Congress doesn't see same intelligence as president, report finds

[huckleberry]

By Jonathan S. Landay
Knight Ridder Newspapers

WASHINGTON - President Bush and top administration officials have access to a much broader range of intelligence reports than members of Congress do, a nonpartisan congressional research agency said in a report Thursday, raising questions about recent assertions by the president.

snip

"Some of the most irresponsible comments - about manipulating intelligence - have come from politicians who saw the same intelligence I saw and then voted to authorize the use of force against Saddam Hussein," Bush said on Wednesday in his most recent speech. "These charges are pure politics."

The Congressional Research Service, by contrast, said: "The president, and a small number of presidentially designated Cabinet-level officials, including the vice president ... have access to a far greater overall volume of intelligence and to more sensitive intelligence information, including information regarding intelligence sources and methods."

snip

Knight Ridder also has reported that the Bush administration relied on information that wasn't shared with Congress, including bogus claims by Iraqi defectors supplied by a former Iraqi exile group.

Also withheld from Congress was a discredited report by a now-defunct Pentagon unit that alleged that Saddam was cooperating with the al-Qaida terrorist network. No evidence of such a link has been found.

more at
http://www.ledger-enquirer.com/mld/ledgerenquirer/news/nation/13416512.htm

[jsamuel]

1. ;)

:thumbsup:

Didn't need a report, it's a DUH!!!

[brentspeak]

2. And Knight Ridder will soon be absorbed into the Corporate Collective

Knight Ridder's investigative reporting will soon become a thing of the past, because it was just sold to media monopoly conglomerate.

Good reporting on this. Let's hope someone else can pick up Knight Ridder's ball.

[Canuckistanian]

3. They're already being fitted for their Borg implants

Media resistance is futile. You will be assimilated.

[brentspeak]

5. We have to hope that a Democratic president and Congress

will once and for all destroy the Queen Borg -- by passing and enforcing better anti-trust legislation.

[Canuckistanian]

6. I'm actually hoping it won't come to that

I'm hoping more for a bottom-up response to the suck-ups that run the media.

And unfortunately, that will mean a financial incentive.

[Up2Late]

7. Did they already get bought up? I'm confused about what you wrote.

I heard Gannett was thinking about buying them, are they any good?

[frylock]

4. this may explain president shithead's recent mea culpa re: faulty intel

[Up2Late]

8. And I bet they didn't share the books they were reading either, like...

...the one that Judy Miller co-authored with Laurie Mylroie. If you don't know who that is, you should read this article about the connection from "The Village Voice" Morning Report 10/20/05

<http://www.villagevoice.com/blogs/bushbeat/archive/001970.php>

...Miller's past ties to Libby's comrade in neocondom Laurie Mylroie are well known: Miller was the co-author of Mylroie's first anti-Saddam book.

Forgotten who Mylroie is? Peter Bergen laid it out in the December 2003 Washington Monthly. Along with assorted other goniffs, Scooter and Judy put in appearances in this passage, which is long but worth it:

In the run-up to the first Gulf War, Mylroie with New York Times reporter Judith Miller wrote Saddam Hussein and the Crisis in the Gulf, a well-reviewed bestseller translated into more than a dozen languages.

Until this point, there was nothing controversial about Mylroie's career. This would change with the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993, the first act of international terrorism within the United States, which would launch Mylroie on a quixotic quest to prove that Saddam's regime was the most important source of terrorism directed against this country.

She laid out her case in Study of Revenge: Saddam Hussein's Unfinished War Against America, a book published by AEI in 2000 which makes it clear that Mylroie and the neocon hawks worked hand in glove to push her theory that Iraq was behind the '93 Trade Center bombing....

<http://www.villagevoice.com/blogs/bushbeat/archive/001970.php>
(much more at link above)

I only gets better from there, recommended read.

[Martin Eden]

9. I need a link !!!!!!!!!!

To the actual report issued by the Congressional Research Service.

I'm debating a wingnut who refuses to believe the Knight Ridder story without proof.

[Up2Late]

10. Here ya go! But I have a feeling even the report won't shut 'em up...

The first reply you will get is, "Where in particular does it say..." with the ... being the exact quote from the part of Knight-Ridder article you are debating. I've been in a few of those.

Best thing to do if it begins to get ridiculous, just say "What ever" and use the eyes :eyes:

<http://feinstein.senate.gov/crs-intel.htm>

<http://feinstein.senate.gov/crs-intel.pdf>

[Martin Eden]

11. Thanks!!!

It's always been obvious to me that congressmen aren't privy to the PDB's and other sensitive intelligence, but when Bush claims that "everyone" saw the same intel they automatically swallow the lie.