NYTimes Editorial: The Build-A-War Workshop (OSP used to get us into "disastrous & unnecessary war")

[Hissyspit]

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/10/opinion/10sat1.html?hp

Editorial
The Build-a-War Workshop

Published: February 10, 2007
It took far too long, but a report by the Pentagon inspector general has finally confirmed that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s do-it-yourself intelligence office cooked up a link between Iraq and Al Qaeda to help justify an unjustifiable war.

The report said the team headed by Douglas Feith, under secretary of defense for policy, developed “alternative” assessments of intelligence on Iraq that contradicted the intelligence community and drew conclusions “that were not supported by the available intelligence.” Mr. Feith certainly knew the Central Intelligence Agency would cry foul, so he hid his findings from the C.I.A. Then Vice President Dick Cheney used them as proof of cloak-and-dagger meetings that never happened, long-term conspiracies between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden that didn’t exist, and — most unforgivable — “possible Iraqi coordination” on the 9/11 attacks, which no serious intelligence analyst believed.

- snip -

We’re sure he was. But there is no comfort in knowing that his dirty work was approved by his bosses. All that does is add to evidence that the Bush administration knowingly and repeatedly misled Americans about the intelligence on Iraq.

To understand this twisted tale, it is important to recall how Mr. Feith got into the creative writing business. Top administration officials, especially Mr. Cheney, had long been furious at the C.I.A. for refusing to confirm the delusion about a grand Iraqi terrorist conspiracy, something the Republican right had nursed for years. Their frustration only grew after 9/11 and the C.I.A. still refused to buy these theories.

- snip -

It is now up to Mr. Levin and Senator Jay Rockefeller, the current head of the intelligence panel, to give Americans the answers. Mr. Levin’s desire to have the entire inspector general’s report on the Feith scheme declassified is a good place to start. But it will be up to Mr. Rockefeller to finally determine how old, inconclusive, unsubstantiated and false intelligence was transformed into fresh, reliable and definitive reports — and then used by Mr. Bush and other top officials to drag the country into a disastrous and unnecessary war.

MORE

[saigon68]

1. Feith is a Liar and a War Criminal

[Hissyspit]

2. Yup. n/t

[BeHereNow]

4. And yet...

Americans do NOTHING.
And THAT is the bottom line.

Everyone in the picture is a liar and war criminal
they have been for years and yet, Americans do NOTHING.

The land of the "ignorant and arrogant" get the government they deserve and condone.

BHN

[ChairmanAgnostic]

3. we miss the bigger picture. Darth Cheney

he is the true villian in this whole mess.

[Hissyspit]

5. He was the Master of the Workshop.

The inventor of the stove-piping.

[salin]

6. This is SO important. Many of us have known about OSP and

their role in stovepiping, manipulating intel and propogandizing us into war. Anyone who reads the New Yorker was familiar with this from a Seymour Hersh article about stovepiping (and other dribs and drabs from various media items - brief and disconnected so most of the public was never given the big picture). A NYT op-ed spelling it out - gets huge readership - and influences op-ed pieces in various smaller markets across the country (esp when their readership has already turned against the war, and against the admin).

One of the very important factors needed to occur before their is a widespread rejection of the GOP - as a failed party, a failed ideology, etc that leads to rejection for more than one or two election cycles, is if the public psyche (what becomes the public's common accepted 'truth'/wisdom) comes to understand and accept the *fact* of the proactive actions of bushco to manipulate the public into a support of a war that it previously did not accept (in the summer of 1992 most polls showed an overwhelming part of the public (more than 60%) was against any action against Iraq unless it was an international (UN backed) action but due to the relentless propoganda from August 2002 to March 2003 the public sentiment shifted. IF the public comes to believe/accept this (reality), than the GOP is cooked - not just based on the actions of bushco - but just as much because of the enablers in Congress and the RWmedia echochamber.

This editorial is, very possibly, a very important harbinger per public 'conventional knowledge' that shifts from bushco incompetence and 'maybe some spinning' to a general understanding/acceptance/belief of very intentional, very twisted manipulation of intelligence to manipulate public support for a war that was not initially supported (by the public).

[Disturbed]

7. Simply put: The Bush Regime lied to America.

The Iraq Invasion was an Illegal Act and so is the US Occupation of Iraq!

Not enough for the Impeachment of GW Bush and R. Cheney?

[salin]

9. Seriously - public sentiment has to be there for the "I" word to

come into play. Thus a NYT editorial laying it out - with smaller media outlets now more likely to echo - moves us the public closer to getting that this isn't incompetence, but malfeasance. That would move us many steps closer to the possibility of Impeachment.

[Gabi Hayes]

8. what good will it do, even if they're all publicly tried and convicted of treason?

we are SO fucked, for, like, maybe, EVER?

no matter what we do, how long we stay, we're screwed, along with at least the entire region, on every conceivable level: economic, military, political, humanitarian....you name it.

and the NYT, with Judy Miller, and their entire editorial/publishing staff deserves to be tried for their complicity

where were they when it counted? along for the ride, cheerleading their asses off, along with the rest of the 'liberal' media

[salin]

11. I agree they were complicit

and I agree that the damage done by bushco is so far-reaching that it will be hard, as a nation, to recover. I also believe that a short-term rejection of the GOP will not allow for corrections to happen per the disasters created by Bushco. The only longer-term hope is that the public comes to accept that the ideology behind the polices of the GOP are failed (and reject them) - that the public fully "gets" how extreme the actions of bushco has been (including the cancerous and shameful propoganda efforts employed to take us into war) tha the GOP is defeated not just for a cycle or two, but for a generation or two. In that time some real corrections can take place. Point being it is not just Bushco that has to be fully rejected by the public (and we are THERE on that point) but the ideologies and corruption (and growing corporate fascism) that need to be rejected that has the oppty to transform our public discussions and resulting change in public policy directions.

Yes I feel anger at the NYT and their editorial board per their role in pushing and giving credibilty to the propoganda.

I also think that this is significant - and I now look towards the future and think this has potential for helping spark on the teutonic shift in US conventional wisdom and the resulting politics and public policy for the coming decades.

[Captain Hilts]

10. Okay. Now, will everybody please stop blaming the CIA!?! nt

[Hissyspit]

12. .

[Peace Patriot]

13. Iraq is so yesterday. Top of their web page today...IRAN'S DEADLY WEAPONS!

Written by LIAR and WMD propagandist Judith Miller's co-author in crime, Michael R. Gordon. Check out this E&P article on it.

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003544369
(discussion here) http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x2725161

So what, if Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Powell, Rove, Libby, Hadley, Rice, the OSP and the New York Times lied us into a heinous war? Mission accomplished. We're stuck in the briar patch now, right where the NYT wanted us.

They can easily afford to backpedal on that, and blame it on the OSP--to try to get some of their readers back.

But they are, at the same time, selling the EXACT SAME TRIPE about Iran!

[Hissyspit]

14. .

[OmmmSweetOmmm]

15. And the NY Times was the biggest hawk for the war and now on their front page today

This gets me sick to my stomach. The same criminals that had been feeding them lies about Iraq are now giving them fodder against Iran.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/10/world/middleeast/10weapons.html?hp&ex=1171170000&en=e9a9ae56cb1df98a&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Deadliest Bomb in Iraq Is Made by Iran, U.S. Says

By MICHAEL R. GORDON
Published: February 10, 2007

WASHINGTON, Feb. 9 — The most lethal weapon directed against American troops in Iraq is an explosive-packed cylinder that United States intelligence asserts is being supplied

The assertion of an Iranian role in supplying the device to Shiite militias reflects broad agreement among American intelligence agencies, although officials acknowledge that the picture is not entirely complete.

In interviews, civilian and military officials from a broad range of government agencies provided specific details to support what until now has been a more generally worded claim, in a new National Intelligence Estimate, that Iran is providing “lethal support” to Shiite militants in Iraq.

[KoKo]

16. We have to pray that Jay Rockefeller has the "spine" to investigate

this thoroughly. He is a Rockefeller....we have to hope that his earlier reputation of being a renagade in his family is still true...although to date he seems to have been pretty wimpy whenever Roberts pounded on him. Even putting a note in his "safe" that he didn't agree with the Senate Intellgence Report... Why didn't he speak out rather than putting a "note in his safe."

Anyway...fingers crossed.