A thread especially for my friend RP re: al Qaeda & Sadd

[Tom Araya]

I'm just posting facts w/o editorializing. But it seems the U.S. Senate agrees with me:

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid= ... M&refer=us (http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=aZEASPflbb2M&refer=us)

[Tom Araya]

I should make one comment, because there is a false assertion in the article:

"It's worth noting,'' Snow added, "that in 2002 and 2003 members of both parties got a good look at the intelligence we had, and they came to the very same conclusions."

First, Snow is attempting to spread the blame & deflect attention away from what his boss did wrong. But the fact is, members of Congress did not get to see the same information that was seen by the administration. It is now well-known that the administration cherry-picked what was shown to the intelligence committees in both houses of Congress. And that is a fact. Google the name of the CIA's national intelligence officer for the Near East and South Asia from 2000 to 2005 Paul Pillar and the journal "Foreign Affairs" for starters.

[RP-in-Nebraska]

I saw this. I will need to read the actual text from the report instead of somebody's quotes and bullet points before I can offer an educated and informed response.

An observation: it seems to contradict some statements in the 9-11 commission report.

[legrider]

Tom, I think you are offering an opinion on what Snow is trying to do. Stick to the facts!

[mconn]

It is not well known that the Bush administration kept any information from congress. That is a load of bunk. Go ahead and site your hash smoking internut sources but they got the same information, and that is a 100% concrete fact.

[Tom Araya]

You know what, Mr. Conn, I consistently cite my sources. If they contradict the opiate haze through which you look (I believe it's an alternate universe somewhere in the neighborhood of Wildwood), then it must be (in your opinion) a conspiracy. I purposely withheld my sources this time because I fully expected your response. So, I must insist, for once, that you actually cite SOMETHING besides your the stuff you hear from Rush & on FAUX News as the source of anything you think is a fact.

And maybe you should get out of West County once in awhile & take a look at the real world. . .

[Tom Araya]

More facts:

The White House propaganda blitz was launched on September 7, 2002, at a Camp David press conference. British Prime Minister Tony Blair stood side by side with President Bush. Together, they declared that evidence from a report published by the UN International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) showed that Iraq was "six months away" from building nuclear weapons.

"I don't know what more evidence we need," said Bush.

Actually, any evidence would help----there was no such IAEA report. But at the time, few mainstream American journalists questioned the leaders' outright lies. Instead, the following day, "evidence" popped up in the Sunday New York Times (so much for their liberal bias) under the twin byline of Michael Gordon and Judith Miller. "More than a decade after Saddam Hussein agreed to give up weapons of mass destruction," they stated with authority, "Iraq has stepped up its quest for nuclear weapons and has embarked on a worldwide hunt for materials to make an atomic bomb, Bush administration officials said today."

In a revealing example of how the story amplified administration spin, the authors included the phrase soon to be repeated by President Bush and all his top officials: "The first sign of a 'smoking gun,' [administration officials] argue, may be a mushroom cloud."

Just the facts, no spin.

Can you do the same?

[Tom Araya]

Thanks to TDC Dad for this story:

WASHINGTON - Saddam Hussein regarded al-Qaida as a threat rather than a possible ally, a Senate report says, contradicting assertions President Bush has used to build support for the war in Iraq.
Released Friday, the report discloses for the first time an October 2005 CIA assessment that before the war, Saddam's government "did not have a relationship, harbor or turn a blind eye toward" al-Qaida operative Abu Musab al-Zarqawi or his associates.

Saddam told U.S. officials after his capture that he had not cooperated with Osama bin Laden even though he acknowledged that officials in his government had met with the al-Qaida leader, according to FBI summaries cited in the Senate report.

"Saddam only expressed negative sentiments about bin Laden," Tariq Aziz, the Iraqi leader's top aide, told the FBI.

The report also faults intelligence gathering in the lead-up to the 2003 invasion.

As recently as an Aug. 21 news conference, Bush said people should "imagine a world in which you had Saddam Hussein" with the capacity to make weapons of mass destruction and "who had relations with Zarqawi."

Democrats contended that the administration continues to use faulty intelligence, including assertions of a link between Saddam's government and the recently killed al-Zarqawi, to justify the war in Iraq.

They also said, in remarks attached to Friday's Senate Intelligence Committee document, that former CIA Director George Tenet had modified his position on the terrorist link at the request of administration policymakers.

Republicans said the document, which compares prewar intelligence with post-invasion findings on Iraq's weapons and on terrorist groups, broke little new ground. And they said Democrats were distorting it for political purposes.

A previous report in 2004 made clear the intelligence agencies' "massive failures," said Sen. Kit Bond, R-Mo., a member of the committee. "Yet to make a giant leap in logic to claim that the Bush administration intentionally misled the nation or manipulated intelligence is simply not warranted."

White House press secretary Tony Snow said the report was "nothing new."

A second part of the report concluded that false information from the Iraqi National Congress, an anti-Saddam group led by then-exile Ahmed Chalabi, was used to support key U.S. intelligence assessments on Iraq.

It said U.S. intelligence agents put out numerous red flags about the reliability of INC sources but the intelligence community made a "serious error" and used one source who concocted a story that Iraq was building mobile biological weapons laboratories.

The report also said that in 2002 the National Security Council directed that funding for the INC should continue "despite warnings from both the CIA, which terminated its relationship with the INC in December 1996, and the DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency), that the INC was penetrated by hostile intelligence services, including the Iranians."

According to the report, postwar findings indicate that Saddam "was distrustful of al-Qaida and viewed Islamic extremists as a threat to his regime."

It said al-Zarqawi was in Baghdad from May until late November 2002. But "postwar information indicates that Saddam Hussein attempted, unsuccessfully, to locate and capture al-Zarqawi and that the regime did not have a relationship with, harbor, or turn a blind eye toward Zarqawi."

In June 2004, Bush defended Vice President **** Cheney's assertion that Saddam had "long-established ties" with al-Qaida. "Zarqawi is the best evidence of connection to al-Qaida affiliates and al-Qaida," the president said.
The report concludes that postwar findings do not support a 2002 intelligence report that Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear program, possessed biological weapons or had ever developed mobile facilities for producing biological warfare agents.

"The report is a devastating indictment of the Bush-Cheney administration's unrelenting, misleading and deceptive attempts to convince the American people that Saddam Hussein was linked with al-Qaida," said Sen. Carl Levin (news, bio, voting record), D-Mich., a member of the committee.

Levin and Sen. Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia, the top Democrat on the panel, said Tenet told the committee last July that in 2002 he had complied with an administration request "to say something about not being inconsistent with what the president had said" about the Saddam-terrorist link.

They said that on Oct. 7, 2002, the same day Bush gave a speech speaking of such a link, the CIA had sent a declassified letter to the committee saying it would be an "extreme step" for Saddam to assist Islamist terrorists in attacking the United States.

They said Tenet acknowledged to the committee that subsequently issuing a statement that there was no inconsistency between the president's speech and the CIA viewpoint was "the wrong thing to do."

Committee Chairman Pat Roberts, R-Kan., said the mistakes of prewar intelligence have long been known and "the additional views of the committee's Democrats are little more than a rehashing of the same unfounded allegations they've used for over three years."

The panel report is Phase II of an analysis of prewar intelligence on Iraq. The first phase, issued in July 2004, focused on the CIA's failings in its estimates of Iraq's weapons program.

The second phase had been delayed as Republicans and Democrats fought over what information should be declassified and how far the committee should delve into the question of whether policymakers may have manipulated intelligence to make the case for war.

Committee member Ron Wyden, D-Ore., said he planned to ask for an investigation into the amount of information remaining classified. He said, "I am particularly concerned it appears that information may have been classified to shield individuals from accountability."

[Tom Araya]

Again, this is a Republican report. No spin, just the facts. Can you do the same?

[Tom Araya]

Tom, I think you are offering an opinion on what Snow is trying to do. Stick to the facts!

It's not an opinion, it's an inference based on facts.

[Tom Araya]

It is not well known that the Bush administration kept any information from congress. That is a load of bunk. Go ahead and site your hash smoking internut sources but they got the same information, and that is a 100% concrete fact.

I eagerly await your cited sources.

[RP-in-Nebraska]

The White House propaganda blitz ......

"evidence" popped up in the Sunday New York Times (so much for their liberal bias)

In a revealing example of how the story amplified administration spin

Just the facts, no spin.

The above 3 sentences ARE opinions and spin - an obvious interjection of bias into what you claim as a merely facts.

Again, I say, I would like to read the actual report because the things being quoted seem to contradict earlier reports from the senate intelligence committee.

[Tom Araya]

[quote="Tom Araya":a885e]
The White House propaganda blitz ......

"evidence" popped up in the Sunday New York Times (so much for their liberal bias)

In a revealing example of how the story amplified administration spin

Just the facts, no spin.

The above 3 sentences ARE opinions and spin - an obvious interjection of bias into what you claim as a merely facts.
[/quote:a885e]

The fact that the White House engages in propaganda is an irrefutable fact: ""You have to keep repeating things to catapult the propaganda" --George W. Bush (I could also cite the reports of the administration placing faulty stories, but W.'s quote more than says it all.)

W.'s claim of a "smoking gun" and "mushroom cloud" were in fact spin, because we now know that the knew it wasn't true. The story did in fact amplify the spin, that is also a fact.

Again, I repeat, just the facts, no spin. :D

Where's your cited refutation, RP? I keep throwing out facts, all you can do is attempt "spin." :lol:

[RP-in-Nebraska]

Again, I say, I would like to read the actual report because the things being quoted seem to contradict earlier reports from the senate intelligence committee.

[Tom Araya]

So look it up. . .it's online.

[oldtimer]

"I did not have sexual relations with that woman!"

[RP-in-Nebraska]

So look it up. . .it's online.

Couldn't find it. Do you have a link? (No, SGA, not THAT kind of "link").

[Tom Araya]

Here ya go!

http://intelligence.senate.gov/phaseiiaccuracy.pdf

[RP-in-Nebraska]

I read a good portion of text. One thing to note is that it mentioned the October, 2002 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) several times as the primary source of information. The Intelligence community provided the information for this report and the intelligence committees endorsed it and signed off on it. So far, all this report does is to reiterate the failure of the intelligence community during the pre-war stages. It is not an "indictment" of the Bush Administration.

The purpose of this report is to examine pre-war intelligence assessments to determine whether they were accurate, regardless of whether they were reasonable or substantiated by intelligence reporting available at the time.

http://www.fas.org/irp/cia/product/iraq-wmd.html

http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2003_cr/h072103.html

[Tom Araya]

So far, all this report does is to reiterate the failure of the intelligence community during the pre-war stages. It is not an "indictment" of the Bush Administration.


Then apparently you missed the part of the report that states that prior to the war Saddam's government “did not have a relationship, harbor or turn a blind eye toward” al-Qaeda operative Abu Musab al-Zarqawi or his associates. It was this link that Bush et al played up continuously. It is this non-existent link that the report "indicts" Bush et al for saying DID exist.

Yesterday, Cheney was on "Meet the Press" repeating this lie again. Like W. said, you gotta contiue to catapult that propaganda til it sticks.

[RP-in-Nebraska]

On what page is this found?

Is this written in present tense or in regards to what was positively and absolutely known PRIOR to March, 2003?