NYT: The Uranium Fiction

[BurtWorm]

NY Times Editorial: The Uranium Fiction


http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/12/opinion/12SAT1.html


We're glad that someone in Washington has finally taken responsibility for letting President Bush make a false accusation about Saddam Hussein's nuclear weapons program in the State of the Union address last January, but the matter will not end there. George Tenet, the director of central intelligence, stepped up to the issue yesterday when he said the C.I.A. had approved Mr. Bush's speech and failed to advise him to drop the mistaken charge that Iraq had recently tried to import significant quantities of uranium from an African nation, later identified as Niger. Now the American people need to know how the accusation got into the speech in the first place, and whether it was put there with an intent to deceive the nation. The White House has a lot of explaining to do.

...

[DrBB]

1. Exactly. Like I've been saying, he made it WORSE for them

That statement does NOT explain or exonerate anyone. It doesn't even do a clear job of taking the blame. Read the thing. If he thinks that's going to do it, he's dummer than Chump.

[Demobrat]

3. Boy it sure doesn't.

All he admits is that he failed to insist that the statement come out. OK. So why didn't he insist? Could it possibly be because he already knew that Bush/Cheney wouldn't listen? Sure wish somebody would ask him. Maybe if he's forced out somebody will.

[BurtWorm]

4. Could it be possible that he knew Cheney knew

and Tenet's word was beside the WH's point?

[Warpy]

6. It wasn't his place to "insist."

The CIA is not there to give orders. It's there to advise, based on what intelligence it's managed to accumulate. If anything, the CIA is there to TAKE orders.

Having Tenet take the rap for Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld, Perle, Strauss, and even poor dumb Bush is completely inappropriate. The buck does NOT stop at his desk.

It stops at Bush's desk.

[Demobrat]

15. That's exactly why it's so lame.

If I didn't know better I'd swear it was some kind of code or something. It's almost like it's begging you to read between the lines.

[BurtWorm]

17. Read this

"A good deal of information already points to a willful effort by the war camp b]in the administration to pump up an accusation that seemed shaky from the outset and that was pretty well discredited long before Mr. Bush stepped into the well of the House of Representatives last January."

[Cha]

2. "The White House has a lot of explaining to do"....

More than enough,,,,but they never will..

they'll just keep lying and lying and lying,,,until the hole is big enough for them all to fall into.

I can't believe George Tenet is disgracing himself like this!!

What does he think he is accomplishing?

[madaboutharry]

7. What does he think he is accomplishing?

These people are not normal, they don't think in terms of right and wrong. They think in terms of survival. One only can imagine what was said to Tenet privately today. He probably got a call from Cheney. Who knows what they have on him.

[unfrigginreal]

5. Happy Days Are here Again!

This one ain't gonna' disappear! Bushy folks better get their shit together cause this one has legs!

HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!

[Walt Starr]

8. Looks like I might be eating my words

I hope I have to, I really do.

I'm still waiting to see what happen s with the Sunday morning Whorefests and the water cooler talk on Monday, but damn I hope I have to eat my words.

[BurtWorm]

9. What words are you hoping to eat?

Did you think this story was finished after tonight?

[Walt Starr]

13. Yep, and right now I still do

It has all the earmarks of every story that's gone before it.

[BurtWorm]

14. Here are some differences to consider

1. There are some glaring contradictions between what the Bushists are saying, what Tenet is saying, what the Brits are saying, and what Joseph Wilson and renegade CIA analysts are saying. These are bothersome contradictions, not just to you and me and everyone at DU, but apparently to the NY Times and more members of the media and even to some Republicans in Congress.

2. Americans are dying steadily in Iraq, and Bush's numbers are falling with them. The public seems to be open to wondering who the fuck this moron vacationing in Africa is who got our soldiers into this bloody mess in Iraq.

3. While Bush is out of the country, the media are buzzing with bad news for the Bushists and a steadier barrage of criticism from Democrats without anyone trying to shout them down for being un-American.

4. A rift seems to be opening up between the Bushists and Blair over this.


It does seem that the only thing that can save Bush from getting muck all over him is another "something big" happening.

[aquart]

16. Better words than shoes.

Just remember to chew slowly.

[RichM]

10. The tone of this editorial is mixed. True, it does not absolve Bush, but

it is also not angry-sounding or even particularly ominous. It allows plenty of room for some sort of evasion - for example, a "bipartisan closed door investigation" that will pretend to examine the issue, before concluding that the President was "ill-served" by the CIA, & that the CIA should be sent to bed without its dinner for one or two days.

[BurtWorm]

11. Did you read this paragraph?

"It is clear, however, that much more went into this affair than the failure of the C.I.A. to pounce on the offending 16 words in Mr. Bush's speech. A good deal of information already points to a willful effort by the war camp in the administration to pump up an accusation that seemed shaky from the outset and that was pretty well discredited long before Mr. Bush stepped into the well of the House of Representatives last January. Doubts about the accusation were raised in March 2002 by Joseph Wilson 4th, a former American diplomat, after he was dispatched to Niger by the C.I.A. to look into the issue."

[RichM]

18. Sure I did. This is a mock-stern tone, like when a parent doesn't want

to discipline a kid, but the kid has been so outrageous that the parent has no choice but to sound a bit stern. It doesn't, however, signal that anything more than an obligatory wrist-slap is coming.

Rove & Bush have probably already seen this editorial, & are laughing, "What a bunch of pussies."

[BurtWorm]

19. That's how the Times usually sounds

Did you want them to call for revolution?

[RichM]

20. Listen, friend, I know when they're serious and when they're not. I've

read them for 20 years. This is not a serious warning.

Would you like to know when they have been serious, in the past? They were serious about investigating "Whitewater." One could tell, just from the tone, that they weren't going to back down on that.

They were serious when they screamed at Clinton for the Marc Rich pardon. NOTHING that Bush has done has produced anything remotely like that kind of anger in their editorials.

The above editorial is a wrist-slap, nothing more.

And you're right - that IS how the Times usually sounds -- sanctimonious & self-important, always posturing as the guardian of their notion of respectability.

But that's NOT how they sound, when they're determined to go after somebody.

[BurtWorm]

21. Howell Raines was the editorial page editor on both of those stories

Raines viscerally disliked the Clintons. He had it in for the Clintons.

Gail Collins' page doesn't pack as much punch as Raines' did. She doesn't seem to have the vendettas Raines did. Her style is much moe like the Gray Lady of old.

[diamond14]

12. OK. What did the pResident know, and when did he know it??

WE the PEOPLE must know why we went to WAR...why OUR soldiers are dead and majorly injured (legs blown off, arms blown off, blinded, deaf, burned, paralyzed...and more)....


We must have a major Congressional investigation to find out what happened here...it threatens OUR national security...

how scary....the CIA misleads the pResident about NUCLEAR MATERIALS !!!!!