Remember the part of the WMD investigation to come out after the election?

[Rose Siding]

Never mind.

THE BACK BURNER: Last July, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence released a 511-page report into how the intelligence community erroneously assessed Saddam Hussein's nonexistent weapons of mass production programs and relationship to Al Qaeda. However, it wasn't complete. Committee members opted to defer inquiry into the politically hazardous questions of how accurately the Bush administration represented the intelligence it possessed on Iraq to the Congress and the public and how appropriately administration policymakers influenced the assessment and presentation of intelligence products within the government until after the November election. Liberals especially have been waiting with bated breath ever since.

Today, Pat Roberts, the Senate intelligence committee chairman, told everyone not to bother. "It's basically on the back burner," Roberts said after a speech on intelligence reform at the Woodrow Wilson Center. "The bottom line is that believed the intelligence, and the intelligence was wrong." Some might dispute that characterization, as former CIA Director George Tenet did last year when he told the Senate Armed Services Committee--on which Roberts also serves--that "when I believed that somebody was misconstruing intelligence, I said something about it."

http://www.tnr.com/blog/iraqd?pid=2588

[paineinthearse]

1. Foul!!!!!!

I want to see the Dem members of the Intellignece Committee up in arms!

http://intelligence.senate.gov/



John D. Rockefeller IV West Virginia, Vice Chairman
Carl Levin, Michigan
Dianne Feinstein, California
Ron Wyden, Oregon
Evan Bayh, Indiana
Barbara A. Mikulski, Maryland
Jon S. Corzine, New Jersey

[paineinthearse]

2. The report

Report on the U.S. Intelligence Community's Prewar Intelligence Assessments on Iraq - http://intelligence.senate.gov/iraqreport2.pdf

Conclusions (Excerpted From Full Report) - http://intelligence.senate.gov/conclusions.pdf

[Gyre]

3. This is an "open society"

that's why the admin is protecting us from the facts. Make sense? Doesn't have to. This country is totally effed, largely due to the dumbing down of Americans. Bunch of bleeding cattle.

Gyre

[atommom]

4. He also just told us not to bother investigating the CIA for torturing

prisoners or for rendering them to countries that would. He's just one of many who will say whatever Bush wants them to.

[Rose Siding]

5. transcript of Friday, July 9, 2004; 12:07 PM presser with Roberts...

snip>
QUESTION: Given the 800 American G.I.s who have lost their lives so far, thousands have had serious injuries, lost limbs, all on the basis of false claims, as much as the American taxpayers have had to kick in almost $200 billion, doesn’t the American public and the relatives of people who lost their lives have a right to know before the next election whether this administration handled intelligence matters adequately and made statements that were justified -- before the election, not after the election?

ROBERTS: Well, as Senator Rockefeller has alluded to, this is in phase two of our efforts. We simply couldn’t get that done with the work product that we put out. And he has pointed out that that has a top priority. It is one of my top priorities. It’s his top priority, along with the reform effort.
...
And, hey, I have told Jay, I have told everybody on the other side of the aisle, everybody on our side of the aisle, "We’ll proceed with phase two. It is a priority."

I made my commitment, and it will be done.
...
We will continue with our work with phase two. I’ve made that commitment. I don’t know if we can get members back over the various breaks. When I mentioned the 20 legislative days, it was more to the approach that would we consider specific reforms, I think we have to have hearings first to educate the committee and really be careful with that, but we are committed to finishing phase two.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A38650-2004Jul9_4.html

[Rose Siding]

6. Rockefeller defines what was left out of the rpt on pg 2 of transcript

snip>
Now, the report does an excellent job of pointing out the intelligence community’s shortcomings. I have to say it is only an incomplete picture of what occurred during the national debate over the decision to invade Iraq.

The report we are releasing today is a first phase of the two- part committee investigation. Regrettably, whereas I consider reform incredibly important, I also consider the nature of the interaction or the pressure or the shaping of intelligence by endless numbers of public statements emanating from all levels high up in the administration, virtually saying that, "Time has run out, you know, mushroom cloud, grave and growing, imminent by some, evidence supports the fact that they are developing their nuclear weapons program" -- all the rest of it.

That whole aspect is being relegated to the second part of our report and I regret that. I felt that we should and could have addressed all of these matters as a single matter, because under the rules of the committee we can do that. But that was not possible and so we moved forward. We’ve moved forward and produced a very good piece of work.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A38650-2004Jul9_2.html

[paineinthearse]

7. I'm confused....

Does the relased report (link above) exclude promised information? If so, couldn't Rockefella relase that on his own? Or we do it with a FOIA request?

Do we have any W. VA members who could contact their Senator?

[Rose Siding]

8. It excludes lots of information

To get an investigation, dems on the Select committee had to agree to certain conditions on what it would cover.

The more damning investigation of how the intel was presented to the public was to follow- put off (by coerced agreement on the part of the dems) until after the election. Now Roberts is reneging on that promise.

[tuvor]

9. The intelligence was RIGHT. bush just didn't want to listen.

Three articles from several months before bush's war:

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.
13 October 2002
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.
October 10, 2002
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
October 9, 2002
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,807286,00.html

Don't let them rewrite history!

[Nothing Without Hope]

10. We need to apply a lot of noise and pressure to this. They mean NEVER.

They are hiding something major and everyone knows it. This is hideous. We need to get this message out.

When the public doesn't hear anything, they assume there is no problem, no issue to be concerned about. That is so very far from true -- and the monsters are counting on this bloody scandal staying buried.

We must INSIST that this is taken OFF the "back burner." This needs to be added to a "list of piority activist pressure points." Otherwise, the whole hideous, criminal lying bunch of pigs, the over 100,000 civilian deaths in Iraq, all of it is buried and will remain secret. Move along, nothing here, here's another Michael Jackson trial clip for your entertainment....

Edited to add: Recommended. EVeryone here needs to know about this and media contacts need to be pushed. They are planning to bury their monster crimes and laugh at us all watching celebrity scandals on TV.

[spanone]

11. And America shrugs it's shoulders....sad

[UrbScotty]

14. Correction: the 'LIBERAL' MEDIA shrugs its shoulders (nt)

[Gyre]

12. Illegal, illegal, illegal

That document was paid for by US taxpayers. It needs to be seen. I know we're already fucked but this is criminal behavior in burying evidence of administration conduct. This was supposed to be the part that was deliberately delayed by the commission until after the elections.

Gyre

[troubleinwinter]

13. We also don't have the CIA IG 9/11 report, held til "after the election"

This is the report that "names names". It is not classified, but was held until after the election, and we STILL don't have it, four months later.....

The 9/11 Secret in the CIA's Back Pocket
By Robert Scheer
The Los Angeles Times

Tuesday 19 October 2004

The agency is withholding a damning report that points at senior officials.
It is shocking: The Bush administration is suppressing a CIA report on 9/11 until after the election, and this one names names. Although the report by the inspector general's office of the CIA was completed in June, it has not been made available to the congressional intelligence committees that mandated the study almost two years ago.

"It is infuriating that a report which shows that high-level people were not doing their jobs in a satisfactory manner before 9/11 is being suppressed," an intelligence official who has read the report told me, adding that "the report is potentially very embarrassing for the administration, because it makes it look like they weren't interested in terrorism before 9/11, or in holding people in the government responsible afterward."

When I asked about the report, Rep. Jane Harman (D-Venice), ranking Democratic member of the House Intelligence Committee, said she and committee Chairman Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.) sent a letter 14 days ago asking for it to be delivered. "We believe that the CIA has been told not to distribute the report," she said. "We are very concerned."
.....

The official stressed that the report was more blunt and more specific than the earlier bipartisan reports produced by the Bush-appointed Sept. 11 commission and Congress.

"What all the other reports on 9/11 did not do is point the finger at individuals, and give the how and what of their responsibility. This report does that," said the intelligence official. "The report found very senior-level officials responsible."

http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/102004V.shtml

[ebayfool]

15. kick n/t