false.
>
> In fact, the claim that Bush lied in order to dupe Democrats into
sup****ti=
ng
> the war is itself the biggest lie of the war. Every Democratic Senator
who=
> voted for the war had on his or her desk before the vote a 100-page
re****t=
,
> called "The National Intelligence Estimate," which summarized all
America'=
s
> intelligence on Iraq that was used to justify the war. We live in a
> democracy; consequently, the opposition party has access to all our
secret=
s.
> Democrats sit on theSenate Intelligence Committee, which oversees all of
> America's intelligence agencies. If any Democrat on that committee,
> including Senator John Kerry, had requested any intelligence information
> Iraq, he or she would have had that information on his or desk within 24
> hours. The self-justifying claim that Bush lied to hoodwink the
Democrats =
is
> a fraudulent charge with no basis in reality.
>
> The Democrats changed their views on the war for one reason and one
reason=
> alone: In June 2003, a far-left Democrat named Howard Dean was poised to
w=
in
> the Democratic Party presidential nomination by running on the claim
that
> America was the bad guy in the war in Iraq, and he would get us out.
>
> The charge that Iraq was no threat is another false claim of the
Democrati=
c
> attack on America's war to defend itself. Typical of Democratic Party
> leaders, former vice president Al Gore now says that "Iraq posed no
threat=
"
> because it was a "fragile and unstable" nation. But if this were true,
the=
> same argument would apply to Afghanistan on September 10, 2001.
Afghanista=
n
> is half the size of Iraq and a much poorer and unstable nation; it has
no
> oil and its government did not invade two countries and use chemical
weapo=
ns
> on its own citizens as Saddam did. Yet by providing a safe harbor to
> terrorists, Afghanistan made possible the murder of 3,000 Americans in
hal=
f
> an hour and allowed Osama bin Laden to do what the Germans and the
Japanes=
e
> failed to accomplish in six years of the Second World War: kill
Americans =
on
> the American soil. That's why in February 2002, a year before the war in
> Iraq, Al Gore was saying that "Iraq is a virulent threat in a class by
> itself" and that President Bush should "push the limit" to do what was
> necessary to deal with Saddam Hussein.
>
> But the most self-serving and deceptive of the lies told by the
Democratic=
> leader****p is this: you can sup****t the troops and not sup****t the war.
No=
> you can't. You can't tell a 19-year old, who is risking his young life
in
> Fallujah and who is surrounded by terrorists who want to kill him, that
he=
> shouldn't be there in the first place; that he's with the "bad guys" -
the=
> aggressors, the occupiers, who have no moral right to be Iraq. You can't
d=
o
> that and not undermine his morale, encourage his enemies, deprive him of
> allies and put him in danger. And that is exactly what the Democrats
have
> done - and all the Democrats have done - in five years of America's war
to=
> deny the terrorists victory in Iraq. Such a party is unfit to lead this
> nation in war. To place it in a position to do so would be to invite a
> tragedy of epic pro****tions.
>
> ____________
> David Horowitz is the author with Ben Johnson of Party of Defeat: How
> Democrats and Radicals Undermined the War on Terror Before and After
9/11,=
> just published by Spence Publi****ng.
|
