Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity

[muchacho]

Some people that know their stuff and might be able to feed the media some truth.

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On a day when it has just been announced that another American soldier died and six were wounded in an ambush near Baghdad, when Secretary of State Rumsfeld is hinting at a future escalation of troop levels in Iraq and the possibility of rising attacks on U.S. forces over the length of the summer, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, a group of retired intelligence agents, have written a memorandum to President Bush pointing the finger directly at the Vice President in the Niger forgery flap and calling for his resignation. ("Sad to say, it is equally clear that your vice president led this campaign of deceit. This was no case of petty corruption of the kind that forced Vice President Spiro Agnew's resignation. This was a matter of war and peace. Thousands have died. There is no end in sight.")


If anyone wants to look for humor in this situation, note the defense raised yesterday on the inside-the-Beltway talk shows by Rice and Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld. Their case seems to be:


a) The President was, technically speaking, accurate in his sixteen-word sentence in the State of the Union speech. According to the Washington Post, "Rumsfeld, appearing on NBC's 'Meet the Press,' said that it was 'technically correct, what the president said, that the did say that and still says that.' But the defense secretary added that Bush and Tenet now believe 'referencing another country's intelligence as opposed to your own' was probably the wrong thing to do in a speech as important as the State of the Union." This begins, it seems to me, to put Rumsfeld and his colleagues in the category of people wondering what the definition of "is" is.


b) A single sentence is being blown all out of proportion. "Rice said on CBS's 'Face the Nation' that 'it was a mistake about a single sentence, a single data point. And I frankly think it has been overblown.'" This from an administration that took us into Code Orange-land, promoted duct tape for our problems, and turned the pathetically punch-less regime of a brutal local dictator into the equivalent of a superpower enemy. Overblown? Please.


c) The Brits did it. (And with Tony Blair all set to arrive in town later in the week.)

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http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=16398

[Frances]

1. Thanks so much for this link.

I am saving a hard copy.