SECTION THREE
sm
COLUMN
NINETY-FIVE, AUGUST 1, 2002
(Copyright © 2002 The Blacklisted Journalist)
1.
AMERICA'S
YAHOO DIET:
BUSHIES
KEEP FEEDING US LIES, LIES, LIES, LIES, LIES
Subject: A Firm Basis for Impeachment
Date: Tue, 15 Jul 2003 23:02:55 -0400
From: portsideMod@netscape.net
Reply-To: portside@yahoogroups.com
To: portside@yahoogroups.com
Robert Scheer: A Firm Basis for Impeachment
July 15, 2003
LATimes.com
Does the president not read? Does his national security
staff, led by Condoleezza Rice, keep him in the dark
about the most pressing issues of the day? Or is this
administration blatantly lying to the American people
to secure its ideological ends?
Those questions arise because of the White House
admission that the charge that Iraq tried to buy
uranium from Niger was excised from a Bush speech in
October 2002 after the CIA and State Department
insisted it was unfounded. Bizarrely, however, three
months later---without any additional evidence
emerging---that outrageous lie was inserted into the
State of the Union speech to justify the president's
case for bypassing the United Nations Security Council,
for chasing U.N. inspectors out of Iraq and for
invading and occupying an oil-rich country.
This weekend, administration sources disclosed that CIA
Director George Tenet intervened in October to warn
White House officials, including deputy national
security advisor Stephen Hadley, not to use the Niger
information because it was based on a single source.
That source proved to be a forged document with glaring
inconsistencies.
Bush's top security aides, led by Hadley's boss, Rice,
went along with the CIA, and Bush's October speech was
edited to eliminate the false charge that Iraq was
seeking to acquire uranium from Niger to create a
nuclear weapon.
We now know that before Bush's January speech, Robert
G. Joseph, the National Security Council individual who
reports to Rice on nuclear proliferation, was fully
briefed by CIA analyst Alan Foley that the Niger
connection was no stronger than it had been in October.
It is inconceivable that in reviewing draft after draft
of the State of the Union speech, NSC staffers Hadley
and Joseph failed to tell Rice that the president was
about to spread a big lie to justify going to war.
On national security, the buck doesn't stop with Tenet,
the current fall guy. The buck stops with Bush and his
Lies, lies, lies that America's Yahoos keep eating up and swallowing without question
national security advisor, who is charged with
funneling intelligence data to the president. That
included cluing in the president that the CIA's
concerns were backed by the State Department's
conclusion that "the claims of Iraqi pursuit of natural
uranium in Africa are highly dubious."
For her part, Rice has tried to fend off controversy by
claiming ignorance. On "Meet the Press" in June, Rice
claimed, "We did not know at the time---no one knew at
the time, in our circles---maybe someone knew down in
the bowels of the agency, but no one in our circles
knew that there were doubts and suspicions that this
might be a forgery."
On Friday, Rice admitted that she had known the State
Department intelligence unit "was the one that within
the overall intelligence estimate had objected to that
sentence" and that Secretary of State Colin Powell had
refused to use the Niger document in his presentation
to the U.N. because of what she described as long-
standing concerns about its credibility. But Rice also
knew the case for bypassing U.N. inspections and
invading Iraq required demonstrating an imminent
threat. The terrifying charge that Iraq was hellbent on
developing nuclear weapons would do the trick nicely.
However, with the discrediting of the Niger buy and the
equally dubious citation of a purchase of aluminum
tubes (which turned out to be inappropriate for the
production of enriched uranium), one can imagine the
disappointment at the White House. There was no
evidence for painting Saddam Hussein as a nuclear
threat.
The proper reaction should have been to support the
U.N. inspectors in doing their work in an efficient and
timely fashion. We now know, and perhaps the White
House knew then, that the inspectors eventually would
come up empty-handed because no weapons of mass
destruction program existed---not even a stray vial of
chemical and biological weapons has been discovered.
However, that would have obviated the administration's
key rationale for an invasion, so lies substituted for
facts that didn't exist.
And there, dear readers, exists the firm basis for
bringing a charge of impeachment against the president
who employed lies to lead us into war.
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-scheer15jul15,1,7945990.column
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