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Debunking the Right: The World Did Not See the Iraqi Threat as Bush Did

By Faiz Shakir on Nov 13, 2005 at 1:27 pm

The defenders of the Bush Iraq policy rolled out a new talking point this morning on the Sunday talk shows. That is: the Bush administration wasn’t the only one to get the pre-war intelligence wrong — rather, this was a global failure of intelligence.

Sen. John McCain: “Every intelligence agency in the world, including the Russian, including the French, including the Israeli, all had reached the same conclusion, and that was that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.” [Face the Nation]

Sen. Pat Roberts: “Not only ours but the British, not only that but the French, not only that but the Russians, not only that but the Israelis – this was a worldwide intelligence failure.” [Fox News Sunday]

Former White House Political Director Ken Mehlman: “The UN looked at it, the Germans looked at it, the French looked at it”¦ they all agreed that this guy has WMD.” [Meet the Press]

What the right wants you to believe is that because these intelligence agencies may have believed Saddam had WMD, they also believed that the intelligence rose to the necessary level of justifying military force to invade Iraq. That is entirely false. In fact, many of our friends and allies believed the opposite — that based on the intelligence they had, the threat of Iraq did not rise to the level of justifying immediate force.

FRANCE: President Jacques Chirac: “France is not pacifist. We are not anti-American either. We are not just going to use our veto to nag and annoy the U.S. But we just feel that there is another option, another way, a less dramatic way than war, and that we have to go down that path. And we should pursue it until we have come to a dead end, but that is not the case yet.” [CNN, 3/17/03]

GERMANY: Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer: “The Security Council is now meeting for the third time within a month at ministerial level to discuss the Iraq crisis. This shows the urgency we attach to the disarmament of Iraq and to the threat of war. … Are we really in a situation that absolutely necessitates the ‘ultima ratio’, the very last resort? I think not, because the peaceful means are far from exhausted.” [Statement by Fischer to Security Council, 3/7/03]

RUSSIA: Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov: “What is really in the genuine interests of the world community? Continuing the albeit difficult but clearly fruitful results of the inspectors’ work, or resorting to force, which inevitably will result in enormous loss of life and is fraught with serious and unpredictable consequences for regional and international stability? It is our deep conviction that the possibilities for disarming Iraq through political means do exist. And they really exist. And this cannot but be acknowledged.” [Statement by Ivanov, 3/7/03]

CHINA: Foreign Minister Tang Jiaxuan: “We believe that as long as we stick to the road of political settlement, the goal of destroying Iraq’s WMD could still be obtained. Resolution 1441 did not come by easily. Given the current situation, we need resolve and determination, and more importantly, patience and wisdom.” [Statement by Jiaxuan, 3/7/03]

Security

Sen. Roberts Questions Bush Claim That Congress Saw “Same Intelligence” On Iraq

By ThinkProgress on Nov 13, 2005 at 12:13 pm

On Friday, President Bush claimed that members of Congress who voted for the 2002 Iraq war resolution “had access to the same intelligence” as his administration. ThinkProgress has published information debunking that claim. Our position was backed up this morning by Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Pat Roberts (R-KS).

Appearing on Fox New Sunday, Chris Wallace asked, “What about this question, Sen. Roberts, about whether or not — the fact is you didn’t get the same intelligence. Is that a legitimate concern?”

Roberts acknowledged: “It may be a concern to some extent.”

Of course, Roberts immediately began to offer caveats. He argued, for instance, that “we had the same information on the aluminum tubes at the time we went to war as the time that we took another look and said, whoa, wait a minute, this isn’t adding up.” In fact, it’s not true that Congress had the same information as the White House on aluminum tubes. As the New York Times explained, of the 15 assessments of the tubes sent to Congress, “not one of them” informed readers that experts within the Energy Department believed the tubes could not be used to reconstitute a nuclear weapons program.

But this critical point should not be obscured: President Bush’s statement on Friday was absolute. Either Congress did or did not have the “same intelligence” as the White House prior to the war. This morning, not even Sen. Pat Roberts — who has led efforts to delay and downplay the need for investigating prewar intelligence — would back him up.

Crooks & Liars has video, or read the full transcript: Read more

Politics

More Clues About Bush Involvement In CIA Leak

By Faiz Shakir on Nov 13, 2005 at 5:42 am

The Washington Post’s write-up today of the CIA leak investigation raises more serious questions about the involvement of President Bush and Vice President Cheney. In an article entitled, “Libby May Have Tried to Mask Cheney’s Role,” the Post writes:

In the opening days of the CIA leak investigation in early October 2003, FBI agents working the case already had in their possession a wealth of valuable evidence. There were White House phone and visitor logs, which clearly documented the administration’s contacts with reporters.

And they had something that law enforcement officials would later describe as their “guidebook” for the opening phase of the investigation: the daily, diary-like notes compiled by I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, then Vice President Cheney’s chief of staff, that chronicled crucial events inside the White House in the weeks before the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame was publicly disclosed.

While the article is explicit about the idea that Cheney may have played a larger role in the leak, the tie to Bush is not as apparent. There are at least two damaging pieces of information as they relate to the president.

First, President Bush was stating in early October 2003 that he didn’t “know if we’re going to find out the senior administration official” who leaked Plame’s identity. That statement now deserves greater scrutiny in light of evidence that the White House was presumably in possession of, or at least had knowledge of, a “guidebook” (i.e. Libby’s notes) that gave strong clues as to who leaked.

Second, on October 7, 2003, Bush answered a journalist’s question about the leak by stating, “how many sources have you had that’s leaked information that you’ve exposed or have been exposed? Probably none.” A week later, on October 14, 2003, Libby met with FBI investigators and told them a false story about how he first learned of Plame’s identity from reporters. In a case which would later hinge upon the accounts of reporters — who as Fitzgerald described were “eyewitness[es] to the crime” — it is interesting that Bush would highlight journalists’ historical disinclination for revealing sources. To drive home his point, Bush said to the journalists, “you do a very good job of protecting the leakers.” Was he not-so-subtly suggesting that they continue doing a “very good job”?

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