Well, it'll be interesting to see how this plays out. My guess is we'll see more of the usual 9/11 style cover up scams where anything that incriminates Bush is a matter of "national security".
Secrecy begets tyranny. Personally, I'm getting pretty sick of the magnitude of information our government is ashamed to share with our nation. If there's that much that needs to be hidden from the people, there's something seriously wrong.
We need a lot more disclosure and a lot less sneaking around.
story.news.yahoo.com
Senate to Probe Iraq Weapons Intelligence
By JESSE J. HOLLAND, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON - Two Senate committees want to investigate whether
U.S. intelligence accurately pointed to banned weapons in Iraq (news - web
sites) as claimed by the Bush administration in going to war, senators said
Sunday.
More than 11 weeks have passed without
conclusive evidence of an Iraqi program to
develop weapons of mass destruction, senators
said, and it's time to investigate whether
intelligence reports saying so were correct.
An investigation doesn't mean senators think
that something was done incorrectly, Sen.
John Warner (news, bio, voting record), R-Va.,
chairman of the Armed Services Committee,
said on CNN's "Late Edition."
"By the fact that we're just investigating it,
should not in any way indicate that we're
putting any credibility doubt against" the CIA
(news - web sites) or the Bush administration,
Warner said.
He said his committee and the Senate
Intelligence Committee might look jointly into
the situation.
One member of the Intelligence panel, Sen.
Bob Graham (news, bio, voting record), running
for the Democratic presidential nomination from
Florida, went further than other senators in
declaring on CNN that the government might
have willfully distributed erroneous information
on Iraq's arsenal.
"If we don't find these weapons of mass
destruction, it will represent a serious
intelligence failure or the manipulation of that
intelligence to keep the American people in the dark," Graham said.
The Bush administration's main argument for the Iraq invasion was that
deposed President Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) held chemical and
biological weapons and possibly was developing nuclear weapons. All were
banned to Iraq under sanctions imposed by the United Nations (news - web
sites) after in August 1990 after Iraq invaded neighboring Kuwait and by
subsequent U.N. resolutions.
Bush faced the question again Sunday in a news conference at St.
Petersburg, Russia, as he ended an official visit. He seemed to have told a
Polish television reporter Thursday that U.S. searchers had found weapons
in the form of two mobile laboratories that the Americans say were to
manufacture biological weapons.
"We've discovered weapons systems, biological labs, that Iraq denied she
had, and labs that were prohibited under the U.N. resolutions," Bush said.
While Democrats have been bashing the White House for the military's
failure to find unconventional weapons in Iraq, Warner and other Republican
senators joined in Sunday in proposing a congressional inquiry.
"Absolutely, absolutely, there should be," said Sen. John McCain (news,
bio, voting record), R-Ariz., on ABC's "This Week." "And I would think that
the Congress is very well suited for that, a bipartisan committee, or
Intelligence Committee report."
Warner said he and Intelligence Chairman Pat Roberts, R-Kan., have talked
about a joint hearing into the intelligence about Iraq that the Bush
administration was given.
CIA Director George Tenet "assured me that he's going to supply the
Congress first and foremost with all the statements made by the
administration on weapons of mass destruction and the underlying
intelligence that supported those statements," Warner said.
Warner gave no time for an investigation.
The Pentagon (news - web sites) is sending a new group of weapons
hunters to Iraq to expand the search for banned weapons, beginning
Monday.
Tenet defended his agency's work. "The integrity of our process was
maintained throughout, and any suggestion to the contrary is simply wrong,"
he said Friday.
Intelligence mistakes might have been made, Sen. Evan Bayh (news, bio,
voting record), D-Ind., said, but he isn't ready to say information was
manipulated.
"I don't think we know enough yet to cross the line, though, and start
questioning motives and saying that people were consciously manipulating
the facts," Bayh said on CNN.
It's important to find out what happened, though, said Sen. Joseph Biden
(news, bio, voting record), D-Del., ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee.
"I think it cannot go uninvestigated, because big nations have two things:
they have their word and they have their credibility," Biden said on CBS's
"Face the Nation."
"Our credibility is going to be called into question in other parts of the world"
if nothing is found, he said. |
