[A-List] Official story continues to unravel

["bon moun" <sherrynstan@xxxxxxx>]

[These two pieces are not coming from the left or alternative press, but
from the NYT and WP, the national 'papers of record', as it were.  Of
course, those of us who have followed this know that there are dozens of
other lies that have been demonstrated but haven't yet been 'discovered'
by the mainstream press.  Included in Dowd's, for example, is an
implicit reference to the Iraqi resistance being simply 'Saddam
loyalists' or some such thing, anything, in fact, except guerrilla
resistance to occupation that is overwhelmingly supported by the
population of Iraq... which it is.  The cards in the House that Bush
Built are beginning to fall.  -SG]

National House of Waffles
By MAUREEN DOWD


WASHINGTON

More and more, with Bush administration pronouncements about the Iraq
war, it depends on what the meaning of the word "is" is.

W. built his political identity on the idea that he was not Bill
Clinton. He didn't parse words or prevaricate. He was the Texas straight
shooter.

So why is he now presiding over a completely Clintonian environment,
turning the White House into a Waffle House, where truth is camouflaged
by word games and responsibility is obscured by shell games?

The president and Condi Rice can shuffle the shells and blame George
Tenet, but it smells of mendacity.
Mr. Clinton indulged in casuistry to hide personal weakness. The Bush
team indulges in casuistry to perpetuate its image of political steel.

Dissembling over peccadillos is pathetic. Dissembling over pre-emptive
strikes is pathological, given over 200 Americans dead and 1,000 wounded
in Iraq, and untold numbers of dead Iraqis. Our troops are in "a
shooting gallery," as Teddy Kennedy put it, and our spy agencies warn
that we are on the cusp of a new round of attacks by Saddam snipers.

Why does it always come to this in Washington? The people who ascend to
power on the promise of doing things differently end up making the same
unforced errors their predecessors did. Out of office, the Bush crowd
mocked the Clinton propensity for stonewalling; in office, they have
stonewalled the 9/11 families on the events that preceded the attacks,
and the American public on how - and why - they maneuvered the nation
into the Iraqi war.

Their defensive crouch and obsession with secrecy are positively
Nixonian. (But instead of John Dean and an aggressive media, they have
Howard Dean and a cowed media.)

In a hole, the president should have done some plain speaking: "The
information I gave you in the State of the Union about Iraq seeking
nuclear material from Africa has been revealed to be false. I'm deeply
angry and I'm going to get to the bottom of this."

But of course he couldn't say that. He would be like Sheriff Bart in
"Blazing Saddles," holding the gun to his own head and saying, "Nobody
move or POTUS gets it." The Bush administration has known all along that
the evidence of the imminent threat of Saddam's weapons and the Al Qaeda
connections were pumped up. They were manning the air hose.

Mr. Tenet, in his continuing effort to ingratiate himself to his bosses,
agreed to take the fall, trying to minimize a year's worth of
war-causing warping of intelligence as a slip of the keyboard. "These 16
words should never have been included in the text written for the
president," he said, in 15 words that were clearly written for him on
behalf of the president. But it won't fly.

It was Ms. Rice's responsibility to vet the intelligence facts in the
president's speech and take note of the red alert the tentative Tenet
was raising. Colin Powell did when he set up camp at the C.I.A. for a
week before his U.N. speech, double-checking what he considered
unsubstantiated charges that the Cheney chief of staff, Scooter Libby,
and other hawks wanted to sluice into his talk.

When the president attributed the information about Iraq trying to get
Niger yellowcake to British intelligence, it was a Clintonian bit of
flim-flam. Americans did not know what top Bush officials knew: that
this "evidence" could not be attributed to American intelligence because
the C.I.A. had already debunked it.

Ms. Rice did not throw out the line, even though the C.I.A. had warned
her office that it was sketchy. Clearly, a higher power wanted it in.

And that had to be Dick Cheney's office. Joseph Wilson, former U.S.
ambassador to Gabon, said he was asked to go to Niger to answer some
questions from the vice president's office about that episode and
reported back that it was highly doubtful.
But doubt is not the currency of the Bush hawks. Asked if he regretted
using the Niger claim, Mr. Bush replied: "There is no doubt in my mind
that Saddam Hussein was a threat to world peace. And there's no doubt in
my mind that the United States, along with allies and friends, did the
right thing in removing him from power. And there's no doubt in my mind,
when it's all said and done, the facts will show the world the truth."

I'm happy that Mr. Bush's mental landscape is so cloudless. But it is
our doubts he needs to assuage.
**********************
CIA Got Uranium Reference Cut in Oct.
Why Bush Cited It In Jan. Is Unclear
By Walter Pincus and Mike Allen
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, July 13, 2003; Page A01

CIA Director George J. Tenet successfully intervened with White House
officials to have a reference to Iraq seeking uranium from Niger removed
from a presidential speech last October, three months before a less
specific reference to the same intelligence appeared in the State of the
Union address, according to senior administration officials.

Tenet argued personally to White House officials, including deputy
national security adviser Stephen Hadley, that the allegation should not
be used because it came from only a single source, according to one
senior official. Another senior official with knowledge of the
intelligence said the CIA had doubts about the accuracy of the documents
underlying the allegation, which months later turned out to be forged.

The new disclosure suggests how eager the White House was in January to
make Iraq's nuclear program a part of its case against Saddam Hussein
even in the face of earlier objections by its own CIA director. It also
appears to raise questions about the administration's explanation of how
the faulty allegations were included in the State of the Union speech.

It is unclear why Tenet failed to intervene in January to prevent the
questionable intelligence from appearing in the president's address to
Congress when Tenet had intervened three months earlier in a much less
symbolic speech. That failure may underlie his action Friday in taking
responsibility for not stepping in again to question the reference. "I
am responsible for the approval process in my agency," he said in
Friday's statement.

As Bush left Africa yesterday to return to Washington from a five-day
trip overshadowed by the intelligence blunder, he was asked whether he
considered the matter over. "I do," he replied. White House press
secretary Ari Fleischer told reporters yesterday that "the president has
moved on. And I think, frankly, much of the country has moved on, as
well."

But it is clear from the new disclosure about Tenet's intervention last
October that the controversy continues to boil, and as new facts emerge
a different picture is being presented than the administration has given
to date.

Details about the alleged attempt by Iraq to buy as much as 500 tons of
uranium oxide were contained in a national intelligence estimate (NIE)
that was concluded in late September 2002. It was that same reference
that the White House wanted to use in Bush's Oct. 7 speech that Tenet
blocked, the sources said. That same intelligence report was the basis
for the 16-word sentence about Iraq attempting to buy uranium in Africa
that was contained in the January State of the Union address that has
drawn recent attention.

Administration sources said White House officials, particularly those in
the office of Vice President Cheney, insisted on including Hussein's
quest for a nuclear weapon as a prominent part of their public case for
war in Iraq. Cheney had made the potential threat of Hussein having a
nuclear weapon a central theme of his August 2002 speeches that began
the public buildup toward war with Baghdad.

In the Oct. 7 Cincinnati speech, the president for the first time
outlined in detail the threat Hussein posed to the United States on the
eve of a congressional vote authorizing war. Bush talked in part about
"evidence" indicating that Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear weapons
program. The president listed Hussein's "numerous meetings with Iraqi
nuclear scientists," satellite photographs showing former nuclear
facilities were being rebuilt, and Iraq's attempts to purchase
high-strength aluminum tubes for use in enriching uranium for nuclear
weapons.

There was, however, no mention of Niger or even attempts to purchase
uranium from other African countries, which was contained in the NIE and
also included in a British intelligence dossier that had been published
a month earlier.
By January, when conversations took place with CIA personnel over what
could be in the president's State of the Union speech, White House
officials again sought to use the Niger reference since it still was in
the NIE.

"We followed the NIE and hoped there was more intelligence to support
it," a senior administration official said yesterday. When told there
was nothing new, White House officials backed off, and as a result
"seeking uranium from Niger was never in drafts," he said.

Tenet raised no personal objection to the ultimate inclusion of the
sentence, attributed to Britain, about Iraqi attempts to buy uranium in
Africa. His statement on Friday said he should have. "These 16 words
should never have been included in the text written for the president,"
the CIA director said.

Bush said in Abuja, Nigeria, yesterday that he continues to have faith
in Tenet. "I do, absolutely," he said. "I've got confidence in George
Tenet; I've got confidence in the men and women who work at the CIA."

There is still much that remains unclear about who specifically wanted
the information inserted in the State of the Union speech, or why
repeated concerns about the allegations were ignored.

"The information was available within the system that should have caught
this kind of big mistake," a former Bush administration official said.
"The question is how the management of the system, and the process that
supported it, allowed this kind of misinformation to be used and
embarrass the president."

Senior Bush aides said they do not believe they have a communication
problem within the White House that prevented them from acting on any of
the misgivings about the information that were being expressed at lower
levels of the government.
"I'm sure there will have to be some retracing of steps, and that's
what's happening," White House communications director Dan Bartlett
said. "The mechanical process, we think is fine. Will more people now
give more, tighter scrutiny going forward? Of course."

A senior administration official said Bush's chief speechwriter, Michael
J. Gerson, does not remember who wrote the line that has wound up
causing the White House so much grief.

Officials said three speechwriters were at the core of the State of the
Union team, and that they worked from evidence against Iraq provided by
the National Security Council. NSC officials dealt with the CIA both in
gathering material for the speech and later in vetting the drafts.

Officials involved in preparing the speech said there was much more
internal debate over the next line of the speech, when Bush said in
reference to Hussein, "Our intelligence sources tell us that he has
attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear
weapons production."

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, in his Feb. 5 presentation to the
United Nations, noted a disagreement about Iraq's intentions for the
tubes, which can be used in centrifuges to enrich uranium. The U.N.'s
International Atomic Energy Agency had raised those questions two weeks
before the State of the Union address, saying Hussein claimed nonnuclear
intentions for the tubes. In March, the IAEA said it found Hussein's
claim credible, and could all but rule out the use of the tubes in a
nuclear program.

Staff writer Dana Milbank contributed to this report from Nigeria.
C 2003 The Washington Post Company