WH December 2002 - FORGET THE TRUTH - Focus On Scaring The American Public

[kpete]

Foley in December 2002
“If the President wants to go to war, our job is to find the intelligence to allow him to do so.”

Forget the Truth
By Peter Eisner and Knut Royce

The Bush White House was never really preoccupied with the question of whether or not Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. It wasn’t until “late 2002,” virtually on the eve of the U.S. invasion, that the administration ordered the CIA to shift priority on WMD intelligence collection to Iraq from North Korea and Iran, according to an internal CIA report.

The administration’s belated concern appears to have been driven by two contemporary events. The White House at the time was narrowly focused on rallying public support for war by invoking the specter of mushroom clouds, and any supportive “intelligence” would be useful. That would also serve as backup ammunition to discredit inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency, reintroduced into Iraq after a four-year hiatus, if they were to conclude there was nothing there.


...................

Foley, for example, played a key role in generating the notorious “sixteen words,” the reference in George Bush’s Jan. 28, 2003 State of the Union address to Iraq’s alleged attempts to purchase uranium from Africa. Foley told National Security Council staffer Robert Joseph that it was perfectly OK: Just pin the intelligence on the Brits. Several months earlier the CIA had, only with great difficulty, convinced intransigent White House officials to delete a passage about the alleged uranium deal from a speech Bush delivered in Cincinnati.

.............

Yet days after Bush’s 2003 State of the Union speech, Foley told an acquaintance that he didn’t think Iraq had been rearming with banned weapons. Retired CIA analyst Melvin Goodman asked Foley what weapons of mass destruction he thought would be found in Iraq after the invasion. “Not much, if anything,” Foley replied.

more at:
http://tableforone.tpmcafe.com/blog/tableforone/2007/jun/11/forget_the_truth

[TexasLawyer]

1. kick n/t

[blogslut]

2. Alan Foley

from the TPM:

"At the same time, there has been not a peep from the man most directly responsible for the monumental intelligence failure—Alan Foley. Foley was the consummate CIA insider who managed the hundreds of WMD analysts at the agency’s Center for Weapons Intelligence, Nonproliferation and Arms Control, charged with tracking illicit weapons activity around the world."

[hootinholler]

3. Why isn't Foley in jail?

Foley, for example, played a key role in generating the notorious “sixteen words,” the reference in George Bush’s Jan. 28, 2003 State of the Union address to Iraq’s alleged attempts to purchase uranium from Africa. Foley told National Security Council staffer Robert Joseph that it was perfectly OK: Just pin the intelligence on the Brits. Several months earlier the CIA had, only with great difficulty, convinced intransigent White House officials to delete a passage about the alleged uranium deal from a speech Bush delivered in Cincinnati.

That is illegal. A felony.

-Hoot