Now that the truth of Bush, Perle, Cheney, Powell, Rummy Rove and Rice's lies are out for even the most skeptical to see and finally understand, Bush and Rice are trying to put the blame on Tenet of the CIA for the bogus bs Bush used to throw us into war, when in fact, Tenet said don't go...Lies piled on lies, piled on more lies coming from the WH....Bush and Rice have no morals, NONE.
Bush and Rice say CIA cleared Bush's State of the Union speech
TOM RAUM, Associated Press Writer Friday, July 11, 2003
(07-11) 09:22 PDT ENTEBBE, Uganda (AP) --
President Bush said Friday that intelligence services cleared his State of the Union speech, which included a now-discredited allegation that Iraq was seeking to buy nuclear material from Africa.
Bush's national security adviser specifically said the CIA 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.
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.
Rice talked with Tenet by phone shortly before meeting with reporters to tell him what she planned to say, said several administration officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
These officials also said that Tenet was sent a final version of the speech before Bush delivered it.
Also Friday, Sen. Joe Lieberman, 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 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."
On Thursday, the Senate agreed to an amendment written by Durbin that would authorize a "thorough and expeditious joint investigation" into assertions that Iraq tried to obtain uranium from Africa, and require parts of that inquiry to be made public. The amendment was offered to the State Department authorization bill, which could be approved by the Senate as early as next week.
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, she said.
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