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Politics : GOPwinger Lies/Distortions/Omissions/Perversions of Truth -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: PartyTime who wrote (214)	2/2/2004 12:01:57 PM
From: TigerPaw	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 173976

Iraq could use these small UAVs, which have a wingspan of only a few meters, to deliver biological agents to its neighbors or, if transported, to other countries, including the United States." washingtonpost.com <font color=green> The CIA originally drafted a speech for a U.N. presentation, which then went to the White House. But what ultimately emerged -- after Cheney's office had been tasked to assemble the material for the speech -- was much different from the CIA draft. I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Cheney's chief of staff, deputy national security adviser Stephen J. Hadley and other National Security Council staffers had produced draft language for Powell -- 45 pages on weapons of mass destruction, 38 pages on alleged links to terrorism and 16 pages on Iraq's human rights abuses. But when Powell's staff and intelligence analysts gathered at CIA headquarters in Virginia to go through the material, controversy immediately erupted over some of the charges, officials said. Because the White House had changed so much from the CIA draft, they had to go over it "page by page," one official said. The UAVs were a major source of controversy, officials said. For many senior officials, this was the subject of some of the best evidence they had. "The UAV program, to me, that was more serious because that was a direct threat to our military," a high ranking national security official said later. "Those UAVs could get up and spread chemical or, worse, biological weapons." Indeed, the proposed narrative for Powell went something like this, according to an official involved in the preparation of Powell's speech: Hussein had his procurement agents, who are virtually all over the world, try to acquire software that would give him sophisticated mapping of the eastern United States, allowing him to program a missile with a high degree of accuracy. But the whole scenario </font><font color=maroon>"fell apart like a toothpick house"</font><font color=green> once Powell and his aides asked for the sourcing on the information, the official said. Upon closer inspection, several officials said, it turned out that Iraq had not sought the software, but that an Australian firm had offered it. The software, meanwhile, apparently produced maps not much better than those sold at gasoline stations. </font>