Finger of blame points at Bush
Spin doctors can't find a cure for his wilting credibility
Controversy over Iraq allegations hurting presidency
TIM HARPER
WASHINGTON BUREAU
WASHINGTON—For almost five hours earlier this week, George Tenet went behind closed doors of a U.S. Senate committee, oozing contrition and gushing mea culpas during his trip to the congressional woodshed.
As an official fall guy, however, the CIA director was an abject failure.
Despite the best attempts by President George W. Bush to pass the buck directly to the top intelligence official in the country, his credibility continues to melt in the hot Washington sun.
Bush and his top advisers have tried every gambit in their playbook to put to rest the controversy over the false allegation the president made in his January State of the Union address as he built his case for an invasion of Iraq.
"The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa," the president told the American people, a statement based on fraudulent documents and a claim now discredited.
Bush first tried to blame Tenet.
The CIA director, whose future is now in question, said he should have had the 16-word passage removed and confessed that he hadn't read the speech ahead of time.
Bush's national security adviser, Condeleezza Rice, also blamed Tenet, but opened another front on the damage control by saying the information might be true.
Bush tried to blame the British. But his closest ally, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, said his intelligence was solid.
Bush and his vaunted spin machine then tried to make the error irrelevant, saying it was only one thread in a case against a ruthless dictator and that the world was a safer place with Saddam no longer in power.
They tried a counteroffensive, with Vice-President Dick Cheney rallying the troops on Capitol Hill, calling on them to accuse Democrats of twisting facts for partisan purposes.
Yesterday, the White House reversed course again and released previously classified intelligence documents that showed it had evidence last October that if Saddam was not checked, he could have a nuclear weapon before 2010.
But the documents included a proviso from the U.S. State Department intelligence bureau, which said it found claims of Iraqi pursuit of uranium in Africa to be "highly dubious."
Nothing seems to be working for the White House, based on two polls released yesterday.
One, by CNN and Time magazine, showed Bush has a 55 per cent approval rating, back to pre-war levels. The same percentage, 55 per cent, said he has done a good job handling Iraq, down 14 points since May.
Perhaps even more troubling for his re-election chances is a poll by Zogby International that shows 47 per cent of respondents think it's time for someone new in the White House, while 46 per cent said they felt Bush should be re-elected.
Zogby put the Bush approval rating at 53 per cent, his lowest level since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
Even if there was no attempt to mislead or hype the Saddam threat, the Bush administration now appears guilty of either sloppy intelligence-gathering or shoddy intelligence analysis.
An administration which had prided itself on never veering from a meticulously vetted script is dangerously careening off in all directions.
Worse problems of credibility continue to dog Blair.
Thursday, after a meeting with Blair, Bush was asked if he took responsibility for his own words in the State of the Union speech.
"I take responsibility for putting our troops into action," he said. "And I made that decision because Saddam Hussein was a threat to our security and a threat to the security of other nations.
"I take responsibility for making the decision, the tough decision to put together a coalition to remove Saddam Hussein, because the intelligence — not only our intelligence, but the intelligence of this great country (Britain) — made a clear and compelling case that Saddam Hussein was a threat to security and peace."
Blair had a distinctly different take on the same question. "The British intelligence that we have we believe is genuine. We stand by that intelligence.
"And one interesting fact I think people don't generally know, in case people should think that the whole idea of a link between Iraq and Niger was some invention, in the 1980s we know for sure that Iraq purchased about 270 tons of uranium from Niger."
Despite the aggressive tactics yesterday to end the controversy, there are still a number of lingering questions.
Secret testimony delivered this week indicates that a White House official, Robert Joseph of the National Security Council, suggested to CIA official Alan Foley that some reference to the alleged uranium search be inserted into the State of the Union address.
Sources told The Washington Post that Foley told senators the wording in the address was suggested by Joseph, and that Foley objected to a specific reference to Niger and the amount of uranium being sought.
Joseph suggested that the intelligence report be sourced to the British dossier.
"We've been asking the wrong question," said Illinois Democrat Dick Durbin, a member of the committee which heard from Tenet. "We've been asking why did George Tenet not stop the White House from misleading the American people. The more important question is, who is it in the White House who was hell-bent on misleading the American people and why are they still there?"
The harshest indictment came in a speech by Massachusetts Senator Edward Kennedy.
"There was and is no evidence that Saddam was conspiring with Al Qaeda," the Democrat said. "What was the imminent threat to the United States that required us to launch a preventive war in Iraq with very little international support?
"It's a disgrace that the case for war seems to have been based on shoddy intelligence, hyped intelligence, and even false intelligence. All the evidence points to the conclusion that they put a spin on the intelligence and a spin on the truth.
"They have undermined America's prestige and credibility in the world — and undermined the trust that Americans should and must have in what their nation tells them."
The controversy already had a substantive effect on the government work this week.
John Bolton, an undersecretary of state, was blocked by the CIA from issuing new warnings about Syria's development of chemical and biological weapons and labelling their development a threat to the Middle East.
In the wake of the uranium controversy, government officials said, the claims were subjected to intensive scrutiny and objections were raised. |
