NEWS: Bush declines to endorse outside intelligence inquiry; President says, ‘I want to know the facts,’ but resists calls for independent probe
[ed: What a slimy SOB!!]
President says, ‘I want to know the facts,’ but resists calls for independent probe
msnbc.msn.com
The Associated Press
Updated: 12:58 p.m. ET Jan. 30, 2004
WASHINGTON - President Bush said Friday he wants "to know the facts” about any intelligence failures concerning Saddam Hussein’s alleged cache of forbidden weapons of mass destruction, but he declined to endorse calls for an independent investigation.
The issue of an independent commission has blossomed into an election-year problem for the president, with Democrats and a handful of Republicans — including influential maverick Sen. John McCain of Arizona — supporting the idea. Former chief weapons inspector David Kay has concluded that Iraq did not possess weapons of mass destruction, which Bush had cited as a rationale for going to war against Iraq.
Bush said he wants to be able to compare the administration’s prewar intelligence with what will be learned by inspectors who are now searching for weapons in Iraq. There is no deadline for those inspectors, the Iraq Survey Group, to complete their work.
‘Saddam ... was a growing danger’
“One thing is for certain, one thing we do know ... that Saddam Hussein was a danger, he was growing danger,” the president told reporters during a brief question and answer session after a meeting with economists.
Some of the Democrats seeking their party's presidential nomination said they support an independent commission.
Former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean criticized Vice President Dick Cheney, saying that he berated CIA operatives because he did not like their intelligence reports. “It seems to me that the vice president of the United States therefore influenced the very reports that the president then used to decide to go to war and to ask Congress for permission to go to war,” Dean said during a campaign debate Thursday night.
North Carolina Sen. John Edwards said his support for the Iraq war was based on years of intelligence briefings and evidence of Saddam Hussein’s atrocities against his own people. He supports an independent commission “that will have credibility and that the American people will trust, about why there is this discrepancy about what we were told and what’s actually been found there.”
Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry said that whether Cheney berated CIA officials to shape the intelligence that he wanted is “a very legitimate question. ... There’s an enormous question about the exaggeration by this administration.”
Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Pat Roberts, R-Kan., has expressed frustration with those who suggest an outside investigation is needed before his committee has a chance to complete an inquiry now under way. Senate Armed Service Chairman John Warner, R-Va., supports letting the committee finish its work.
McCain breaks GOP ranks
In an interview with the Associated Press on Thursday, McCain parted company with many of his fellow Republicans by saying he believes the public needs an assessment that won’t be clouded by partisan division. He said he is seeking a full-scale look not only at apparently botched intelligence on Iraq’s weapons capabilities, but also flawed estimations of Iraq, North Korea and Libya and the faulty assessments from other Western intelligence services.
“I am absolutely convinced that one is necessary,” McCain said, “because this is a very serious issue and we need to not only know what happened, but know what steps are necessary to prevent the United States from ever being misinformed again.”
McCain’s comments come less than one week after Kay, the CIA's chief weapons inspector, left his position and began stating publicly that purported weapons of mass destruction didn’t exist.
The House and Senate intelligence committees, both of which have been looking into the issue for the past seven months, have unearthed failures in prewar intelligence similar to those identified by Kay, the Washington Post reported Friday.
The newspaper quoted unidentified congressional officials as saying the committees believe CIA analysts never seriously considered the possibility that Saddam no longer possessed weapons of mass destruction.
Rice says CIA, congressional probes sufficient
National security adviser Condoleezza Rice reiterated the administration’s position Thursday, saying that efforts to learn the extent of Saddam’s weapons arsenal are sufficient. FREE VIDEO
Jan. 29: National security adviser Condoleezza Rice responds to weapons inspector David Kay’s congressional testimony about faulty intelligence on Iraq’s weapons program.
Today show
“No one will want to know more than the president the comparison between what we found when we got there and what we thought was there going in,” Rice said on NBC’s “Today” show.
When asked if she thought Americans have a legitimate concern about whether intelligence was manipulated to justify the decision to go to war, Rice replied, “The president’s judgment to go to the war was based on the fact that Saddam Hussein for 12 years had defied U.N. resolutions” regarding his stock of weapons.
She added that the administration went to war, because Saddam “had been considered a danger for a long time and it was time to take care of that danger.”
Kay and some Democrats, including Senate minority leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., also have called for an outside investigation into the intelligence community. Along with the Senate inquiry, several retired intelligence officers have delivered a review to CIA Director George Tenet on the performance of the CIA and other agencies.
McCain, who was one of the loudest voices in a successful campaign to form a commission on the Sept. 11 attacks, said he spoke to administration officials, but doesn’t know what — if any — action the White House will take. McCain believes the investigation would take over a year, removing the findings from election-year politics.
McCain said the commission should consider a series of questions: Were the estimates wrong? If so, why? Who is responsible? What steps need to be taken to ensure that the president has accurate intelligence information?
Names McCain suggested for the commission include former House Speaker Tom Foley, D-Wash., former Secretary of State and Treasury George Shultz, former Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger and former national security adviser Brent Scowcroft. |
