POLITICS: Cheney Adviser Libby Resigns After Indictment

Originally posted by subz
Baiting (aka asking) you to answer a question is against the T&C?

Do I not have the choice to respond to what I see worth commenting to, subz?

You seem content on telling me that I am delusional in thinking the report you originally mentioned isnt a bipartisan report. Yet when I gave you evidence that shows the Republican's swayed the Committee into ommitting key facts you shy away from the whole topic. Nice moves.

Erm, no, you are certainly not delusional.
Actually, your quite an intelligent individual and worthy of debate.
Your so-called evidences indicating that the report was swayed was found wanting, thus required no reply against or to it.
You were refutted.

As for this:

That criticism is hogwash and probably why you had to go to Wikipedia to get it.

Apparently, your having source issues?






seekerof

[edit on 29-10-2005 by Seekerof]

Seekerof - I see from Subz's last comment that he is finished for the weekend. Perhaps you can tell me either where to find out what the report said about the use of intelligence by the Bush Administration, or provide me a link to the report so I can read it.

[edit on 29-10-2005 by Astronomer68]

Certainly I can.
Here is a whole page full of links to the Downing Street Memo.
Downing Street Memo






seekerof

Not that report Seekerof, the Intelligence committee report he kept referring to.

We're running late, time to reply

Further to your critique of the Downing Street Memo

From seeker's Wiki quote
Fixed around' in British English means 'bolted on' rather than altered to fit the policy," he says. This view was seconded by the writer Christopher Hitchens

Christopher Hitchens, the rabid anti-Michael Moore writer?

From the Wiki on Chrisopher Hitchens
He is a vociferous critic of what he describes as "fascism with an Islamic face," and is now sometimes described as a "neoconservative" or a "liberal hawk," though his idiosyncratic ideas and positions preclude easy classification.

Great, he doesnt have any vested interest in debunking the voracity of the Downing Street memo does he?

Originally posted by Astronomer68
Out of curiosity Subz, how do we know Cheney would not take "no" for an answer? If our only source is the CIA, that response would fit in quite nicely with my little conspiracy theory.

You've got two sides to pick from I suppose, the CIA or the White House. Given the facts and news stories quoted in this thread, I chose to believe the CIA.

Originally posted by Seekerof
Do I not have the choice to respond to what I see worth commenting to, subz?

Yes but it makes you look like you dont have an answer to my question because you know im right

Originally posted by Seekerof
Erm, no, you are certainly not delusional.
Actually, your quite an intelligent individual and worthy of debate.
Your so-called evidences indicating that the report was swayed was found wanting, thus required no reply against or to it.
You were refutted.

Thanks for the compliments. The so-called evidence I provided came from your link, not my own. You refutted nothing.

Originally posted by Seekerof
Apparently, your having source issues?

No really, I dont really buy into using Wiki as a source of critiques, rather that its value lies in presenting facts, not interpretations.

Originally posted by Astronomer68
Not that report Seekerof, the Intelligence committee report he kept referring to.

The report that Seeker originally linked to:

Originally posted by Seekerof
Yeah, perhaps, but then again, maybe it is all semantics, eh, subz.
You provide what you will, as will I.
According to the the US Senate Intelligence Committee 511 page report that reviewed all of this, including that which you refer to, it was the CIA's prewar estimates of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction were overstated and unsupported by intelligence.

CIA: Opppss.



seekerof

The report that Seeker now wont comment on because he doesnt believe I have credible evidence (because I used the story he linked to) that shows the report was a white wash.

Taken from the above quoted link from Seekerof:

the CIA's prewar estimates of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction were overstated and unsupported by intelligence.

Critics of the war had expressed concerned about visits to the CIA by Vice President Dick Cheney and other officials, but the report said it found no evidence that policymakers asked inappropriate questions of analysts or tried to pressure them into changing their views.

Some GOP lawmakers on the panel successfully blocked Democratic efforts to finish the second part of the report -- how the Bush administration used the information from the intelligence community -- until after the November elections.

If that doesnt show the Republicans were ommitting pertinent information from that report, hence negating its findings, I will bare my ass infront of Victoria's Parliament

...and all the Kings horses and all the Kings men,
couldn't put President Bush's career back together again.

I was searching the internet and found this article on this site the "American Prospect". I don't know if this site is a NO NO on the rules for ATS, but I guess I'll be finding out.

Ok, here's what I found as far as WHO's to blame for the bad intelligence report that Bush used to sway the US and Congress to follow him into war against Iraq.

The Yes-Man
President Bush sent Porter Goss to the CIA to keep the agency in line. What he’s really doing is wrecking it.
By Robert Dreyfuss
Issue Date: 11.23.05

Print Friendly | Email Article

Exactly as intended, Porter Goss has hit the Central Intelligence Agency like a wrecking ball.

The former Florida congressman, who had an undistinguished career as a CIA operations officer in the 1960s, came to the agency in September 2004 after serving seven years as chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. With his staff in tow -- a collection of Capitol Hill aides nicknamed “the Gosslings” -- Goss bowled into the CIA’s Langley, Virginia, headquarters, scattering senior officials like so many duckpins. In mid-September, Robert Richer, the newly installed deputy director of operations and a former Near East Division chief, quit in disgust. The newspapers duly reported Richer’s departure. But he is only the tip of a Titanic-sized iceberg.

And who was it on this thread that stated that the Vice President was pressuring the CIA to go along with what the Bush Administration wanted in order to attack Iraq ? Here's a piece of that this article said about that.

This article, based on more than two-dozen interviews with former intelligence officials from the CIA, the Pentagon, and the State Department, along with ex–Capitol Hill intelligence staffers who worked with Goss, is the first comprehensive account of the CIA’s transition from George Tenet through John McLaughlin, the agency’s respected acting director in mid-2004, to Goss. It reveals that Goss may have put the final nail in the coffin of an agency whose expertise and analytical skills were cavalierly overridden by a White House obsessed with Saddam Hussein. From 2001 on, its covert operatives and analysts were ignored, pressured, and forced to toe the administration’s line; neoconservative ideologues considered those operatives to be virtually part of the enemy camp. Many of those who remain inside the CIA are distraught, convinced that their work is wasted on an administration that doesn’t want to hear the truth. “How do you think they feel?” asked one recently retired CIA officer with three decades of experience. “They’re watching a #ing idiotic policy, run by idiots, unfold right before their eyes!”

(Sorry about that one nasty word but it's part of the article I had nothing to do with it )

So from what I had read in this article, Cheney did put the screws to the CIA to get them to lie in the report, which this article goes on to state that MANy of the CIA asked to be moved/retired or quit just so they did not have to go along with the lie about Saddam having WMDs.



www.prospect.org...

Why all the debate on the whole CIA faulty intelligence versus Administration fixing evidence around the WMD claim versus Downing St memos?

Long before the Downing St memos it was well known to those who would seek the truth that the intelligence agencies were "stovepiped" (a term for when the flow of information is redirected to short circuit vetting and verification procedures).

A quick search shows that this has been posted here before, but for those who wish to catch up, begin your search with "Karen Kwiatkowski" and the "Office of Special Plans". (Try Lew Rockwell, Democracy Now and the place where it first appeared - Soldiers for the Truth).

This information was revealed while the process was in action building the case for war. Wilson, Plame, Nigerian Yellowcake and the Downing St memos were no surprise and merely confirmed the previously leaked info on the OSP.

That should end any doubt about who instigated it all....and how they carried it off.

[edit on 29-10-2005 by News Junkie]

Thanks for the corroborating evidence people

There are too dad blamed many threads on the same subject. There is another thread asking who is responsible for the forged intelligence documents concerning Iraq trying to buy uranium from Niger. After reading the entire report from the Senate Intelligence Committee on the subject as well as everything else I could find, I posted the following:

Reading the history of that entire incident leads me to the conclusion that the multi-faceted face of U.S. intelligence collection, processing and analysis is entirely too cumbersome to be effective. The reports about attempts by Iraq to purchase uranium in Niger and elsewhere in Africa were suspected of being erroneous right from the beginning and yet the various bureaucratic levels within the CIA & elsewhere just wouldn't let the reported intelligence concerning the thing die. The handling of those reports is a comedy of errors (mostly by the CIA).

To truely understand the incident though requires an understanding of the WMD reports coming out of the CIA & DIA all through the period of the Clinton Administration (and probably before). It would appear from the historical accounts that no one, of sufficiently high stature, was asking questions about the accuracy of WMD intelligence concerning Iraq. As a result, continual assumptions were made and reports generated that perpetuated older intelligence, which was quite likely no longer accurate. When the initial report was received from the U.K. about Iraqi attempts to purchase uranium in Niger it fit right in with those old assumptions & conclusions and never received the scrutiny it deserved.

In the light of hindsight, it seems the assessed probability of Iraq obtaining nuclear weapons was based upon only two things. The past efforts of Iraq in that regard and the mis-interpretation of current intelligence by the CIA & DIA. Only two intelligence items seem to have formed the basis of the NIE President Bush & other administration officials used as a justification--in part--for invading Iraq. (The Niger uranium report, and the aluminum tubes report).

It is clear the senior members of the Bush Administration repeatedly asked for clarification and/or additional information about Iraq's nuclear related activities (without getting either) and that they cleared all their speeches with the intelligence community before giving them. What isn't so clear though is why they accepted and used intelligence assessments based upon such limited information.

One could argue that the threat of a nuclear armed Iraq presented such a clear danger they really didn't have a choice. But one could also argue that they already had their minds made up to invade Iraq and the intelligence they had was all the justification they needed to sell the idea to the American people. Arguments along both lines continue to this day. It is abundantly clear however, that President Bush and others in his administration did not knowingly lie to the American people.

Also, I just found out the Italians were also supplying intelligence on the same issue to the Bush Administration. It seems the head of Italy's Military Intelligence is now under fire for his part in it.

[edit on 31-10-2005 by Astronomer68]

Originally posted by Astronomer68
It is abundantly clear however, that President Bush and others in his administration did not knowingly lie to the American people.

Im sorry Astronomer but I reject that notion with the utmost incredulity.

You said yourself you read the entire Senate report on the intelligence failures surrounding the case for invading Iraq. If you have formed your opinion off this then I implore you to take into account the self-policing nature of that Senate committee:

Some GOP lawmakers on the panel successfully blocked Democratic efforts to finish the second part of the report -- how the Bush administration used the information from the intelligence community -- until after the November elections.

Report slams CIA for Iraq intelligence failures

That is proof positive that the integrity of the report you read was fatally compromised by partisan lawmakers sitting on the committee. What other facts have been omitted or what other spin was engineered into the report to cast the CIA in an unfavourable light whilst exhonorating the current administration?

You say that old intelligence was rehashed as the basis for going to war, this is true but you've laid the blame at the CIA's feet for this. I take issue with that because governments ultimately keep bad intelligence alive if it suits their agenda.

An intelligence body, such as the CIA, has only one raison d'etre: to provide accurate intelligence and estimates to their government

A government, on the other hand, has many reasons for being. As such it does not have a single motivation for ensuring that correct intelligence is collated. Now, if the government becomes proactive in the intelligence gathering activities of such an agency you run the risk of intelligence being omitted/fixed around their own policy.

There is ample evidence that shows the CIA was actively discrediting the key points that made up their final analysis of Iraq's WMD situation. One has to wonder why there is evidence showing that the CIA knew the information was false yet they issued it in their final report. Why? What benefit does an intelligence agency gain by going public with intelligence they know to be false? None!

What benefit would Cheney gain by getting the CIA to include evidence they both knew to be inaccurate? He gets his justification for carrying out their predetermined invasion of Iraq.

Now you've seen evidence and testimony that clearly states Cheney was brow-beating CIA staff into compiling intelligence that he himself wanted in the report. When he was told that there was no basis for the intelligence he was demanding evidence for he kept repeating the questions until he got what he wanted to hear. He is the Vice President after all, would you go up against him?

Then because the Downing Street memo and countless other elements proved that the American government's case for invading Iraq was fraudulent they convene a committee to investigate themselves. They then issue a report that blames everything on the CIA. Couple this with other evidence that shows Cheney has a grudge against the CIA and you've got two motives for Cheney to set the CIA up to take the fall for giving him his green light to invade Iraq based on evidence the CIA has publically shown that it did not have faith in.

[edit on 31/10/05 by subz]

Subz I paid no heed to the conclusions of the report at all. What I did was look at all the different elements involved in the intelligence and how they seemed to speak with different voices. Even when they did speak with one voice their own administration departments crossed them up by injecting earlier conclusions instead of current ones. I really meant it when I said it was a comedy of errors. Senior meddling/pressure would show up as changes in the language of the official assessment and I found no such changes. In fact, there was a remarkable consistency there.

The sheer number of people, groups, working committees, etc. involved in the processing of nuclear related intelligence just boggled my mind. It is amazing anything ever gets through that mill. The conclusions I came up with turned out to be pretty much the same as the Senate came up with and I certainly was not playing politics in my own assessment. Just looking at the processes involved in clearing a speech was instructive. Several times the wording of a speech was agreed by the working groups to need changing, yet the actual recommendation from the CIA would cite earlier agreed language instead of the newest recommended language. That kind of disconnect wasn't caused by meddling, it was caused by incompetence in the admin parts of the agency.

[edit on 31-10-2005 by Astronomer68]

Further to my last post.

An examination of the timelines involved is another instructive area. When Wilson was sent to Niger his conclusions were probably already tainted by the official position of the CIA--because they had been discussed at a meeting before he departed. His assessment turned out to be the same as CIA's--no big surprise there, yet the DIA insisted the official line stay the same and it did. The report concerning the shipment of yellowcake to a warehouse in Benin just screamed for thorough investigation and yet it was weeks before even a casual look inside the warehouse was taken and even then it was only an eyeball look--not even a geiger counter was used to see if there was radiation present.

Sigh......

Please people, save yourselves a lot of time and energy and follow this link.

Karen Kwiatkowski - Inside the Office of Special Plans - Building the case for war.

This will explain who pushed the war agenda, how they did it, why they did it, the reasons behind the subsequent actions taken (like building permanent bases, switching oil trading back to the US$ etc.).

[edit on 31-10-2005 by News Junkie]