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To: Lizzie Tudor who wrote (158487)	7/11/2003 7:20:05 PM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 164684

commondreams.org

To: Lizzie Tudor who wrote (158487)	7/12/2003 11:31:49 AM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 164684

REAL Leaders take responsibility but Bush loves to blame... Bush Team Split as CIA Becomes the Fall Guy by Tim Reid in Washington Published on Saturday, July 12, 2003 by the Times/UK ONE BY ONE, all the President’s men rounded on George Tenet yesterday, forcing the CIA Director to issue a resounding mea culpa that is likely to bring his career to an abrupt end. The first salvo in what degenerated into open warfare within the Bush Administration was fired by the President himself, blaming the CIA for the inclusion of a false claim about Iraq’s nuclear weapons program in his State of the Union address last January. The extraordinary public blame Mr Bush heaped upon the agency was underscored by Condoleezza Rice, his National Security Adviser, who summoned reporters covering Mr Bush’s Africa tour to tell them that the CIA had “cleared the speech in its entirety”. Their finger-pointing exposed the bitter blame game raging within the Administration as the issue of Saddam Hussein’s alleged weapons of mass destruction finally caught fire in Washington. It capped one of the worst weeks Mr Bush has endured since the September 11 attacks and put the normally sure-footed White House on the defensive as it struggled to protect the President from allegations that he he may have knowingly lied to the American public.The Oval Office’s attack on the CIA caused a sensation on Capitol Hill, and brought calls from Democrats for a congressional investigation. The internal warfare was triggered by last week’s White House admission that Mr Bush was wrong to have claimed in his State of the Union speech that Iraq had tried to buy uranium from Africa. That claim was based on intelligence reports that Saddam sought nuclear material from Niger. After it emerged that the CIA and State Department were told 11 months before the speech that the claim was bogus, congressmen demanded to know why Mr Bush repeated the allegation. In anonymous briefings to the US media on Thursday CIA officials insisted that the agency explicitly told the White House that the claim was false before the speech. They also said they had tried unsuccessfully to persuade the British Government on this. That triggered yesterday’s furious White House counter-attack, with Mr Bush saying: “I gave a speech to the nation that was cleared by the intelligence services.” Dr Rice also insisted that the CIA cleared the speech in its entirety. “If the CIA — the Director of Central Intelligence — had said ‘Take this out of the speech’, it would have been gone.” She added that Mr Tenet was a “terrific” Director, but in Washington her words were seen as devastating. Pat Roberts, Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, also weighed in. Mr Roberts, a Republican, said that ten days before the speech the CIA was still standing behind the Niger claim. “If the CIA had changed its position, it was incumbent on the Director of Central Intelligence to correct the record and bring it to the immediate attention of the President. It appears that he failed,” Mr Roberts said. Colin Powell, the Secretary of State, fueled the row by saying that he had not included the uranium-from-Africa claim in his presentation to the United Nations a week after Mr Bush’s speech because he doubted its veracity. John McCain, a Republican senator, said that there should be an investigation to determine how the bogus information made its way into the address. Dick Durbin, a senior Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said: “Somebody in the White House knew. This really calls into question the leadership in the White House and our intelligence agencies.” Howard Dean, a Democratic presidential contender, raised Watergate’s famous refrain: “We need to know what the President knew and when he knew it.” He demanded the resignation of any official who failed to tell Mr Bush the information was false. “The only other possibility, which is unthinkable, is that the President of the United States knew himself that this was a false fact and he put it in the State of the Union anyhow. I hope for the sake of this country that did not happen,” he said. Democrats had begun taking the offensive even before yesterday’s developments, exploiting growing disquiet over mounting casualties in Iraq and over rising unemployment at home. Mr Bush will arrive back from Africa today facing, for the first time since he took office, questions about his honesty, and looking vulnerable on foreign policy and national security — issues that until now he has successfully used to divide Democrats and unite the public behind him. The President continues to enjoy an enviable 60 per cent approval rating — at this stage in their presidencies Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton were 42 per cent and 47 per cent respectively — but a Gallup poll showed that public approval for Mr Bush’s stewardship of Iraq has fallen from almost 90 per cent in May to 58 per cent now. Donald Rumsfeld, the Defense Secretary, admitted this week that the monthly cost of the occupation is $3.9 billion (£2.75 billion), nearly double the Pentagon’s previous estimate. Public and congressional disquiet also mounted after General Tommy Franks, the recently retired coalition commander, said US troops may have to remain in Iraq for up to four years. Copyright 2003 Times Newspapers Ltd commondreams.org

To: Lizzie Tudor who wrote (158487)	7/12/2003 5:36:33 PM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 164684

No Mistakes Were Made _________________________ Haunted by his father’s defeat and the accidental nature of his own presidency, Bush won’t ever concede missteps on Iraq NEWSWEEK July 11 — President Bush is certain he did the right thing by going to war in Iraq. Bush never second-guesses himself, a trait that permeates his administration and contains the seeds of his undoing. HOW CAN BUSH fix the mess in Iraq if he denies any missteps? This administration’s unwillingness to ever admit a mistake makes it unlikely it will expand the force size in Iraq, take responsibility for the phony intelligence Bush touted as a prelude to war or eat enough humble pie to get military and financial help from other nations. The White House won’t acknowledge anything that might chip away at Bush’s commander-in-chief image. That’s the nature of the reelection machine that Karl Rove has constructed in his role as Bush’s consigliere. To admit flaws risks losing the luster of the wartime president. Bush’s insecurities are at the heart of it. Haunted by his father’s defeat and the accidental nature of his own presidency, Bush never wants to hand his enemies ammunition. He can’t let cracks appear or the whole edifice could crumble. The moment Bush landed on the USS Lincoln, he was caught in his own net of hubris. The juvenile taunt—”Bring ‘em on”—diminishes the seriousness of sending men and women into an urban guerilla battle that nobody prepared them for. American soldiers in Iraq are going on the record with reporters to say how unhappy they are, and how vulnerable they feel. You don’t do that in the military unless the conditions are dire. How different it would have been if instead on May 1 Bush had delivered a sober speech from the Oval Office saying we have succeeded in the first phase of the war, followed by a candid assessment of what lay ahead. How different the tone and the context would be today. Instead we have Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld flippantly dismissing America’s European allies. NATO hasn’t been consulted about helping with security and reconstruction in Iraq since December, three months before the war began. Secretary of State Colin Powell testified about the Coalition of the Willing, boasting about assistance from Eastern European countries. “I’m not interested in three Latvians in bio-chem suits,” says California Democrat Ellen Tauscher. “I’m interested in a Coalition of the Capable: countries with real skill sets, real burden-sharing and real checkbooks.” Administration officials have been strong-arming countries, so far without much success. The contributions have been largely ceremonial. There are foreign commitments for an additional 8,000 troops, a miniscule number compared to what’s needed. The American taxpayers are paying the price for the way Bush went into Iraq, arrogant and alone. Under persistent questioning, Rumsfeld told the Senate Armed Services Committee that Iraq is costing $3.9 billion a month. But he and others are vague about the administration’s strategy, except to stay the course and admit no mistakes. “If they have a plan, why aren’t they sharing it?” said a frustrated Senate Republican. Democrats are getting over the fear of being branded traitors for challenging the administration. The revelation that Bush relied on a forged document to make his case for war has emboldened critics. Claiming that Iraq tried to buy uranium from the African country of Niger wasn’t a judgment call. By the White House’s own admission, it was a fraud, a lie. The envoy sent to investigate the intelligence in February 2002, former ambassador Joseph Wilson, sought out the information and informed the administration. The only question is how high up the food chain his report got. Did it stop at low-level officials as the White House claims, or did it go all the way to the president and vice president? Wilson is not some wild-eyed lefty. He had experience in Iraq and North Africa, and completely understood his mission. He only revealed his identity a week ago in the face of continued insistence by the White House that it had no idea the documents were forged. CIA director George Tenet sent Wilson to Niger after Vice President Cheney asked for an investigation. Wilson asks why Cheney’s office would demand this inquiry and not want to know the result. If Bush really was misled, wouldn’t he want to know who embarrassed him? Who made him a liar? In a White House as obsessed with loyalty as this one, the fact that no heads rolled strongly indicates this could go all the way to Cheney, if not to Bush himself. Who knows how much Cheney tells the boss. Bush is not a detail guy. He may not have wanted to know. The drip-drip of bad news from Iraq is reflected in the polls, though it does not yet pose a political problem for Bush. A majority of voters dismiss the wrangling over what Bush knew and when he knew it as partisan. But America’s good name is under attack around the world, and Bush’s credibility has foreign-policy consequences, making it much more difficult to undertake other interventions. The hawkish neocons who urged the war on Iraq are dismayed over what’s happening because Iraq was supposed to be easy. “Iraq was the low-hanging fruit,” says a Republican Senate aide, who backed the war. Taking down Saddam was a test case for the real thing, regime change in Iran. Now the administration is standing down on its rhetoric toward Iran, a welcome intrusion of reality in Bush’s fantasy presidency. © 2003 Newsweek, Inc