<font color=green> Americans are getting screwed on all fronts thanks to Mr. Bush's policies. I strongly recommend we give Mr. Bush some "yellow cake" uranium pie for his b-day cake!
In the meantime, the White House doesn't know who to blame first for his State of the Union gaffe/lie, the latest in a string. Spin, spin, spin; then lie, lie, then; followed by spin, spin, spin! That's all this WH knows what to do!<font color=black>
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Bush: CIA Approved State of Union Speech
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 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.
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.
<font color=red>"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." <font color=black>
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. |
