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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: jmhollen who wrote (748800)	9/8/2006 5:06:33 PM
From: pompsander	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 769670

How can the CIA now be so wrong if the Weekly Standard is right? Here is the quote from teh 2005 CIA report: It discloses for the first time an October 2005 CIA assessment that prior to the war Saddam's government "did not have a relationship, harbor, or turn a blind eye toward Zarqawi and his associates." Sounds like if Saddam knew about them, he crushed them or tossed them out..but did not harbor them or ignore them. You are not calling the CIA wrong, are you?

To: jmhollen who wrote (748800)	9/8/2006 6:29:32 PM
From: DuckTapeSunroof	Respond to of 769670

A 'memo' from Feith? One of the deepest, died-in-the-wool neo-con faithfuls? Well I guess THAT settles it! Who would take the Senate Intelligence Committee, the 9-11 Commission, or the C.I.A.'s word over Feith's? LOL! Message 22794044

To: jmhollen who wrote (748800)	9/8/2006 6:31:05 PM
From: DuckTapeSunroof	Respond to of 769670

Most likely BOEING not very happy about this: Message 22793548

To: jmhollen who wrote (748800)	9/9/2006 7:55:14 AM
From: DuckTapeSunroof	Respond to of 769670

Voice of America News: Senate Report Rules Out al-Qaida Link with Saddam By Dan Robinson Capitol Hill 08 September 2006 voanews.com A report by a Senate committee says there is no evidence former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein had any relationship with the al-Qaida terrorist leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi or his associates before the U.S. and allied forces invaded Iraq in 2003. The report is part of an ongoing investigation by the Senate Intelligence Committee, which has been looking into intelligence used to justify the invasion of Iraq, it was widely thought at the time to eliminate weapons of mass destruction. According to the 400 page document, an assessment by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in 2005 stated that before U.S. and allied forces invaded, the Saddam Hussein regime did not, in the words of the report, have a relationship, harbor, or turn a blind eye toward Zarqawi and his associates. President Bush and other administration officials have acknowledged that no evidence has emerged to show a direct link between Saddam and the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. However, the president, along with Vice President Dick Cheney and other key officials have maintained that Zarqawi's presence in Iraq before the war constituted proof of an al-Qaida connection. At a news conference Friday, Senate Democrats asserted the report proves that the Bush administration sought to exploit the fears Americans had in the wake of the 2001 al-Qaida attacks in New York and Washington to justify military action in Iraq. On the basis of the report, Senator John Rockefeller, the committee's ranking Democrat, says the administration's case for war in Iraq was, in his words, fundamentally misleading. "Most disturbingly the administration in its zeal to promote public opinion in the U.S. for toppling Saddam Hussein pursued a deceptive strategy prior to the war," he said. The Senate Intelligence Committee investigation has sparked intense partisan battles on Capitol Hill, with Democrats charging Senate Pat Roberts, the Republican chairman, with deliberately slowing down the probe. Senator Roberts has strongly denied these allegations. Statements by committee Democrats, he said in a written statement Friday, are little more than a rehashing of the same unfounded allegations they've used for over three years. White House spokesman Tony Snow took the same approach, repeating the argument that Democrats had access to the same intelligence the Bush administration had prior to military action in 2003. But Senator Carl Levin says what he calls unrelenting, misleading and deceptive attempts to convince Americans of the existence of links between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida had far-reaching effects. "And to make repeated public statements that gave the misleading impression that Saddam Hussein's regime was connected to the terrorists who attacked us on September 11 cost him [President Bush] any credibility that he may have had on this issue," he said, The release of the second part of the Senate Intelligence Committee's report comes just days before Americans observe the fifth anniversary of the September 11 attacks. In its final report on intelligence and other failures leading to the 2001 attacks, the independent 9/11 Commission also found that there had been no collaborative relationship between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida.

To: jmhollen who wrote (748800)	9/9/2006 8:03:46 AM
From: DuckTapeSunroof	Respond to of 769670

More on cool-aid drinker and 'neo-con' propagandist Feith will be released only after the upcoming election, by the Senate investigating committee and the Pentagon: "...Many of the Iraqi National Congress claims, however, were passed on to the White House and the office of Vice President Dick Cheney through reports by a separate intelligence analysis group established by then-Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith. The Senate committee's inquiry into the Feith group's activities, another part of the prewar intelligence study, has been delayed by committee Chairman Pat Roberts, R-Kan., who is awaiting completion of a Pentagon inspector general inquiry into the same matter...." Saturday, September 09, 2006 Senate questions claim of Iraq link to terrorists heraldextra.com WALTER PINCUS - The WASHINGTON POST WASHINGTON -- The two long-awaited Senate Intelligence Committee reports released Friday shed new light on why U.S. intelligence agencies provided inaccurate prewar information about Saddam Hussein and his weapons programs, including details of how Iraqi exiles who fabricated or exaggerated their stories were accepted as truthful because they passed Pentagon lie detector tests. The newly declassified reports fueled political accusations Friday that the Bush administration lied to justify invading Iraq, but the documents' nearly 400 pages contain several examples of how bad information wound up accepted as truthful in intelligence assessments at the time. One section includes results of a new evaluation by the CIA of its performance, which concludes that despite repeated prewar assessments that the Iraqis were practicing deceit and deception to hide their weapons, there actually were no such efforts because there were no weapons. The CIA concludes, "There comes a point where the absence of evidence does indeed become the evidence of absence." That statement is a play on a remark Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld made frequently in the months before the war, after United Nations inspectors in late 2002 and early 2003 could find no weapons, that "the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence." One 208-page report from the Senate committee covers the use of intelligence provided by the Iraqi National Congress and its leader, Ahmed Chalabi. The panel wrote that three Iraqi exiles gave the Pentagon inaccurate information about Saddam's alleged training of al-Qaida terrorists, as well as the existence of mobile biological weapons factories and an alleged meeting between the Iraqi leader and Osama bin Laden. All three exiles passed lie detector tests given by the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), adding credibility to their stories. In each case, the information proved to be questionable, if not inaccurate. But in the case of the mobile labs, the source's information was used to corroborate data in the October 2002 Iraq National Intelligence Estimate even after the informant was tagged as a fabricator. The report notes that a DIA official who knew that the source was unreliable sat in on two meetings where the mobile labs information was incorporated into the speech Secretary of State Colin Powell delivered in February 2003 to the U.N. Security Council, but that the official didn't realize the information was based solely on the word of the untrustworthy source. According to the Senate panel's report, another Iraqi National Congress source, recommended to the DIA by Chalabi through a high-ranking Defense Department official, passed two lie detector tests after "claiming to have seen Saddam meeting with a man, who Uday Hussein (Saddam's son) identified as bin Laden." The source said Uday told him that bin Laden was there "to discuss training of some of his people in Iraq." The DIA subsequently distributed the information but pointed out that the source was connected with Iraqi opposition and that the information "may have been intended to influence as well as inform decision makers." The CIA later noted in its assessment of the information that the meeting between Hussein and bin Laden had "not been corroborated" and that "other sensitive reporting ... provides no indication that Saddam and bin Laden have met each other." Although the Senate report raises questions about the reliability of the information provided by Iraqi exiles, it notes that the information had little direct impact on the Iraq National Intelligence Estimate produced in October 2002. Many of the Iraqi National Congress claims, however, were passed on to the White House and the office of Vice President Dick Cheney through reports by a separate intelligence analysis group established by then-Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith. The Senate committee's inquiry into the Feith group's activities, another part of the prewar intelligence study, has been delayed by committee Chairman Pat Roberts, R-Kan., who is awaiting completion of a Pentagon inspector general inquiry into the same matter. One surprising conclusion from the CIA retrospective is that the agency now believes that aggressive U.N. inspections in Iraq in 1991 after the Persian Gulf War led Saddam to what it described as a "fateful decision." He covertly dismantled and destroyed the undeclared nuclear, chemical and biological facilities, materials and actual weapons he had put together in the preceding decade -- along with "the records that could have verified that unilateral destruction." As a result, there was no proof in 2002 and 2003 when the Iraqis claimed they had no weapons of mass destruction, and Saddam could not demonstrate he was in basic, if not complete, compliance with U.N. resolutions. Noncompliance with the Security Council's October resolution was the main U.S. public rationale for the invasion of Iraq. This story appeared in The Daily Herald on page A1.