In This Weeks Episode, We Learn More About
What the Dear Leader Knew Before the War
It is becoming increasingly clear that the cabal, including Bushie, knew in 2002 that the main source for Iraq intel in the leadup to the war was a serial fabricator. It's in today's NYT, and Raw Story, Kos, and countless other sources reported on that piece yesterday:
The New York Times starts to answer the question, with reporter Doug Jehl disclosing the contents of a newly declassified memo apparently passed to him by Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee.It shows that an al-Qaeda official in American custody was identified as a likely fabricator months before the Bush administration began to use his statements as the foundation for its claims that Iraq trained al-Qaeda members to use biological and chemical weapons, according to this Defense Intelligence Agency document from February 2002.
It declared that it was probable that the prisoner, Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, "was intentionally misleading the debriefers" in making claims about Iraqi support for al-Qaeda's work with illicit weapons, Jehl reports.
"The document provides the earliest and strongest indication of doubts voiced by American intelligence agencies about Mr. Libi's credibility," Jehl writes. "Without mentioning him by name, President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Colin L. Powell, then secretary of state, and other administration officials repeatedly cited Mr. Libi's information as `credible' evidence that Iraq was training Al Qaeda members in the use of explosives and illicit weapons.
So Bush knew. It also appears he knew more than has been revealed about Plamegate and Rove's role. Add that to the fact that the Dear [Vice] Leader, whose poll numbers are around 19% and whose aide Scooter was indicted in Plamegate, continues to insist on being the official who determines the level of torture (lots) that so endears us to the Islamic world and replaced Scooter with an aid who authored torture memos and lobbied heavily in favor of torture.
And add to that the revelation that "ghost detainees" are taken to Europe to be tortured and yesterday's report on Brownie-of-the-Week Kenneth Tomlinson's "ghost employees" at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and the depth and sweep of the Dear Leader's criminal enterprise can be seen.
It's time. Your senators must know that they must shut down the Senate a la Harry Reid - Bush, currently throwing a hissy fit because Scalito won't get a hearing until January, must be denied everything until he and the rest of his crooked henchmen confess and resign as appropriate. Enough is enough. Here are all the Senate email addresses - go git 'em.
firedoglake has more here.
tags: george bush dick cheney david addington iraq war on terror impeach bush abu ghraib guantanamo kenneth tomlinson ghost detainees
It's allllllllllll coming out in the wash, ain't it?
I am disgusted as hell.
Posted by: HelenWheels | November 06, 2005 at 10:42 AM
From:
http://counterdeception.blogspot.com/
Still more evidence of administration deception (sigh)
In the current (and previous) drumbeat of right-wing spin, the Bush-Cheney message “justifying” the Iraqi War, that claims no intelligence agencies dissented from the Bush propaganda line, always conspicuously omits two key major facts (as well as misrepresenting many minor ones).
The UN inspectors (the only agency with extensive HUMINT collection with access in Iraq) consistently refused to assert as a positive, or as proven, that Saddam had WMD (other than some short-range missiles)--and as a result the UN inspectors were persistently castigated by the Bush Administration as flat wrong. Recently the Nobel Committee recognized M. El Baradi and the IAEA for their courage and accuracy in consistently debunking the Bush “mushroom cloud” and other WMD mythologies.
The details of the many intelligence agencies’ evidence (now proven wrong, and gradually being shown as discredited at the time) were always mostly secret. The evidence of the UN inspectors (now proven right, and defamed then by the Bush Administration) was always largely public.
Second, the UN Security Council, following the infamous Powell briefing and Bush’s General Assembly plea, did not authorize another war with Iraq, and instead recommended continued monitoring by the UN inspectors.
Consequently, as Kofi Anan has gently suggested, under the UN Charter (an historical creation of the US) the “Coalition’s” invasion of Iraq was then, and still is, illegal--the same crime, in effect, that Saddam committed on Kuwait fifteen years ago.
Rightwing spin-meisters, before the war and now, act as if these inconvenient two facts do not exist.
All of which underscores the point that, even when motives are pure (and in this case they are almost certainly not), worst case decision-making can be as costly (or more so) than a prudent, evidence-based decision.
One is reminded of another empire that made a foolish decision to fight an unneeded war (and paid the price of ultimate disintegration and demise):
"What used to be described as a thoughtless act of aggression was now regarded as the courage one would expect to find...to think of the future and wait was merely another way of saying one was a coward; any idea of moderation was just an attempt to disguise one's unmanly character; ability to understand a question from all sides meant that one was totally unfitted for action." Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War
Those who attend to moral and political philosophy may recognize a direct philosophical line from Plato to Strauss to the NeoCons, and their corresponding respect for truth and the voters and their representatives; a line for which that good soldier, Thucydides, had nothing but unbrided scorn in his day. Other soldiers, in our day, have expressed similar opinions about cabals so inclined.
A modern warrior offered an appropriate warning:
Once upon a time, a mighty king gathered a superb collection of loyal knights. One day, an enthusiastic and powerful knight clad in red armor returned to the king’s castle after months away, the marks of much battle apparent on his armor. The king was pleased with the obvious efforts of the Red Knight and asked him where he had been fighting.
The Red Knight leaned on his sword and proudly said, “My Lord, I have been fighting in the west, laying waste to the enemies of the king!”
The king pondered this, then replied in a puzzled voice, “But good sir knight, I don’t have any enemies in the west.”
The Red Knight straightened up, saluted the king, and said, “Well, sire, you do now.” Rear Admiral James Stavridis, The Tale of the Red Knight
The King today is “We, the People,” and the Red Knights we elected and pay to defend us have provided us with many more enemies.
Posted by: Mark Novak | November 06, 2005 at 03:05 PM