What's the difference between Bob Graham and the Clintons on the Iraq fiasco? Honest truth.

[madfloridian]

On the lead up to the Iraq war Senator Bob Graham was very critical of those who refused to read the entire NIE and not just the sanitized version. He did not mince words. These are strong words for Bob Graham who always thought and thought about things before speaking.

This is a partial repost, but it needs to be said again. I notice Graham is still after getting the redacted truth about 9/11 out to the public.

We need to remember things like this at this anniversary of the time that our country invaded another country based on lies.

I remember Bob Graham's rant on October 9, 2002, two days before the IWR vote.

The Palm Beach Post link is no longer available, but I saved the text and the article.

..."On Oct. 9, 2002, Graham — the guy everyone thought of as quiet, mild-mannered, deliberate, conflict-averse — let loose on his Senate colleagues for going along with President Bush's war against Iraq.

"We are locking down on the principle that we have one evil, Saddam Hussein. He is an enormous, gargantuan force, and that's who we're going to go after," Graham said on the floor. "That, frankly, is an erroneous reading of the world. There are many evils out there, a number of which are substantially more competent, particularly in their ability to attack Americans here at home, than Iraq is likely to be in the foreseeable future."

He told his fellow senators that if they didn't recognize that going to war with Iraq without first taking out the actual terrorists would endanger Americans, "then, frankly, my friends — to use a blunt term — the blood's going to be on your hands."

It was a watershed moment. Gone was the meticulous thinker who would talk completely around and through a problem before answering a question about it...

In contrast to those words were the ones spoken by other leaders.

Clinton defends successor's push for war

"I have repeatedly defended President Bush against the left on Iraq, even though I think he should have waited until the U.N. inspections were over," Clinton said in a Time magazine interview that will hit newsstands Monday, a day before the publication of his book "My Life."

Clinton, who was interviewed Thursday, said he did not believe that Bush went to war in Iraq over oil or for imperialist reasons but out of a genuine belief that large quantities of weapons of mass destruction remained unaccounted for.

Noting that Bush had to be "reeling" in the wake of the attacks of September 11, 2001, Clinton said Bush's first priority was to keep al Qaeda and other terrorist networks from obtaining "chemical and biological weapons or small amounts of fissile material."

"That's why I supported the Iraq thing. There was a lot of stuff unaccounted for," Clinton said in reference to Iraq and the fact that U.N. weapons inspectors left the country in 1998.

Of course his views were the basis of many of the votes for the invasion by others in Congress.

And Hilary also spoke on the topic in 2008, when there had been plenty of hindsight.

Hillary and the Iraqi People

Sometimes one can agree with a great part of what one says, but then can be appalled by one statement. This was that kind of time for me.

As Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-NY, prepares to give a major address on Iraq today, I’m reminded how much I was struck by this part of her Friday speech in Pittsburgh, when she sounded as if she were implying that the Iraqi people were entirely to blame for their current troubles.

Democrats, it seems to me, have blurred the line between the Iraqi government officials unable or unwilling to come together, and the Iraqi people — the millions of people who have been victimized by Saddam Hussein, then a poorly-planned war, and on and on.

Her words from that ABC article in 2008.

"And I believe that at the same time that we have to make clear to the Iraqis that they have been given the greatest gift that a human being can give another human being – the gift of freedom. And it is up to them to decide how they will use that precious gift that has been paid for with the blood and sacrifice and treasure of the United States of America.

Changing the reason for the invasion from protecting ourselves from weapons of mass destruction to giving Iraqis the gift of freedom. That is a terrible spin about such a tragic loss of our country's integrity.

[madfloridian]

1. What I Knew Before the Invasion..Bob Graham 2005

What I Knew Before the Invasion

I, too, presumed the president was being truthful -- until a series of events undercut that confidence.

In February 2002, after a briefing on the status of the war in Afghanistan, the commanding officer, Gen. Tommy Franks, told me the war was being compromised as specialized personnel and equipment were being shifted from Afghanistan to prepare for the war in Iraq -- a war more than a year away. Even at this early date, the White House was signaling that the threat posed by Saddam Hussein was of such urgency that it had priority over the crushing of al Qaeda.

In the early fall of 2002, a joint House-Senate intelligence inquiry committee, which I co-chaired, was in the final stages of its investigation of what happened before Sept. 11. As the unclassified final report of the inquiry documented, several failures of intelligence contributed to the tragedy. But as of October 2002, 13 months later, the administration was resisting initiating any substantial action to understand, much less fix, those problems.

At a meeting of the Senate intelligence committee on Sept. 5, 2002, CIA Director George Tenet was asked what the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) provided as the rationale for a preemptive war in Iraq. An NIE is the product of the entire intelligence community, and its most comprehensive assessment. I was stunned when Tenet said that no NIE had been requested by the White House and none had been prepared. Invoking our rarely used senatorial authority, I directed the completion of an NIE.

Lots more at the link.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

2. Which is the biggest reason I won't vote for her. K&R

[Scuba]

3. +1

[madfloridian]

6. The difference between them is stunning.

One wants truth, two seem to depend on talking points.

[Thinkingabout]

7. Warren and Sanders vote on ISIS Resolution is the reason I would not vote for either of them.

[calimary]

23. Nobody's perfect, Part 2.

[calimary]

22. Nobody's perfect, Part 1.

[Thinkingabout]

27. You are right, no one is perfect but for some one thing wrong prevents a vote, so there you are.

[madfloridian]

35. My post does NOT encourage anyone to refuse to vote.

I have never done that.

[Thinkingabout]

36. I did not say refuse to vote, some actions taken by candidates just may send my vote elsewhere.

I vote everytime even on bond issues, it us my right and I feel duty to vote, if you don't vote, don't bitch.

[madfloridian]

37. I don't know what got you started on me so angrily....

But my posts here show I have always voted Democrat. However I have the last year been thinking more and more about no party affiliation. Not sure yet.

You said:

if you don't vote, don't bitch

[Thinkingabout]

39. Actually i was e replying to Post #2, and yes I believe if one sits on their duff and does not make

The effort to vote the should deserve their bitching to them selves. Like a bumper sticker I have seen lately "Don't blame me, I voted"

[Thinkingabout]

4. Just to be plain spoken, Bush had every intention on invading Iraq before he was elected, he had to

Create a "situation" in which to do so. I di not doubt for one moment he knew the WND's was not going to be found, he had to jump the gun and invade before the inspection was complete. It I time to lay the invasion totally at the feet of George W Bush. To attempt to delivery this to anyone else is just as bad as W invading Iraq in the first place.

Would it have been a good thing for Al-qaeda to have taken the WND'S in their position, I would think it could have been bad.

To continue blaming Hillary Clinton for her vote on IVR is giving Bush a pass, why not start asking the questions of Bush? Do you think it possible to try Hillary for voting yes on the IVR in international court or is it more probable Bush may get tried for his decisions on invading Iraq?

I hate war, hate what it does to our troops and their families, knew invading Iraq was bad, Iraq had kept Iran under wraps for a long time, it was uncorking the bottle which could not be recorked.

[madfloridian]

8. I do believe those who voted yes to the Iraq invasion must be reminded over and over.

Else why bother with truth?

[Thinkingabout]

9. And we should at the same time remind everyone Bush pulled the invasion of

Iraq in order to be truthful.

[RobertEarl]

24. Thank you

I know you are a staunch supporter of the Clintons and the establishment Democrats.

Well, you just showed that the Clintons are both dead wrong because they do not come down on bush as hard as even you do. If they had, we might be living a more peaceful world. Alas, the Clintons are in the same boat as bush and they are manning the bush sails.

Good job. Think about it.

[Thinkingabout]

26. And in this thread Bush gets a pass, does this mean everyone who did not come

Down are dead wrong and manning the Bush sails?

[RobertEarl]

28. bush gets no pass

I don't know why you say that.

Your statements that have any bearing on this are that the Clintons are dead wrong because they gave bush a pass. Try to keep it straight, k?

[Thinkingabout]

29. You got it reversed, I said Bush was the vote to invade Iraq, he planned it before he was president

And any lie would get what he wanted. I have NEVER given Bush a pass on invading Iraq. BTW, I have it straight, you must be thinking about some one other than me.

[RobertEarl]

31. To be clear

It was the Clintons who give and are giving bush a pass.

Think about it.

[Thinkingabout]

32. If you think they should jump out on him ok, I do not know it is necessary for my good but whatever.

[RobertEarl]

33. Glad to see you do not give a pass

Not that we matter, but the Clintons do carry some weight. So, good for you!! Too bad the Clintons can't do as much, eh? Hill probably would get my vote were she as bright as you.

[ND-Dem]

41. Bush got a pass? Only from the clintons.

[jeff47]

11. No, we're quite good at blaming more than one person.

Putting some of the blame on either Clinton is not putting all of the blame on either one of them.

If we schmucks in the bleachers could tell the fix was in, you'd think a US Senator could. Clinton's poor judgement with the vote and the "bring them freedom" speech does not remove all responsibility from Bush.

[Thinkingabout]

12. You can discount her failure to vote no, Bush gave the go ahead, if she would have voted no he would

Have still invaded Iraq, it was not based on whether she voted or not, his was the vote which caused the invasion. Plain speaking Iraq was Bush's decision.

[jeff47]

14. Then that's all the more reason for her to have voted no.

Voting "yes" because it was inevitable is even worse.

"I think Bush is wrong, but I'm gonna vote yes anyway"

[Thinkingabout]

15. Plain speaking, the vote in the Senate was 77 yes votes and 23 no, as I stated before it would not

Have changed the outcome even if she did not vote, the decision was made by Bush, just saying, her vote would not have changed anything.

[w4rma]

17. A no vote might have made Hillary president 6 years ago. Now, she'll never be president.

So, don't say it wouldn't have changed anything. You are fooling yourself if you don't think people can't tell that she was disingenuous then and is disingenuous now, too.

[madfloridian]

18. It does not matter if it would have changed the outcome. Read her words in the OP.

That is a bunch of BS, she knows it, we know it, now everyone knows it.

[Thinkingabout]

44. If Hillary voted no what action do you think Bush have taken?

If she was absent for the vote what action do you think Bush would have taken?

You know he would have invaded but now many here seems to blame one vote by Hillary is the reason Bush invaded Iraq, he was intent on invading Iraq, this is my point, to point one out and apparently son thinks she was the only one who voted.

[ND-Dem]

42. "It's wrong, but I'll vote for it anyway, because everyone else is"

What a stupid politics. Both by the politician and the one who votes for the pol.

[calimary]

25. Good point here, Thinkingabout.

Why do we stop short of george w. bush? I see this huge wave of effort that seems to attempt to leave him out of all the dirty work. Leaving him with relatively clean hands.

FUCK THAT. He was right in the middle of it. Even ceding operational control to cheney because he was too lazy and probably didn't want to bother his "beautiful mind" about it. Thinking deeply wasn't his thing. He didn't even want to bother having to read any position paper that was longer than two pages. That's all the attention-span he had. TWO PAGES. He's the one who didn't "do nuance." Well, sometimes nuance is IT. Nuance sometimes is EVERYTHING. It's KEY.

Not that I want to give Hillary a pass. I am a fully-acknowledged admirer of her brains, her intellect, her superior intelligence. Brains are tremendously attractive to me. In men, they're downright sexy to me. Given that, I'm still annoyed that somebody with her brainpower could allow herself to be lulled by the constant drumbeat for invading Iraq. Somebody that smart should have known better, and should have seen through all that utter bullshit. Somebody that smart should have been smart enough not to be naive about the motivations of the people pushing that invasion so damn hard. Somebody that smart should have seen through it - AND them. I mean - WE did. WE saw through it. We took the time to read this stuff, to scratch the surface, to research the damn thing. That's why when I had a chance to vote for her in the California primary, I went with Barack Obama. I hope to GOD she's learned from this colossal mistake. I think, if it hadn't been for her vote for the Iraq War, SHE would be president now, in the last half of HER second term. And I still think she has the best and most realistic chance to keep the White House in Democratic hands in 2016. Especially if Elizabeth Warren, whom I LOVE, still says she's not running - and actually has said she'd support Hillary Clinton.

We have to be brutally objective about this. Because it's not just the White House at stake. It's the Supreme Court - which we've already seen is CRITICAL to social change and improvement, or the utter obstruction thereof.

[madfloridian]

34. To be clear, Bush would not have gotten his way if more had stood up to him.

The media played to our fears, and both parties went along.

I have never ever left Bush out of the equation....I just am giving credit to a brave and persistent Bob Graham.

[ND-Dem]

43. "Bush would not have gotten his way if more had stood up to him." = exactly. I still remember

what a collection of cringing cowards and syncophants Congress turned out to be in those hours.

[elleng]

5. Damn right.

I supported him for President.

And when he withdrew, I supported Wes Clark.

[Cryptoad]

10. Seems Papa Paul has many moles.

[progressoid]

13. Heh. I misread the OP title.

I thought it said Lindsey Graham.

[FloriTexan]

16. K&R

[madfloridian]

19. Phantom Flight From Florida. Tampa Tribune 2001

http://911research.wtc7.net/cache/post911/aviation/tampa_phantom.html

TAMPA - The twin-engine Lear jet streaked into the afternoon sky, leaving Tampa behind but revealing a glimpse of international intrigue in the aftermath of terrorist attacks on America.

The federal government says the flight never took place.

But the two armed bodyguards hired to chaperon their clients out of the state recall the 100-minute trip Sept. 13 quite vividly.

In the end, the son of a Saudi Arabian prince who is the nation's defense minister and the son of a Saudi army commander made it to Kentucky for a waiting 747 and a trip to their homeland.

The hastily arranged flight out of Raytheon Airport Services, a private hangar on the outskirts of Tampa International Airport, was anything but ordinary. It lifted off the tarmac at a time when every private plane in the nation was grounded due to safety concerns after the Sept. 11 attacks.

Local and federal authorities will say little about the flight.

``It's not in our logs ... it didn't occur,'' said Chris White, spokesman for the Federal Aviation Administration's regional office in Atlanta.

[madfloridian]

20. Senator Bob Graham: The CIA Made Up Two Briefing Sessions. Emptywheel blog.

Remember how Graham always takes notes of his everyday activities? He writes almost everything down in his journals. He's been mocked for it, but he still does it faithfully.

http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2009/05/14/senator-bob-graham-the-cia-made-up-two-briefing-sessions/

hursday May 14, 2009 7:43 am
google plus icon

Bob Graham just appeared on WNYC’s Brian Lehrer Show. In addition to repeating earlier reports that he was never briefed on waterboarding, Graham revealed that the first time he asked the CIA when he was briefed on torture, it claimed it had briefed him on two dates when no briefing took place.

I didn’t get Graham’s exact quotes (and the quotes below are rough approximations), but when asked to respond to Philip Zelikow’s assertion that members of Congress from both parties had been briefed on this program, Graham said that when he asked the CIA when he had been briefed on the program, the CIA gave him the dates of four briefings, two in April 2002 and two in September 2002, when they claimed they had briefed him about the program. But after Graham consulted his own records, he pointed out that on two of those dates, he had not attended any briefing. After Graham pointed this out to the CIA, they conceded their own dates were incorrect.

Graham then went on to repeat his claim that he had no recollection of being told about waterboarding Zubaydah or anything else about extreme interrogation.

In addition to repeating his earlier assertion that he would have remembered something that dramatic, Graham contextualized the briefing the CIA gave him–which occurred right in the middle of Graham’s complaints about the inaccuracy of the Iraq NIE (the briefing on September 27, 2002 would have shown up just a few days after the British released a White Paper on September 24, 2002 that publicized for the first time the yellocake claim).

Occurred in September 2002, right in the middle of the NIE on Iraq where I was at open war with the Administration where I was at war with the Administration on the inaccuracies of that NIE.

[WillyT]

21. K & R !!!

[RiverLover]

30. Awesome post. Much of this is new to me.

Thank you.

[madfloridian]

38. That is one reason I reposted it in part.

Many are not aware of the lead up to the war, the cowardly way the patriot act was signed. I think we need to remember those who had the courage to take a stand.

[moondust]

40. Yep.

I've posted some of this before but...the Clintons of all people should have known better given Bill's fairly recent access to all the intelligence on Iraq. Some Iraqis have said Saddam shut down the WMD programs by the mid 90s; Clinton should have known that. I suspect the Clintons may have even advised their buddy Tony Blair to jump on the war wagon.

Bob Graham is the one member of Congress I recall who seemed to be diligently looking in the right places for hard evidence: raw intelligence. Of course credible incriminating SIGINT or HUMINT didn't exist--not counting Curveball or Colin Powell's UN BS --because the WMD programs apparently hadn't existed for years. It may very well be that some CIA analysts knew there wasn't a credible WMD case but were overruled by Tenet and Bushco and threatened not to disclose the truth.

Ahh, memories...

Great post, MFla.

[madfloridian]

46. "the Clintons of all people should have known better given Bill's fairly recent access"

Yes, he had great access to all the info.

[johnnyreb]

45. k&r, thanks madfloridian.