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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: LindyBill who wrote (107368)	7/23/2003 11:28:18 AM
From: Rascal	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

National Security Aide Says He's to Blame for Speech Error By DAVID E. SANGER with JUDITH MILLER WASHINGTON, July 22 — President Bush's deputy national security adviser accepted blame today for allowing faulty intelligence to appear in the president's State of the Union speech. He took responsibility after revealing that the Central Intelligence Agency had sent him two memorandums warning that evidence about Iraqi efforts to obtain uranium in Africa was weak. The deputy adviser, Stephen J. Hadley, a critical behind-the-scenes player in the Bush White House, told reporters that while he received the memorandums before the president gave a speech about Iraq in October, he had no memory of the warning three months later when the issue came up again in the State of the Union address. He said the two memorandums had been discovered in the last 72 hours. Looking shaken, he said, "I should have asked that the 16 words be taken out" of the State of the Union address, and added, "I failed in that responsibility." Mr. Hadley's account of events today once again shifted the White House explanation of events. Two weeks ago, Ari Fleischer, then the White House press secretary, said the C.I.A.'s concerns about the quality of the intelligence before Mr. Bush's October speech in Cincinnati were resolved by changing the president's language in the State of the Union address. Today Mr. Hadley said, in fact, that nothing had been resolved. Had he recalled the warnings describing "some weakness in the evidence," the line would have been stricken, he said. Mr. Hadley's acceptance of the blame seemed likely to fuel the calls for an investigation in Congress. But it also appeared to be part of an effort to end an open feud between the C.I.A. and the White House over who was responsible for the State of the Union imbroglio. Ten days ago the White House fingered the director of central intelligence, George J. Tenet, who accepted partial blame the next day in a statement that said he had never read the draft of the speech that was sent to him. Mr. Hadley, a lawyer and veteran of the first Bush administration who has a reputation for fanatical attention to detail, did not say if he had offered to resign when he talked to President Bush earlier today. But Dan Bartlett, the White House communications director, said Mr. Bush, who was briefed about the discovery of the memorandums on Monday at his ranch in Texas, "expressed the utmost confidence" in Mr. Hadley and his boss, Condoleezza Rice, whose name was listed as a recipient on one of the C.I.A. warnings. But Mr. Hadley's account, given in a meeting with reporters at the White House, raised new questions about Mr. Tenet and the C.I.A. According to the outline of events the White House gave today, Mr. Tenet's warnings to the National Security Council that the information was unreliable came only six days after the intelligence director published it in the "National Intelligence Estimate," the gold-standard of intelligence documents circulated to the highest levels of the administration and to Congress. "I can't explain that," Mr. Hadley said, referring the issue back to Mr. Tenet. Three months later, on Jan. 24, another senior C.I.A. official, Robert Walpole, sent Mr. Hadley and other White House officials another memorandum that again said Iraq had sought to obtain the uranium, citing the language in the Oct. 1 intelligence estimate. That memorandum, which was not part of the White House discovery this weekend, was intended to aid Secretary of State Colin L. Powell as he prepared to make the case against Saddam Hussein at the United Nations. But it arrived at the White House just four days before the State of the Union speech, and seemed to support the president's now disputed statement. It contained none of the cautions that Mr. Tenet had voiced by phone to Mr. Hadley and in the two memorandums sent just before the president's speech in Cincinnati on Oct. 7, laying out the case against Mr. Hussein. Mr. Hadley and Mr. Bartlett said that one of the memorandums was found this weekend by Michael Gerson, President Bush's chief speechwriter. The second was found Monday by the C.I.A. Mr. Bush, they said, was told of the existence of the memorandums on Monday. nytimes.com Rascal @whatdoesaguyhavetodotogetfiredbyGWB.com

To: LindyBill who wrote (107368)	7/23/2003 11:34:21 AM
From: Noel de Leon	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

"As the Israeli unties the others, they ask him, "Why didn't you just shoot them? Why did you ask the chief to kick you in the behind?"" The point is that the Israeli had to be untied in order to draw and fire his gun not that he didn't want to be called an aggressor. That the Americans couldn't figure this out and therefore ask the question opens the way to the illogical punch line: ""What?" answers the soldier. "And have you(American) SOBs call me the aggressor?"" As usual you don't read what you write for logical consistency and you change the subject as you see fit. More over you have chosen to denigrate Americans with this "joke".