Monday, November 14, 2005

How Big Will Pat Roberts' Nose Get?

If Republican Senator Pat Roberts of Kansas is on the up-and-up, cigarettes are a cure for lung cancer. I haven't seen a transcript yet, but based on Roberts' performance on Late Edition on Sunday, it's plain as the nose on the guy's face that his first priority is to protect the White House and himself from blame for the Iraq intelligence manipulation.

This is the same Pat Roberts who chairs the "bipartisan" Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, on which Republicans outnumber Democrats.

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Confusion:

The Committee's Phase One investigation conclusions blast the intelligence community, and contain the sentence:
The committee found no evidence that the [Intelligence Community's] mischaracterization or exaggeration of the intelligence of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction (WMD) was the result of political pressure.

If they didn't investigate political pressure in Phase I, why in the world would they include that statement in their conclusions? It's difficult to believe that inserting that sentence wasn't an attempt to preemptively interdict the process of Phase II.

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Over at TomPaine.com, John Prados provides several perceptive insights.
In phase one, the Bush administration sought a definition of “politicization” that was so narrow it prevented the commission from reaching finding any fault.

And you can bet the cost of a tank of gas that if the administration wanted a narrow definition, Pat Roberts moved heaven and earth to make sure they got it.

It's important, Prados says, for the Phase II investigators to have subpoena power to explore the entire context of what went on between policy makers and the intelligence services. That means exploring all the nooks and crannies inhabited by Dick Cheney, Scooter Libby, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, John Bolton, and the entire cast of neocon characters who publicly advocated the Iraq invasion back in 1998 and who invaded the executive branch in 2002.

I'm not entirely optimistic the Intelligence Committee will be able to do that.

As Prados asserts, Senator Roberts is…
…already attempting to divert the panel from fulfilling its responsibility. The committee’s own press release described the aim of phase two as an inquiry into “whether any influence was brought to bear on anyone to shape their analysis to support policy objectives." To accomplish this, Roberts is arguing that the panel should merely review administration statements in the run-up to war and see if there was intelligence that supported each claim. This minimalist approach would give the Bush administration a free pass for politicizing the analytical process and then cherry-picking the conclusions that fit its needs.

Put another way, the administration and its allies (like Roberts) are trying to erase the past faster than they can accuse their critics of rewriting it.

9 comments:

  1. Then why are Roberts and the rest of the neocons trying to block the investigation?

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  2. I think there's too many people involved, too many layers, to explain it all in simple terms. But yes, I say intel was shaped, repackaged, modified, retrofitted, in some cases manufactured and made into pretzels, etc. to suit various peoples' agendas -- I think that's always gone on to some extent. Just never to this extreme, and never with so many moving (political) parts in action.

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  3. Anonymous4:22 PM

    rsk:

    The devil, as they say, is in the details.

    You note that the prior administration "talked about" what a threat Saddam was. Talk yes, invade no.

    Take a look at what is usually the neocons' Exhibit "A" for the proposition that "Clinton thought so to", the "Iraq Liberation Act of 1998". It was a PNAC - drafted piece of feel - good legislation forced on Clinton by a Republican congress during the Lewinsky fiasco. I say "feel good" because it specifically PROHIBITED the use of American forces for regime change in Iraq. Rather, it was all about giving some do - re - mi to Chalabi and his exile pals in London.

    As to what the present crowd thought about the intel, we have:

    1. Colin Powell on 2/24/01, stating that Saddam had not developed any significant wmd capability and was unable to project conventional power against his neighbors, and;

    2. The one the only, Condi, who told CNN in July, 2001, how flat on his back Saddam was and how he posed no threat to anybody.

    So what changed? Only one thing -- 9/11. As has been reported in numerous places, Dear Leader was going after Hussein from before he was sworn in.

    And before we all go down the road of "European intelligence services thought he had wmd", ask yourself this: How come we're the only ones there? As Holmes said to Watson, That's the dog that didn't bark.

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  4. fbg,

    You have links for all that?

    Yes. To high heaven. And it doesn't smell like chocolate ice cream.

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  5. Anonymous4:55 PM

    rsk:
    As long as we're separating issues, let's separate the following: "WMDs" means biological, chemical and thermonuclear. The people who play in this particular sand box will tell you that the only one of the three that counts, i.e., is a global weapon, is the thermonuclear. Biological and chemical are only theater weapons, and only then on their best days. Too many problems re: delivery, too much chance you'll kill your own side.

    The one thing that everybody knew was that Saddam had no nuclear weapons. The discussion was over when in the future he might get them if left alone. The earliest estimate was 5 years, the most reasonable 10 to 15 . . . if we let him. No one was going to let him have those toys. But did we need to invade to stop him? Don't think so.

    The point: No serious person (including at the time, Powell and Condi) thought Saddam had nukes or anything close to the capability of developing them. It was only after 9/11 that we started to hear about aluminum tubes and yellowcake from Niger . . . and we know how all that turned out.

    As for your argument about generalized UN greed, perfidy, etc.; if that were truly the case, why not just say that the various intel services involved disagreed with the Americas' intelligence assessment and let it go at that? (And we haven't even gotten to the fact that it was UN pressure that got the inspectors back in four months before the invasion.)

    At the end of the day, the argument that Dear Leader in fact believed that Saddam had wmd just can't get around all the inconvenient facts in its way. Look, nobody wants to belive that the Pres of the USA lied to us and the world, but all the evidence available makes that the most logical inference to be drawn -- and we don't know know the half of it yet.

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  6. Anonymous5:03 PM

    Why Cmdr., funny you should ask:

    The quickest location for the Colin/Condi references is to the free chapter of Ray McGovern's book which is online. (McGovern is a retired CIA type.) I got to it by googling his name and clicked on "Advance Release Chapter of Ray McGovern's new book." The specific references to Powell and Rice are on page 3 of the pdf.

    If you can't find it let me know and I'll forward the chapter.

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  7. Anonymous5:22 PM

    rsk:

    You state you argument well argument in the last paragraph of your last post:
    "For me, the justification has to lay . . . from blowing up in their face."

    But that's precisely the point: In the months leading up to the invasion had Dear Leader stated the rationale as straightforwardly as you did in that paragraph, while that might may have enough for you to have okayed an invasion of Iraq I guarantee you it was nowhere near enough for alot of to have done so.

    The further point is that we'll never know how many of us (and our represetatives)would have gone along with the rationale you present because that wasn't the one we in fact were presented with.

    And that leads us to the biggest point of all: The President of the United States isn't supposed to lie his way into a war.

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  8. Anonymous5:29 PM

    rsk:

    Message received and understood.

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  9. Thanks for the lengthy contributions/discussions everyone.

    I'm convinced that policy shaped the "final" intelligence. To what extent it did so, and to what extent dissenting opinion was stifled is what I want to know.

    And did anyone do anything criminal, or were the guys at the top just overly focused on justifying the policy?

    Jeff

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