Bush team sought to snuff CIA doubts Differences over Iraq WMD latest at

[UpInArms]

Bush team sought to snuff CIA doubts
Differences over Iraq WMD latest attempt to override agency

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/10/26/MNG62FDUGL1.DTL

Washington -- Whether or not Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald decides to bring indictments in the outing of Valerie Plame as a CIA operative -- and whether or not any crimes were actually committed -- one element of the case is central to an understanding of what happened and why: At the time of the leak, administration supporters of the Iraq war were determined to neutralize the CIA's doubts about the White House case that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction, most notably nuclear weapons.

It is also not the first time -- and it most likely won't be the last -- that conflicts over intelligence have had momentous political consequences.

As far back as the 1950s, when the Air Force claimed there was a missile gap between the United States and Russia, the CIA proved to be a sticking point. Only when the agency sent its new U-2 spy plane soaring over the Soviet Union, taking pictures of air bases and missiles from 80,000 feet, did U.S. arms-control advocates have the ammunition they needed to beat back the furor.

In the 1970s, when President Richard Nixon's policy of detente was under attack by some former military officials and conservative policy intellectuals, Ford administration officials Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld were among those challenging as too soft the CIA's estimate of Moscow's military power.

Rumsfeld and Cheney wanted to create a "Team B," which would have access to the CIA's data on the Soviets and issue its own conclusions. Cheney, as White House chief of staff, and Rumsfeld, as secretary of Defense, championed Team B, whose members included the young defense strategist Paul Wolfowitz, who a quarter-century later would be one of the chief architects of the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

CIA Director William Colby rejected the Team B idea and was fired. Colby's successor as head of the spy agency, George H.W. Bush, the current president's father, accepted it.

...more...

[shraby]

1. Trying to do the same old stuff way back then

weren't they?

[UpInArms]

3. I thought these two paragraphs were also very interesting

Team B's conclusion that the CIA was indeed soft on the Soviets was leaked to sympathetic journalists and generated public support for a new round of military spending, particularly on missiles. Team B's conclusions turned out, years later, to be false.

and

Over at the Pentagon, however, Rumsfeld was reprising Team B by creating his own intelligence shop. The Chalabi organization's alarmist reports on Hussein's nuclear weapons, which later proved to be false, bypassed the CIA and went directly to the White House.

[HereSince1628]

2. Unfortunately, this is a 70's redux administration of 70's jr bureaucrats

and middle managers intent on reversing 70's social progress and vindicating all the methods they promoted and failed at 30 years ago.

[shraby]

4. Leopards don't change their spots!

[HereSince1628]

5. and insecure ideologues are resistant to learning.

[LynnTheDem]

6. The CIA was correct. The bushCabal LIED.

Doubts, Dissent Stripped from Public Version of Iraq Assessment

The public version of the U.S. intelligence community's key prewar assessment of Iraq's illicit arms programs was stripped of dissenting opinions, warnings of insufficient information and doubts about deposed dictator Saddam Hussein's intentions, a review of the document and its once-classified version shows.

As a result, the public was given a far more definitive assessment of Iraq's plans and capabilities than President Bush and other U.S. decision-makers received from their intelligence agencies.

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0210-02.htm

CIA to Bush: 'No clear Evidence of WMD'
http://www.truthout.org/docs_03/120103A.shtml

Why the CIA thinks Bush is wrong

The president says the US has to act now against Iraq. The trouble is, his own security services don't agree.
http://www.sundayherald.com/28384

CIA in blow to Bush attack plans

The letter also comes at a time when the CIA is competing with the more hawkish Pentagon, which is also supplying the White House with intelligence on the Iraqi threat.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,808970,00.html

White House 'exaggerating Iraqi threat'
Bush's televised address attacked by US intelligence
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,807286,00.html

Depiction of Threat Outgrew Supporting Evidence
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A39500-2003Aug9?language=printer

CIA's October 2002 NIE:

-Unmanned aircraft
" ... The Director, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance, US Air Force, does not agree that Iraq is developing UAVs primarily intended to be delivery platforms for chemical and biological warfare (CBW) agents. The small size of Iraq's new UAV strongly suggests a primary role of reconnaissance, although CBW delivery is an inherent capability."

bushit:

-"We have also discovered through intelligence that Iraq has a growing fleet of manned and unmanned aerial vehicles that could be used to disperse chemical or biological weapons across broad areas. We are concerned that Iraq is exploring ways of using these UAVs for missions targeting the United States."

CIA's October 2002 NIE:

-WMD
"We lack specific information on many key aspects of Iraq's WMD programs."

bushit:

"Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction."

"We know for a fact that there are weapons there."

"There can be no doubt that Saddam Hussein has biological weapons and the capability to rapidly produce more, many more."

"Well, there is no question that we have evidence and information that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction, biological and chemical particularly"

"There is no doubt that the regime of Saddam Hussein possesses weapons of mass destruction."

"We know where they are."

CIA's October 2002 NIE:

-Nuclear program
"The activities we have detected do not, however, add up to a compelling case that Iraq is currently pursuing what INR would consider to be an integrated and comprehensive approach to acquire nuclear weapons."

bushit:

"Iraq is reconstituting its nuclear weapons program."

MOST AMERICANS OPPOSED invading Iraq UNLESS the UN inspectors FOUND actual hidden WMD;


January 22, 2003; US Public Want to Give UN Inspectors More Time

Seven in 10 Americans would give U.N. weapons inspectors months more to pursue their arms search in Iraq...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&contentId=A23564-2003Jan21

So bush kicked the weapons inspectors out of Iraq 90 days before they were finished.

BUSH LIED. The US "media" covered up. Americans were punk'd.

[tanyev]

7. And Cheney and Rumsfeld were already working on

continuity of government in the 80s.

Published in the March, 2004 issue of The Atlantic
The Armageddon Plan
by James Mann

At least once a year during the 1980s Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld vanished. Cheney was working diligently on Capitol Hill, as a congressman rising through the ranks of the Republican leadership. Rumsfeld, who had served as Gerald Ford's Secretary of Defense, was a hard-driving business executive in the Chicago area—where, as the head of G. D. Searle & Co., he dedicated time and energy to the success of such commercial products as Nutra-Sweet, Equal, and Metamucil. Yet for periods of three or four days at a time no one in Congress knew where Cheney was, nor could anyone at Searle locate Rumsfeld. Even their wives were in the dark; they were handed only a mysterious Washington phone number to use in case of emergency.
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0318-14.htm

High time all of their dark deeds are brought into the shining light of day.