This is hot. Light bulb morning. See this article that Daily Kos is

[peacetalksforall]

highlighting. Want to understand the Cheney-Rumsfeld Presidency in the 2000's? Going after the CIA? Trying to replace the CIA with the DIA (Mil intel)? Go read this now. It's a SF Chronicle article linked from Daily Kos. NOW THIS IS JOURNALISTIC INVESTIGATION and clear writing that anyone can understand. HOORAY for sfgate and Jeff Stein.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/10/26/MNG62FDUGL1.DTL

"In the 1970s, when President Richard Nixon's policy of detente was under attack by some former military officials and conservative policy intellectuals, Ford administration officials Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld were among those challenging as too soft the CIA's estimate of Moscow's military power.

Rumsfeld and Cheney wanted to create a "Team B," which would have access to the CIA's data on the Soviets and issue its own conclusions. Cheney, as White House chief of staff, and Rumsfeld, as secretary of Defense, championed Team B, whose members included the young defense strategist Paul Wolfowitz, who a quarter-century later would be one of the chief architects of the 2003 invasion of Iraq."

[Norquist Nemesis]

1. "Team B" is now "Team Bush" n/t

[Javaman]

8. So that's what we have! The "B" team, not the "A" team, that figures..

all is clear now.

don't send in the best, send in the bench squad.

[Jim Sagle]

16. That's what we need, the A Team! Mr. T should storm the WH and left hook

everyone of those sumbitches right into the street!

[hippiechick]

2. These assholes have been planning this for 30 years !!

Greedy fuckers. :mad:

[PDittie]

3. Recommended and kicked

[DeepModem Mom]

4. Thanks for posting!

[rucky]

5. How is this not a coup, again? n/t

[bleever]

6. I was pretty proud of the Chron for this in-house piece.

Great background. Nominated.

[DemoTex]

7. Daily Kos seems to be down

I keep getting this message:

Exiting via interrupt: 15

:wtf:

( www.dailykos.com )

On edit: Never-mind. Kos is back up now.

[RedEarth]

11. I still can't get into Kos .... maybe too much traffic

[many a good man]

9. Bush 41 FOUGHT Team B

when he led the CIA according to Ray McGovern and Kevin Phillips. I'll try and find a link.

[sonias]

10. Excellent review

"In retrospect, and with the Team B report and records now largely declassified, it is possible to see that virtually all of Team B's criticisms ... proved to be wrong,"

Team B has always been a failure. They always cherry pick the intelligence to fit their skewed view of the world. These creeps are criminals who unfortunately run the United States Government.

Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Chalabi, and the BFEE.

Sonia

[Wordie]

15. Team B = the neocons (apparently) eom

[0007]

12. Excellent article and a must read.

More from the same article.

"The path to Plame's outing also led through Baghdad, this time via Iraqi exile Ahmed Chalabi, who had been abandoned by the CIA in the late 1990s as too troublesome, unreliable and corrupt.

Among Chalabi's key supporters were Rumsfeld, Cheney and Wolfowitz. When the three came back into power in January 2001, the CIA and State Department still refused to back Chalabi.

Cheney began visiting CIA headquarters to challenge its analysts over their intelligence on Hussein's weapons. To Richard Kerr, the former chief of CIA analysis who later studied the agency's pre-war reporting on Iraq, Cheney displayed no anti-CIA animus at the time."

The fallout may be enough to put someone in jail for a time, and it may shake up the White House in major ways. But as past episodes have shown, even that will probably not disarm the combatants in the long and unending war over who controls intelligence."

And now they have invited back Chalabi back into the United States and are pushing him to head the new Democratic Iraq. I would hope our Senate has a little more sense than Donald Rumsfeld, Cheney and Wolfowitz. But who knows.

[tk2kewl]

13. Team B is discussed at length in the BBC's "The Power of Nightmares"

Power of Nightmares available for download at dKos...

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/6/10/103745/557

[On the Road]

14. I Remember "Team B"

and being a clueless little twerp at that time, I was alarmed at the dangerously dovish CIA interpretation of Soviet motives. Although I do remember Rumsfeld being considered a moderate.

You are correct -- they are doing exactly the same thing now. Stovepiping, twisting intelligence, and scaremongering to pursue aggressive policies most Americans don't want.