SCOWCROFT Board: Shrub Lied, But Not Deliberately (Yellow Cake)

[UTUSN]

It only took Poppy one lie ("Read my lips...") to lose his greedy votes, but Shrub has apparently acquired the Platinum Card for getting away with raps on the knuckles.

******QUOTE*****

White House Faulted on Uranium Claim
Intelligence Warnings Disregarded, President's Advisory Board Says
By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, December 24, 2003; Page A01

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A25935-2003Dec23?language=printer
.... After reviewing the matter for several months, the intelligence board -- chaired by former national security adviser Brent Scowcroft -- has determined that there was "no deliberate effort to fabricate" a story, the source said. Instead, the source said, the board believes the White House was so anxious "to grab onto something affirmative" about Hussein's nuclear ambitions that it disregarded warnings from the intelligence community that the claim was questionable. ....

The board shared its findings with Bush earlier this month. It is the first government body to complete its inquiry into an episode that buttressed criticism by lawmakers and others that the administration exaggerated intelligence to make the case for war. Word of its findings has also circulated within the White House and on Capitol Hill. The White House declined to comment on the board's findings.

The findings of the advisory board do not appear to add many new details about the uranium episode, but they make it clear that the White House should share blame with the CIA for allowing the questionable material into the speech. CIA Director George J. Tenet and deputy national security adviser Stephen J. Hadley have accepted responsibility for allowing the assertion into the address. ....

One enduring mystery is which White House official was responsible for promoting the material in question. Senate hearings have indicated there was a disagreement between a CIA analyst and the White House National Security Council staff member about how the material was handled. "One side did not coordinate with the other," said the source familiar with the advisory board's inquiry. ....
*****UNQUOTE****

[librechik]

1. did they accidentally put the info in after being told it was a lie?

or deliberately? Seems like it was deliberate to me. That was a deliberate lie, damn it. Take the cotton balls off the fingers, please.

What a mealymouthed failure to address the results of their investigation.

[Jack Rabbit]

2. Logical acrobatics

No deliberate attempt to lie? No, they just wanted to believe their little fantasies about Saddam's nuclear program so bad that they passed them on as fact.

There's no excuse for that, even assuming it's true.

The yellow cake story is only one of many that fit the same pattern: White House, Pentagon and state department spokesmen made information public that turned out to be patently false. Are we supposed to believe that this pattern, so well established, is simply a case of wishful thinking on the part of sick men who are looking for any excuse to go to war?

If the yellow cake story were the only case of Administration prevarication, this might have some credibility. However, it is not. Not only was this story false, but all of what the administration spokesmen, from Mr. Bush on down, said about Saddam's biochemical arsenal was false. Was there no real intelligence reaching them? Did they want to believe it so bad that Cheney and Libby were telling the CIA what to tell them and the gang at OSP was disregarding inconvenient facts that didn't support the case for war? All of what administration spokesman said or implied about Saddam's association with al Qaida was false. Were all of those carefully crafted statements that contained the words "Saddam" and "September 11" in the same sentence simply attempts "to grab on to something affirmative" rather than deliberate attempts to deceive?

The Scowcroft commission would have us believe that Bush and all his aides just wanted to believe the worst about Saddam so bad that they really believed it. No, the commission concludes, that's not lying; it's just not telling the truth. And furthermore, it's strangely infantile behavior for an administration that boasted on assuming power that "the adults are in charge."

The administration and its supporters need to give it up. The truth is that they lied.

[bitchkitty]

3. Idiotic from the first paragraph:

First it is "After reviewing the matter for several months, the intelligence board -- chaired by former national security adviser Brent Scowcroft -- has determined that there was "no deliberate effort to fabricate" a story" then goes on to describe the fabrication as motivated by desperation. They were desperate, so it wasn't deliberate. What a crock of shit.

Doubleplus BULLSHIT!

[KansDem]

8. Well, I for one am relieved...

believes the White House was so anxious "to grab onto something affirmative" about Hussein's nuclear ambitions that it disregarded warnings from the intelligence community that the claim was questionable

I mean to say, I feel better now knowing that the Leader of the Free World will ignore well-reasoned intelligence reports and rely on knee-jerk reactions in formulating foreign policy.

I was getting worried there for awhile. :eyes:

[frylock]

4. cough*bullshit*cough

[PsN2Wind]

5. A lie

by definition is a statement made with the intent to mislead or deceive. Thus a lie can't be classified as undeliberate.
This from the guy toasting the Chinese right after Tianamen (sp) square.

[linazelle]

6. Lie by omission...deliberate or not they left out critical info

about this charge. They ignored American intelligence in favor of foreign intelligence--a huge issue if ever there was one. And as we all know, the foreign intelligence source conveniently did away with himself. Nothing to see here move on.

[are_we_united_yet]

7. "no deliberate effort to fabricate"......CRAP!

It is a bunch of CRAP!