The coward is pointing the finger to the CIA...this will come back to haunt him. I am willing to bet on that.
Al
==========================================================
Bush: CIA Approved State of Union Speech
55 minutes ago
Add White House - AP to My Yahoo!
By TOM RAUM, Associated Press Writer
ENTEBBE, Uganda - President Bush (news - web sites) said Friday that
intelligence services cleared his State of the Union speech, which included
a now-discredited allegation that Iraq (news - web sites) was seeking to buy
nuclear material from Africa.
Bush's national security adviser specifically
said the CIA (news - web sites) had vetted the
speech. If CIA Director George Tenet had any
misgivings about that sentence in the
president's speech, "he did not make them
known" to Bush or his staff, said Condoleezza
Rice (news - web sites).
The issue arose a day after other senior U.S.
officials said that before and after Bush's Jan.
28 speech, American intelligence officials
expressed doubts about a British intelligence
report the president cited to back up his
allegations.
Those doubts were relayed to British officials
before they made them public, and were
passed to people at several agencies of the
U.S. government before Bush gave his
nationally broadcast speech. The White House
this week admitted the charge about Iraq
seeking uranium should not have appeared in
his speech.
Bush, asked during a meeting with Ugandan
President Yoweri Museveni here how erroneous
material had ended up in the address, said, "I
gave a speech to the nation that was cleared by
the intelligence services." He did not answer
when pressed again on how it wound up in his
speech.
But he reiterated his belief that he made the
right decision in invading Iraq and asserted that
the world is a more peaceful place for it.
Rice said "the CIA cleared the speech in its entirety."
The agency raised only one objection to the sentence involving an allegation
that Iraq was trying to obtain "yellow cake" uranium, she said. Yellow cake
is a slightly processed form of uranium ore the color and consistency of
yellow corn meal.
"Some specifics about amount and place were taken out," Rice added.
"With the changes in that sentence, the speech was cleared," she said.
"The agency did not say they wanted that sentence (on uranium) out."
Rice made the defense of the White House in a rare 50-minute meeting with
reporters aboard the president's plane as Bush flew from South Africa to
Uganda. Questions about the allegations in Bush's January speech have
shadowed him on his five-day trip through Africa.
Also Friday, Sen. Joe Lieberman (news - web sites), D-Conn., said the
inclusion of a false statement in the president's State of the Union address
— however it happened — needs "full and thorough investigation." He called
on an independent commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to
look at the matter, as well as the larger question of the quality of the
nation's intelligence.
"We cannot and should not play fast and loose with our intelligence
information," said Lieberman, who is seeking the Democratic nomination to
run for president against Bush. "Quite simply, we need to know what people
in the administration knew about the weakness of our uranium intelligence
reports and when they knew it."
The administration is facing rising criticism on another front in postwar Iraq:
increasing attacks against American soldiers there. Two were killed on
Thursday.
Critics have attacked the administration's characterizations of the current
outlook in Iraq, where the war's former commander, Gen. Tommy Franks,
told a House panel Thursday that U.S. troops may have to remain in Iraq for
four years.
The Senate on Thursday, in a 97-0 vote, called on Bush to work harder to
get other countries to share the military burden in Iraq. Bush said Thursday
that U.S. forces would have to "remain tough" in the face of attacks that
Franks said were coming at the rate of 10 to 25 a day.
Before dawn Friday, insurgents fired two mortar rounds into the U.S. base in
the troubled western city of Ramadi. Capt. Michael Calvert, public affairs
officer for the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, said there were no injuries or
damage to the base.
According to Rice, the CIA had mentioned the claim that Iraq was
seeking to buy uranium from Africa in a classified National Intelligence
Assessment made periodically to the president.
"If the CIA — the director of central intelligence — had said 'Take this
out of the speech,' it would have been gone," Rice said. "We have a high
standard for the president's speeches."
Asked whether Bush still had confidence in the intelligence agency, Rice
replied, "Absolutely."
When queried on reports that the CIA expressed concern to the White
House about the allegation, she suggested that Tenet should be asked
directly. "I'm not blaming anyone here," Rice said.
If anyone at the CIA had doubts about the veracity of the uranium-Iraq
allegation, Rice said, "those doubts were not communicated to the
president."
However, she acknowledged that Secretary of State Colin Powell (news
- web sites) had reservations about the report and chose not to mention
the allegations in his Iraq presentation to the U.N. Security Council a few
days later.
Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., said Friday he was concerned about the
reports.
"It is apparent now that one of the statements, and a very important
statement made by the president in January, was not technically
accurate," he said on CBS' "The Early Show."
Congress should be concerned, he said, "if the intelligence agencies come
up with reliable information which is then distorted by political operatives
at the White House."
Rice did say that the State Department's intelligence division considered
the uranium-purchasing allegations dubious, and this was also noted in a
footnote in an intelligence assessment given to Bush.
Powell, however, did not discuss his misgivings with her or anyone on her
staff between the time of the State of the Union address and Powell's
presentation to the United Nations (news - web sites), she said. |
