HERE'S WHAT WE'VE BEEN WAITING FOR !! ..... Yes!!

[Justice Is Comin]

READ IT ALL. It's Great!!!!!!!

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/11/AR2005111101832.html




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But Bush and his aides had access to much more voluminous intelligence information than did lawmakers, who were dependent on the administration to provide the material. And the commissions cited by officials, though concluding that the administration did not pressure intelligence analysts to change their conclusions, were not authorized to determine whether the administration exaggerated or distorted those conclusions.

[bleever]

1. Aaaaahhh...I can breathe again. The Fourth Estate got its voice back.

Now, I rest.





Okay, back to work.


:thumbsup:

[Eric J in MN]

2. Are we supposed to believe that Cheney's visits to the CIA

were in search of the truth?

The man is completely dishonest.

A person would have to be a naive idiot to believe that Cheney wasn't pressuring CIA employees to cough up evidence of wmd.

"concluding that the administration did not pressure intelligence analysts to change their conclusions" - what garbage

[Wetzelbill]

4. Cheney was just there for moral support, c'mon Eric!

Here have some Kool-Aid. :)

You know, in order to find any cooking of the books on intelligence you have to look no further than Doug Feith, Abram Shulsky and the Office Of Special Plans. Hell, their job was to cherrypick intelligence and stovepipe it to Cheney's office. That's why they existed. And, this administration and it's media spinners are trying to say everything was done in an honest and concise manner? Puhleez.

[Tuesday_Morning]

41. exactly...

Analysts were asked and re-asked questions until they gave the right answer... and even those answers were cherry-picked.

[lizerdbits]

3. In the last paragraph

Condi said 'we went to war in 1998 over concerns of his WMDs' That was considered a "war"?

[Straight Shooter]

17. Yes. That was four days of the most brutal war the world has ever seen.

Clinton was just wagging the dog, though, and of course the right-wingers were in an uproar because what the hell did Saddam ever do to us, eh?

:sarcasm:

[Marie26]

19. Although actually...

Clinton was in a low-grade war with Iraq for a few years. Working on the news desk, we'd get reports every week or so about new bombings, or US planes firing at Iraqi planes in the no-fly zone. Isn't this right? I wonder if this is part of the reason Clinton has been mostly quiet on the issue of the Iraq war.

[Straight Shooter]

32. I believe you're correct.

My sarcasm was directed more at the rightwing response to anything Clinton did vis-a-vis the extreme attack by the bush cabal.

I think we could have continued with Clinton's tactics and all would have remained fairly uncomfortable yet controlled. Of course, the sanctions were the worst part of all, considering whom they hurt the most. A very un-Christian thing to do for a nation which prides itself on being Christian.

As for Clinton being quiet, maybe he doesn't want to weigh in with his opinions because of Hillary's aspirations. :shrug:

[stevietheman]

5. It seems like every day now, the MSM is catching Bush in...

a new lie. It looks like they have discovered that doing this actually requires less legwork than acting as the regime's mouthpiece. All they have to do is record Bush, as we all know today... Bush lies whenever his lips move.

[SammyWinstonJack]

6. bush would lie even if the truth sounded better. eom.

[Fridays Child]

7. Bullshit: "...dependent on the administration to provide the material."

What causes their ears to turn to tin, once they step foot inside the beltway? Did we have special access to intelligence? Of course not. Yet, before Congress ever took up the question of war, we knew enough to be certain that the invasion of Iraq would be wrong.

We have to hold our representatives to a minimum standard of decent behavior. They can't be allowed to let themselves off the hook with this self-serving and transparent "we were lied to" excuse. Too many people have died.

[AuntiBush]

8. Here it is.

"But Bush and his aides had access to much more voluminous intelligence information than did lawmakers, who were dependent on the administration to provide the material. And the commissions cited by officials, though concluding that the administration did not pressure intelligence analysts to change their conclusions, were not authorized to determine whether the administration exaggerated or distorted those conclusions."

And:

"But Bush does not share his most sensitive intelligence, such as the President's Daily Brief, with lawmakers..."

[Justice Is Comin]

9. Here is the only article our spokespeople have to hold up.

This is the Washington Post saying unequivocally, the senators did not see voluminous amounts of information that he did.

And secondly, that the investigation as to whether it was chopped and diced is just for the first time now being investigated by the Senate.

And they tie it right to his speech today. Both his claims are shot to hell right here!

[milkyway]

10. Wish the WaPo noticed that bush pointedly did not say that the Dems saw

the same intelligence he did. In his speech bush was careful not to say this, but he said it in such a way that most people will think he did. See my post about it here:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=104&topic_id=5337308&mesg_id=5337308

[Justice Is Comin]

12. That won't mean a hill of beans.

Everybody in this country knows that in this speech today he was desperately attempting to stop the sliding of his polls and convey the fact that he shouldn't be blamed for something that others had reviewed and made the same decision he did.

Every time you see a republican mouth open, they have been saying it. Bush had to subliminally say the same thing but not the exact words. With this article, it's just going to anger people even more and show the continued deception which has already put him in the cellar.

The important thing is that this is the paper of record stating it CLEARLY that, no matter how you parse it, Bush had volumes of information that was never available to the congress. They got only WHAT HE PROVIDED.

[Rodger Dodger]

11. The intrigue going on in the Whitehouse cabal is something to behold

Everything is falling apart G.W. should admit it; Tell them, "The devil made me do it." That's what Geraldine would have done if she were in his shoes.

[Hekate]

20. Oh but Bush thinks God made him do it

Your reference to Geraldine made me smile though.

:popcorn: Just watching the wheels fall off.

Hekate

[Burried News]

45. And when you look good, you feeel good and when you feel good

you mooove good. Rest in Peace Flip (Wilson)- loved you man, your passing was an incredible loss.

[welshTerrier2]

13. bravo !!!

view information bouncing along a path towards an endpoint ...

first, there is a discovery of evidence ... then there is the classification of evidence and grouping it with seemingly related other pieces of evidence ... at some point comes an analysis of this collected and categorized evidence and then judgments and estimations and conclusions are drawn ...

in government, these conclusions are then passed up the chain of command ... even if it's true no pressure was exerted on CIA analysts, they were not the end of the information pipeline ... the truth only emerges from the pipeline if the last person to handle it chooses to tell the truth ... it's clear that was not the case with the Iraq evidence ...

and don't forget this - cheney, and good old Newt Gingrich, made numerous trips to CIA headquarters ... it should not be taken as gospel, in spite of conclusions reached by certain commissions, that NO PRESSURE WAS EXERTED on intelligence analysts ... one might suggest that the outing of Plame was a wee bit more than subtle pressure ... it's not clear the commissions evaluated the impact of that treasonous conduct and it's impact on CIA analysts at all ...

[Joe Chi Minh]

39. But haven't CIA employees have expressly stated that

Lon Cheyney virtually browbeat them to come up with what he wanted, and repudiated stuff he didn't want to read? I'm sure I read at least one such statement from a CIA employee.

[Voltaire99]

14. "The lawmakers are partly to blame for their ignorance."

Partly?

I'd say a fool like Kerry is wholly responsible for his endorsement of the war.

The entire planet saw through the Bushies; the sordid fact remains that most elected Democrats did not. Even today, they support the war. When will they learn?

[Justice Is Comin]

16. We've been around that bush until I'm dizzy.

Kerry did not endorse the "war." He thought he could trust the commander in chief to use it as a last resort and continue efforts at the U.N.

That's not important anymore. Bush has created a Viet Nam II and the majority of the country is furious about it. The only thread of a hope for Bush's survival now is to make everybody in congress a before-the-fact co-president and all came to the same conclusion. In order to do that, all the "co-presidents" would have had to see and evaluate the same data.

When that premise falls apart, Bush stands alone. And that's where this WAPO article just put him.

No paper prior to today has come out and stated point blank what is written here. It debunks their entire hope to point to a shared blame for the war. Now the only thing left is to show this war was deliberately intended and unnecessary. Enter phase two. Exit Bush.

[JanusAscending]

18. What gives you the

AUDACITY to call John Kerry a fool? Evidently "the entire planet" didn't see through the bushies, or we wouldn't be in Iraq now!! MOST ELECTED DEMOCRATS DO NOT SUPPORT THE WAR! Where do you get off!!!???? We've learned, when will you ???

[Old and In the Way]

36. Perhaps if he'd read what John Kerry actually said in his Senate floor

speech, he wouldn't make ignorant statements like that. I am so sick of Democrats (?) who want to focus this war on Senators who:

(1) Were lied to.
(2) Had no part in the decision to invade Iraq.

How many previous Presidents knowingly lied to Congress to get their unjustified war and invasion on? This was sold as an authority to allow us to take out the WMD if the UN inspectors did not receive cooperation from Iraq. Fact is, they were receiving cooperation from Iraq...Bush elected to go to war anyway.

If we had a Democratic Congress, Bush would not have had the balls to do this because he'd be out of office today, probably awaiting his sentencing. Even worse, I'd say that Bush has created a precedent and, in the process, has damaged the future credibility of the Office of the Presidency and hamstrung future Presidents to rally bi-partisan support for real emergencies of real gathering threats.

Had Bush been telling the truth (that's a stretch, I know), would these posters be so sanguine about the results of a "no" vote if that had led to, say, the incineration of a US city in which their family lived? Pretty easy to be a Monday morning quarterback, knowing your opinion effects precisely no one, but yourself.

[flyarm]

15. wapo missed this and its important!!

a friend sent to me after reading this article..and its important!!

This WAS basically a great article, but it failed to point out this other misrepresentation by Bush today:

Co-Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, on MTP with Pat Roberts on April 10, 2005:

And let me just say that in--this is a very good study, what Pat and I agree on, this study. But it has a conflict in it. It says there wasn't any pressure put on analysts, but it--then later in a footnote it says that 7 percent of all of those people in WINPAC, which is kind of the weapons of mass destruction and the nuclear proliferation, and that kind of thing, in the CIA, felt that they had had to change their intelligence to suit the customer, i.e., the executive branch. Now, we can argue that one out, but the point is John Bolton and others clearly tried to exercise pressure, put pressure on George Tenet, told Pat Roberts and I that face-to-face...

MR. RUSSERT: That John Bolton put pressure?

SEN. ROCKEFELLER: No, no, that the pressure was being put on his people, said it happens.

MR. RUSSERT: When was that?

SEN. ROCKEFELLER: That was in an interview a long time ago. He also--the Kerr Commission...

MR. RUSSERT: Who was putting the pressure on him?

SEN. ROCKEFELLER: That people were putting pressure on analysts. There wasn't at that time a specific person.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7452510/

[chat_noir]

21. Thanks...and kick

:dem:

[calimary]

22. This is good, but of course the always hesitant Dana Milbank

will only go so far with his bush-criticism as to call it "asterisks." How 'bout coming straight out and just saying it, Milbank? How about using the "L" word - "LIES"? This is, after all, just another misinformation "campaign". That's all they do in this White House - campaign.

[Nikki Stone 1]

23. This is the guy Dana? (Not the woman Dana?)

I always confuse them. They're both at the WP

[Dudley_DUright]

24. Dana Milbank is the guy and is very good when he teams up

with Walter Pincus. Dana Priest is the other Dana and is female.

[nicknameless]

25. Don't forget Dana Milbank's totally contemptible article ridiculing

the Dems over their hearings on the Downing Street Minutes. That snarky piece put him on a number of Progressives' shit lists.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/16/AR2005061601570.html

Conyer's reply to the Post was printed (among other places) in The Nation:
http://www.thenation.com/blogs/thebeat?bid=1&pid=3617

[otohara]

27. Back When Media Whores Online Was Still Around

he was always being picked Media Whore of the Week.

[Cults4Bush]

28. I will never ever forget it.

I write to him every now and then about it. He never answers back but it makes me feel better. It was a hit piece pure plain and simple. I always ask why he printed it, why the vitriol for an incredible progressive?

Dana is just another megalomaniac who has an egogasm every time someone with more power strokes him.

[Dudley_DUright]

29. Yes, I guess what I should have said is Walter Pincus

makes him look good. When he is on his own, he is too susceptible to whitehouse bullshit.

[Name removed]

26. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[roseBudd]

30. Lets make it most read and emailed! DUers it is important to click thru

The 4 paragraph summaries are so good, I don't always feel the need to read more, but I always click through to the actual article because all newspapers keep track of what their users are reading. We mold the media with our click throughs.

[lonestarnot]

31. Wooodamn! There you have it!

Cooked up spoon fed, let me see... from this bowl this mouth full of oatmeal and one raisin, and with this mouthful a bit of brown sugar and butter (makes for better swallowing, slippery you know) FRY THE BASTARD!

[realFedUp]

33. Office of Special Plans

is the media tonedeaf? What does it
take to connect the dots and just lay out the whole
scenario? You'd think the MSM is deliberately dragging
it's brains...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,999737,00.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Special_Plans

http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2004/01/12_405.html

http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?030512fa_fact

http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline.jsp?timeline=complete_timeline_of_the_2003_invasion_of_iraq&general_topic_areas=officeOfSpecialPlans

[seafey]

34. Bush has a point

Why *didn't* more Democrats stand up against the war in 2003? Why weren't they asking for more information? Why was Kucinich made out to be some hippie freak for his stand on the Iraq war since before it even started? The Dems were weak when they should have been strong. THey complied when they should have asked questions. Sure they weren't given the same intelligence Bush had but didn't they KNOW THIS? Why wouldn't they have demanded more information? Why did Howard Dean get on CNN (or some "credible" news show) and agree emphatically that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and that we had to go do something about it? And then he turned around and claimed to be the "anti-war" candidate. How can Democrats now read this article and think- YEAH, we are not guilty of anything, Bush didn't make it easy for us to find the answers, so- we didn't. We also didn't READ the Patriot Act, and so, not knowing what it said, voted it right in! It makes me sick, all this irrelevant blaming. I think it would be nice if some Democratic officials would stand up and take responsibility for having helped cause this war by refusing to ask questions. They're just as guilty as the media for not asking questions. And just as guilty as Bush for setting the world on this course we've taken. And we, as citizens are guilty, too for not doing more to stop it.

[newspeak]

40. so let's get back to the environment after 9/11

If you don't pass the Patriot Act, your not patriotic; if you don't give Bush more power he can't protect the people and your with the terrorists. Tell me what the media was yammering and spinning about that time. Those partisan Democrats aren't working together, they're abetting the terrorists. it was 24/7 on my television, how about yours? I hold the media complicit with this administration for the damage done to our country. If they invited a Democrat on TV, it was usually a Zell Miller type or a "milque toast" type. However, there were Democrats who didn't go along and they didn't get much air time, did they?

[seafey]

44. I completely agree...

That's why I said "They're just as guilty as the media for not asking questions."

But the media's hand in this doesn't excuse the Democrats' hand in this. They are ELECTED to do a JOB. Yeah, it's difficult, but they were elected to be the ones asking questions, be the ones catching heat for certain ideas, putting heat on others to DO WHAT'S RIGHT.

But it didn't happen that way. Everyone looked out for themselves and their damn political careers, staying out of the way of criticism. It's disgraceful.

[rosesaylavee]

49. AMEN to that... how soon we forget how crazy it was then.

We didn't know if that was just the beginning of the terror attacks, didn't know what was up with the anthrax attacks, we were all encouraged to be watching the trains for suspicious activity. PLANES for god sake didn't fly for how many weeks after that. I am not forgetting it - the world was upside down and I for one didn't think it would ever be remotely the same again.

[bvar22]

35. "...no more than six senators and a handful of House members..."

"The lawmakers are partly to blame for their ignorance. Congress was entitled to view the 92-page National Intelligence Estimate about Iraq before the October 2002 vote. But, as The Washington Post reported last year, no more than six senators and a handful of House members read beyond the five-page executive summary."

I would like to know who these people are (actually read the whole report), and how they voted on the IWR.
ANYONE who did NOT read beyond the Executive Summary before voting to MURDER THOUSANDS OF INNOCENT IRAQIS is NOT earning their pay, and should be turned out in the street!

There are Democrats in DC who TRUST bush* to tell the truth???!!!

[grasswire]

37. dammit, dammit, dammit

In September of 1991, Bush (by executive order) pulled security clearances for all but eight members of Congress.

So how the heck could they have seen the "same" intel the WH saw?

The WH itself stopped the United States Congress from being informed.

Look here:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x5340848

[G_j]

38. Newsweek: Al-Libi’s Tall Tales

Al-Libi’s Tall Tales

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/111105Y.shtml

A CIA document shows the agency in January 2003 raised questions about an al Qaeda detainee’s claims that Saddam Hussein’s government provided chemical and biological weapons training to terrorists - weeks before President George W. Bush and other top officials flatly used those same claims to make their case for war against Iraq

............
Al-Libi's Tall Tales
By Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball
Newsweek

Thursday 10 November 2005

A CIA document obtained by NEWSWEEK provides further evidence that the US intelligence community had serious doubts about information from a high-level Qaeda detainee before the Iraq war.
A CIA document shows the agency in January 2003 raised questions about an al Qaeda detainee's claims that Saddam Hussein's government provided chemical and biological weapons training to terrorists - weeks before President George W. Bush and other top officials flatly used those same claims to make their case for war against Iraq.

The CIA document, recently provided to Congress and obtained by NEWSWEEK, fills in some of the blanks in the mysterious case of Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, a captured al Qaeda commander whose claims about poison-gas training for the Qaeda group by Saddam's government formed the basis for some of the most dramatic arguments used by senior administration officials in the run up to the invasion of Iraq.

As NEWSWEEK first reported last July, al-Libi has since recanted those claims. The new CIA document states the agency "recalled and reissued" all its intelligence reporting about al-Libi's "recanted" claims about chemical and biological warfare training by Saddam's regime in February 2004 - an important retreat on pre-Iraq war intelligence that has never been publicly acknowledged by the White House. The withdrawal also was not mentioned in last year's public report by the presidential inquiry commission headed by Judge Laurence Silberman and former Sen. Charles Robb which reviewed alleged Iraq intelligence failures.

The declassified CIA document about al-Libi was recently provided to Sen. Carl Levin, the Michigan Democrat who has been pressing for a more aggressive investigation by the Senate Intelligence Committee into the Bush Administration's handling of pre-war intelligence on Iraq. It has not been officially released because of Senate Intelligence Committee rules restricting public disclosure of information it receives as part of its inquires - even if the data has been declassified.

..more..

[jsamuel]

42. Booya

[oxbow]

43. Page A01! We should call and thank them

The editors are really letting them speak the truth about Bush now! Do I write the ombudsman to thank them?

"The Ombudsman can be contacted at 202-334-7582, Monday - Friday, 7 AM - 6 PM. You can also email him at [e-mail]"

[Disturbed]

50. No votes on IWR

23 Senators who voted NO

NAYs ---23
Akaka (D-HI)
Bingaman (D-NM)
Boxer (D-CA)
Byrd (D-WV)
Chafee (R-RI)
Conrad (D-ND)
Corzine (D-NJ)
Dayton (D-MN)
Durbin (D-IL)
Feingold (D-WI)
Graham (D-FL)
Inouye (D-HI)
Jeffords (I-VT)
Kennedy (D-MA)
Leahy (D-VT)
Levin (D-MI)
Mikulski (D-MD)
Murray (D-WA)
Reed (D-RI)
Sarbanes (D-MD)
Stabenow (D-MI)
Wellstone (D-MN)
Wyden (D-OR)

Dem Reps who voted No

Victor F. 'Vic' Snyder
Edward 'Ed' Pastor
Nancy Pelosi
Bob Filner
Joe Baca
Lynn C. Woolsey
Anna G. Eshoo
Michael M. 'Mike' Honda
Lucille Roybal-Allard
George Miller
C. Michael 'Mike' Thompson
Barbara Lee
Diane E. Watson
Xavier Becerra
Maxine Waters
Fortney H. 'Pete' Stark
Grace Flores Napolitano
Juanita Millender-McDonald
Zoe Lofgren
Sam Farr
Loretta L. Sanchez
Susan A. Davis
Hilda L. Solis
Lois Capps
Diana L. DeGette
Mark E. Udall
Rosa L. DeLauro
John B. Larson
Corrine Brown
Alcee L. HastingsD
John R. Lewis
Cynthia Ann McKinney
Neil Abercrombie
Jesse Louis Jackson
Lane A. Evans
Jerry F. Costello
Danny K. Davis
Bobby L. Rush
Luis V. Gutierrez
Janice D. 'Jan' Schakowsky
Julia M. Carson
Peter J. Visclosky
Michael E. Capuano
James P. 'Jim' McGovern
Richard E. Neal
John F. Tierney
William D. 'Bill' Delahunt
John W. Olver
Barney Frank
Benjamin L. Cardin
Elijah E. Cummings
John Elias Baldacci

[Burried News]

46. Keep lying George. Your lies are like spinach ...

[MojoXN]

47. And I was hoping that your post...

Would say, "BUSH RESIGNS IN DISGRACE."

Wishful thinking... :D

MojoXN

[Roland99]

48. Yes, Bush Lied - WorldNetDaily - Oct. 6, 2003

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=34930


;)

[Justice Is Comin]

51. I just hope that every democrat congressman or woman

carries this around with them. Every time we hear that desperation cry--ohhh we all saw the same intelligence-- BAM! , whip it out.

This is not a democrat saying this, this is the prominent national paper who has slammed and hammered our cause countless numbers of times. Not only the paper as a whole in it's many articles, but Dana Milbank is the co-writer of this article. He has been devastating to the point of exasperation in articles supporting the Bush position.