16 Words, and Counting By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF - NY Times After I wrote a month ago about the Niger uranium hoax in the State of the Union address, a senior White House official chided me gently and explained that there was more to the story that I didn't know. Yup. And now it's coming out. Based on conversations with people in the intelligence community, this picture is emerging: the White House, eager to spice up the State of the Union address, recklessly resurrected the discredited Niger tidbit. The Central Intelligence Agency objected, and then it and the National Security Council negotiated a new wording, attributing it all to the Brits. It felt less dishonest pinning the falsehood on the cousins. What troubles me is not that single episode, but the broader pattern of dishonesty and delusion that helped get us into the Iraq mess â and that created the false expectations undermining our occupation today. Some in the administration are trying to make George Tenet the scapegoat for the affair. But Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, a group of retired spooks, issued an open letter to President Bush yesterday reflecting the view of many in the intel community that the central culprit is Vice President Dick Cheney. The open letter called for Mr. Cheney's resignation. Condi Rice says she first learned of former Ambassador Joseph Wilson's fact-finding trip to Niger during a TV interview, presumably when George Stephanopoulos asked her on "This Week" on June 8 about a column by me describing the trip. (Condi, you're breaking my heart â you didn't read that column itself? How about if I fax you copies of everything I write, so you don't miss any, and you fax me everything you write?) Actually, I have to agree with Ms. Rice that the focus on that single sentence in the State of the Union address is a bit obsessive. It was only 16 words, attributed in a weaselly way that made it almost accurate, and as any journalist knows well, mistakes do get into print. So the problem is not those 16 words, by themselves, but the larger pattern of abuse of intelligence. The silver lining is that the spooks are so upset that they're speaking out. The Defense Intelligence Agency has had town hall meetings in which everyone was told not to talk to journalists (thanks, guys, for naming me in particular). One insider complains: "In the most recent meeting, we also were told that, as much as possible, we should avoid `caveat-ing' our intelligence assessments. . . . Forget nuance, forget fine distinctions; they only confuse these guys. If that isn't a downright scary dumbing-down of our intelligence product, I don't know what is." Intelligence isn't just being dumbed down, but is also being manipulated â and it's continuing. Experts say the recent firefight on the Syrian-Iraq border involved not Saddam Hussein or a family member, as we were led to believe, but just some Iraqi petroleum smugglers. Moreover, Patrick Lang, a former senior D.I.A. official, says that many in the government believe that incursion was an effort by ideologues to disrupt cooperation between the U.S. and Syria. While the scandal has so far focused on Iraq, the manipulations appear to be global. For example, one person from the intelligence community recalls an administration hard-liner's urging the State Department Bureau of Intelligence and Research to state that Cuba has a biological weapons program. The spooks refused, and Colin Powell backed them. Then there's North Korea. The C.I.A.'s assessments on North Korea's nuclear weaponry were suddenly juiced up beginning in December 2001. The alarmist assessments (based on no new evidence) continued until January of this year, when the White House wanted to play down the Korean crisis. Then assessments abruptly restored the less ominous language of the 1990's. The latest issue of the Naval War College Review describes the ambiguities of the North Korean uranium program and argues that U.S. officials "opted to exploit the intelligence for political purposes." "Is there a parallel with what is now going on, after the fact, in estimates about Iraq?" asked the article's author, Jonathan Pollack, chairman of the Strategic Research Department of the Naval War College, in an interview. "I think there may be." So that chiding White House official was right: there was more to the picture. But I'm afraid the bigger the picture gets, the more it looks like a pattern of dishonesty.
"According to Krugman, the Bush administration is to be held accountable both for not being sufficiently alarmist with respect to intelligence estimates prior to 9/11 and then for being unduly alarmist with those same intelligence estimates after 9/11. Think about the absurdity and hypocrisy of this for a moment: Krugman wants to vilify the Bush administration for not piecing together scraps of intelligence, speculation and theory to "predict and prevent" a one-in-a-million terrorist attack scenario and then turn around and vilify the administration when they take seriously intelligence reports - reports that the British government continues to stand by even to this very moment - that Hussein attempted to purchase material to make a nuclear bomb. The ridiculousness of this part of Krugman's argument does, I think, put a nice highlight on why this issue may not damage President Bush the way the Democrats hope and may even backfire on them in a big way. Rather than offer up a clear cut case that "BUSH LIED!", what the Niger/uranium story does indicate explicitly to voters in this country is that if there is even the slightest indication that terrorists or rogue regimes around the world are trying to get their hands on WMD's, President Bush is willing to act swiftly and forcefully to take them down and defend America. This stands in stark - and I mean STARK- contrast to Howard "Let's Send Troops to Liberia but Not Iraq" Dean and most of the rest of the Dem presidential hopefuls."
No. Krugman quite accurately illustrates the fact that the Bush administration has persisted in viewing and applying intelligence ONLY as it supports their agenda. They dismissed the imminent threats of Saudi backed terrorists, (Hart Rudman report) and actively undermined ongoing investigations (as the 9/11 will clearly show) and they embellished and promoted suspect, and outright false information regarding Iraq WMD and the possible connection to Al Qaeda. You need to either admit you're being played or brush up on your reading comprehension.
Let them tell that to the Marines....., Let them tell that to our fighting men.... In the movie Pearl Harbor, recently in the movies, the Roosevelt character in doing the radio addresses, replied to all the taunts of America's non-involvement. So, similarly, I'll suggest that from an economic standpoint: "let them tell that to all those millions out of work (especially from the high tech sectors)" oh, BTW, are you better off now than you were 4 years ago? (let them ask that of those high tech workers and that industry)
You need to either admit you're being played or brush up on your reading comprehension. ____________________________ Why not ask yourself this same question. It is equally valid on the other side too.
Hello. I KNOW we're being played by this deceitful administration. Clue phone ringing....... it's for you!
I consider you and your allies much more deceitful than this administration. Eight years of Clinton/Gore and 50 years of " lying liberals" taught us that.
And these are only the examples of those respective presidents who were caught! One has to wonder in what other areas Nixon, Reagan, Bush Sr. (read my lips) and Clinton have lied to the American citizens.
Get a clue, Aphie!! Did you suddenly fall into Harry's basement apartment and get overtaken by the glue fumes??? Do a search for funeralgate -- W is a dirty, dirty, little man. And enough with this shit about how 9/11 was clinton's fault -- who the FUCK was in charge when those planes hit the building?? You'd have to be sniffing glue with Harry to blame it on Clinton. And what happened as a result? The patriot act -- Clinton would've vetoed that shit right away. Isn't it fucked up that W endorsed a bill that allows YOUR tax dollars to let the government spy on you with satellites that YOU paid for??!! Isn't the conservative mentality supposed to endorse the rights of the individual above ALL else?? Aren't the kids still reading 1984 in school??