Dowd - I Spy a Screw-Up

[realFedUp]

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/31/opinion/31dowd.html?hp

March 31, 2005
OP-ED COLUMNIST
I Spy a Screw-Up
By MAUREEN DOWD

WASHINGTON

Like the new Woody Allen movie, "Melinda and Melinda," it is possible to view today's big story on the tremendous intelligence failures before the Iraq war as either comedy or tragedy, depending on how you look at it.

snip

As necessity is the mother of invention, political pressure was the father of conveniently botched intelligence. Dick Cheney and the neocons at the Pentagon started with the conclusion they wanted, then massaged and manipulated the intelligence to back up their wishful thinking.

As The New Republic reported, Mr. Cheney lurked at the C.I.A. in the summer of 2002, an intimidating presence for young analysts. And Douglas Feith set up the Office of Special Plans at the Pentagon as a shadow intelligence agency to manufacture propaganda bolstering the administration's case.

The Office of Special Plans turned to the con man Ahmad Chalabi to come up with the evidence they needed. The Iraqi National Congress obliged with information that has now been debunked as exaggerated or fabricated. One gem was the hard-drinking relative of a Chalabi aide, a secret source code-named Curveball, who claimed to verify the mobile weapons labs.

Mr. Cheney and his "Gestapo office," as Colin Powell called it, then shoehorned all their meshugas about Saddam's aluminum tubes, weapons labs, drones and Al Qaeda links into Mr. Powell's U.N. speech.

continued

[realFedUp]

1. love this line

"It is laughable that the report offers its most scorching criticism of the C.I.A. when the C.I.A. was simply doing what the White House and Pentagon wanted. Isn't that why Mr. Tenet was given the Medal of Freedom? (Freedom from facts.)"

(She may be really late with this info...stuff we've
discussed here endlessly pre-Iraq, but glad she's written it
down in black and white) (she definitely won't get a
press pass to the WH now...)

[realFedUp]

2. and this one...

"The 9/11 attacks gave the neocons an opening for their dreams of remaking the Middle East, and they drove the Third Infantry Division through it."

ya gotta admit...this column's da bomb.

[primavera]

14. I especially like Powell's reference to the Cheney gestapo

Nice to hear even the Repukes have perceived some parallels there.

[gumby]

3. Trying to wash the blood off your hands, MoDo?

You asked for it and now you got it, Toyota! you Corporate Whore.

[preciousdove]

4. Clinton's request for files on White House personal from FBI

was screamed by the media as not only improper but illegal. Linda Trip was in house then and they suspected a rat(is that what Foster was hinting at?), no doubt. Bet that is why not all records that the witch hunt sought made it into the office.

Clinton my have been in the White House but he sure had limited power while dealing with people left over in government agencies from the Reagan-Bush years. Reagan had massive purges when he first got in and I imagine they continued under Bush.

The media sure showed its bias on treating these two stories.

I want my country back!

[realFedUp]

5. I want the truth back

as well as honor and justice.

Bush said he'd change the tone in DC...
I've never seen a country more at war
with what it stands for since the Civil War.

[rodeodance]

6. "no laughs threre" she is right on!!

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/31/opinion/31dowd.html?th&emc=th

March 31, 2005
OP-ED COLUMNIST
I Spy a Screw-Up
By MAUREEN DOWD

WASHINGTON

Like the new Woody Allen movie, "Melinda and Melinda," it is possible to view today's big story on the tremendous intelligence failures before the Iraq war as either comedy or tragedy, depending on how you look at it.

For instance, on the comic side, The Times reported yesterday that administration officials were relieved that the new report by a presidential commission had "found no evidence that political pressure from the White House or Pentagon contributed to the mistaken intelligence."

That's hilarious......


......
Like "Melinda and Melinda," the other side of this wacky saga is deadly serious. There are, after all, more than 1,500 dead American soldiers, Al Qaeda terrorists on the loose and real nuclear-bomb programs in Iran and North Korea that we know nothing about. No laughs there.

[Jack Rabbit]

7. Well done by Ms. Dowd

This must never, never be forgotten:

administration officials were relieved that the new report by a presidential commission had "found no evidence that political pressure from the White House or Pentagon contributed to the mistaken intelligence."

That's hilarious.

As necessity is the mother of invention, political pressure was the father of conveniently botched intelligence.

Dick Cheney and the neocons at the Pentagon started with the conclusion they wanted, then massaged and manipulated the intelligence to back up their wishful thinking.

As The New Republic reported, Mr. Cheney lurked at the C.I.A. in the summer of 2002, an intimidating presence for young analysts. And Douglas Feith set up the Office of Special Plans at the Pentagon as a shadow intelligence agency to manufacture propaganda bolstering the administration's case.

The intelligence was bad because they wanted it bad. Any report that says otherwise is a whitewash.

Now get these war criminals to The Hague.

[tofubo]

8. the fix is in - power to be concentrated into the hands of loyal minions

Bush commission offers dozens changes to fix intelligence agencies

WASHINGTON (AP) - In a scathing report, a presidential commission said Thursday that America's spy agencies were "dead wrong'' in most of their judgments about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction before the war and that the United States knows "disturbingly little'' about the weapons programs and threat posed by many of the nation's most dangerous adversaries.

The commission called for dramatic change to prevent future failures. It outlined more than 70 recommendations, saying that President George W. Bush must give John Negroponte, the new director of national intelligence, broader powers for overseeing the nation's 15 spy agencies.

It also called for sweeping changes at the FBI to combine the bureau's counterterrorism and counterintelligence resources into a new office.

[realFedUp]

9. but, what's left for Cheney's son-in-law to do?

:eyes:

[tofubo]

13. time

time in a honduran jail cell

[tofubo]

15. missundaztood you

thought the son in law reference was to negroponte (my bad)

nytimes article on nepostism

Bush Names Cheney Kin to Legal Post
By ERIC LIPTON
Published: March 31, 2005

President Bush has nominated the vice president's son-in-law, Philip J. Perry, as general counsel of the Homeland Security Department, where he would oversee 1,500 lawyers who work on legal matters like Coast Guard maritime laws and immigration.

Mr. Perry, who is married to Elizabeth Cheney, is leaving the Washington office of the Latham & Watkins law firm, where he was a partner, as well as a lobbyist for Lockheed Martin, one of the top 10 contractors for the Homeland Security Department.
MAR 30, 2005

Before joining Latham & Watkins, Mr. Perry was general counsel of the White House Office of Management and Budget and, before that, acting associate attorney general at the Justice Department, where he oversaw civil litigation divisions. In 2000, Mr. Perry, who has a law degree from Cornell Law School, worked on the Bush-Cheney Presidential Transition team and was an adviser to Dick Cheney as he prepared for the vice-presidential debates.

Mr. Perry, according to disclosure forms filed last year with the Senate, lobbied the Homeland Security Department and House Homeland Security Committee on behalf of Lockheed Martin as it applied for a government designation that certain of its products were "qualified antiterrorism technologies" and approved for sale. Last year, it was among the first companies to win such a designation.

Lockheed Martin and its partners have won hundreds of millions of dollars worth of commitments in the last two years for products and services it sells, including a contract to train airport security screeners for the Transportation Security Administration.

Mr. Perry, who faces a confirmation in the Senate, would succeed Joe D. Whitley, general counsel since August 2003.

If confirmed, Mr. Perry will not be the only member of Mr. Cheney's family working for the administration. Elizabeth Cheney, the vice president's daughter and Mr. Perry's wife, was appointed last month by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice as the second-ranking United States diplomat for the Mideast.

A White House spokeswoman, Dana Perino, said Mr. Perry's nomination had nothing to do with his relationship to the vice president.

"The president," Ms. Perino said, "nominates individuals he believes are the best qualified for the job to serve the American people."

[realFedUp]

17. welcome tofubo to DU

I was just making a joke about the incestuousness
of the Bushies.

[nyhuskyfan]

10. They started with their conclusion...

Exactly right. They knew the conclusion they wanted, and just cherry-picked items that supported that conclusion. It should be obvious by now to everyone, but the Kool-Aid drinkers still think their administration is above reproach. Remarkable.

[Briar]

11. There are also 100,000 dead civilians

and hundreds of thousands of malnourished children. But since they aren't Americans (and haven't been turned into a cause by the religious right), they obviously don't count.

[realFedUp]

12. This is an important column

It really needs posting on blogsites today.
All the stuff is there clear as day.

[dbeach]

16. The Yale cheerleader turned war hero at the helm...

no changing seats on the USS Titanic..

Mayberry Machiavellians!