THE PROGRESS REPORT -- Meet the Facts --Bushit's Credibility Gap Grows
americanprogress.org
INTELLIGENCE
Meet the Facts
A day after his Meet the Press interview, President Bush is being panned for a lackluster performance that failed to clarify his position on why the United States went to war in Iraq. Conservative columnist/Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan said Bush's "performance was not impressive," adding "the president seemed tired, unsure and often bumbling, his answers were repetitive, and when he tried to clarify them he tended to make them worse. He did not seem prepared." Former Clinton press secretary Joe Lockhart told CNN this morning that the President offered "the 4th different explanation for the reason we went to war" and people are beginning to become "tired of him making it up as we go." The NYT editorial board said that the American public "needs to know whether the President recognizes he has learned from" his Administration's misuse of intelligence, but his reflections "were far from reassuring...the only clarity in the president's vision appears to be his own perfect sense of self-justification." And the cover of Time Magazine asks a question increasingly on America's mind: "Does Bush Have a Credibility Gap?" American Progress issued a point-by-point analysis of the President's appearance.
QUESTIONS ABOUT INTELLIGENCE COMMISSION: NBC's Tim Russert pressed the President on why the new commission to investigate overhyping of U.S. intelligence will report only after the November elections. Bush replied that this was "because we didn't want it to be hurried" – ignoring the fact that British Prime Minister Tony Blair's similar commission will be reporting in July, during Parliamentary elections. Russert failed to ask Bush why he appointed the panel himself, and yet expects it to be "independent." Russert also did not ask Bush about why the top Republican on the panel is Laurence Silberman, a man who has been criticized for being "a biased judge with a hair-trigger temper and a thinly veiled partisan tint to his opinions." He was the judge who "helped write the decision that overturned the convictions of Iran-Contra figure Oliver North, a pivotal event that undercut the criminal investigation then under way."
NO QUESTIONS ABOUT WHY BUSH IGNORED INTELLIGENCE: Russert never directly asked the President why he was making unequivocal statements after he received intelligence with specific reservations (see this previous edition of the Progress Report for a chronology). Russert did not ask Bush about two major stories on the intelligence controversy. The WP reported (on pg. A17, strangely), "President Bush and his top advisers ignored many of the caveats and qualifiers included in a classified report on Saddam Hussein's weapons." Similarly, the NYT reported that the White House ignored the Defense Intelligence Agency's warning that an Iraqi defector the White House relied on for WMD info was unreliable. Specifically, a classified "fabrication notification" about the defector was "repeatedly overlooked, according to three senior intelligence officials." Former U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix said all of this happened because the Administration's intent was "to dramatise [intelligence], just as the vendors of some merchandise are trying to increase and exaggerate the importance of what they have." He said, "From politicians and our leaders in the western world I think we expect more than that, a bit more sincerity."
A QUESTION OF INTERNATIONAL CREDIBILITY: Russert asked Bush how the world will believe the U.S. after the failure to find WMD. And while Bush deflected the question, the inquiry was on target considering U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan yesterday "said U.S. failure to uncover WMD in Iraq has heightened international skepticism over the quality of American intelligence and may complicate efforts to use it in the future to build a case for action against outlaw regimes."
DOING A U-TURN ON THE 9/11 COMMISSION: Bush made a point of saying that he has "given extraordinary cooperation with Chairmen Kean and Hamilton" of the 9/11 Commission. He said, "I want the truth to be known. I want there to be a full analysis done." However, Bush refused to commit to being questioned by the commission. Russert also did not ask Bush about Newsweek's report "that commission members are fed up with what one calls 'maddening' restrictions by White House lawyers on their access to key documents." As one commission official says, if the White House continues to be uncooperative, the report "will not withstand the laugh test." The panel "is threatening to force a showdown soon—by voting to subpoena the White House." See more in American Progress's Meet the Press backgrounder on the Administration's inconsistent rhetoric about the commission.
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