In challenging war's critics, administration tinkers with truth

[Judi Lynn]

Posted on Wed, Nov. 16, 2005

In challenging war's critics, administration tinkers with truth

By James Kuhnhenn and Jonathan S. Landay
Knight Ridder Newspapers

WASHINGTON - Vice President Dick Cheney turned up the White House rhetoric Wednesday in attacking critics of the Iraq war, accusing some unnamed lawmakers of lacking "backbone."

Cheney's rough-edged remarks were the latest in the Bush administration's campaign to challenge critics of the war, accusing them of twisting the historical record about how and why the war was launched. Yet in accusing Iraq war critics of "rewriting history," Bush, Cheney and other senior administration officials are tinkering with the truth themselves.

The administration's overarching premise is beyond dispute - administration officials, Democratic and Republican lawmakers and even leaders of foreign governments believed intelligence assessments that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. That intelligence turned out to be wrong.

But Bush, Cheney, and other senior officials have added several other arguments in recent days that distort the factual record. Below, Knight Ridder addresses the administration's main assertions:
(snip/...)

http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/13185357.htm

[MissMarple]

1. This was printed in our right wing rag " The Gazette" today. Big OOPS!

It doesn't get any clearer than this.

"ASSERTION: In his speech, Bush noted that "more than a hundred Democrats in the House and the Senate - who had access to the same intelligence - voted to support removing Saddam Hussein from power."


CONTEXT: This isn't true.


The Congress didn't have access to the President's Daily Brief, a top-secret compendium of intelligence on the most pressing national security issues that was sent to the president every morning by former CIA Director George Tenet.


As for prewar intelligence on Iraq, senior administration officials had access to other information and sources that weren't available to lawmakers.


Cheney and his aides visited the CIA and other intelligence agencies to view raw intelligence reports, received briefings and engaged in highly unusual give-and-take sessions with analysts.


Moreover, officials in the White House and the Pentagon received information directly from the Iraqi National Congress (INC), an exile group, circumventing U.S. intelligence agencies, which greatly distrusted the organization." ...

[MissMarple]

2. Uh Oh. They didn't print the entire article AND it's not online.

Poor form from the Gazette editor. Or maybe getting at least part of it in the print edition was really pushing the edge for some brave soul.

"War hawks at the Pentagon also created a special unit that produced a prewar report - one not shared with Congress - that alleged that Iraq was in league with al-Qaida. A version of the report, briefed to Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld and top White House officials, disparaged the CIA for finding there was no cooperation between Iraq and the terrorist group, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence disclosed.


After the report was leaked in November 2003 to a conservative magazine, the Pentagon disowned it.


In fact, a series of secret U.S. intelligence assessments discounted the administration's assertion that Saddam could give banned weapons to al-Qaida.


In other cases, Bush and his top lieutenants relied on partial or uncorroborated intelligence.


For example, Cheney contended in an August 2002 speech that Iraq would develop a nuclear weapon "fairly soon," even though U.S. intelligence agencies and the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency had no evidence to support such a claim.


The following month, Bush, Cheney and then-national security adviser Condoleezza Rice asserted that Iraq had sought aluminum tubes for a nuclear-weapons program. At the time, however, U.S. intelligence agencies were deeply divided over the question. The IAEA later determined that the tubes were for ground-to-ground rockets."

I'm sure there is more left out, but it will rattle a few cages, as it is.