Ignoring Some Relevant Facts
Here, the NY Times once again serves as a handy talking points memo for the left wing, asserting that the Bush Administration relied on the claims of an Al Qaeda who was designated as a "likely fabricator" to support its claims that Iraqis were training Al Qaeda in the production of chemical weapons.
How ironic that it's implicitly chastising President Bush for being so driven by an agenda that he failed to take all the facts into account -- when it's doing the same thing.
As Stephen Hayes points out, there's plenty that the Times is overlooking:
1. "The head of the U.S. intelligence community made the same claim Bush did--using almost exactly the same words--some four months after Bush's speech." This suggests that, in fact, Administration officials didn't go beyond the intelligence in making claims about Iraqi training of Al Qaeda -- their statements were perfectly consistent with the intelligence they wee given by the CIA.
2. Carl Levin, who now criticizes the inclusion of the alleged fabricator's statements in Colin Powell's address to the UN, in the past signed off on the Senate Intelligence Committee's report that, in fact, stated both that Powell's speech had been carefully vetted by the appropriate personnel and that none of the intelligence reporting in Powell's speech differed from previous intelligence assessments.
3. The CIA produced a classified analysis in September of 2002 that stated, "The general pattern that emerges is of al Qaeda's enduring interest in acquiring chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear (CBRN) expertise from Iraq." With that background, the alleged fabricator's statements gained added credibility.
4. After striking pharmaceutical factories in Sudan back in 1998, the Clinton Administration justified the strikes by asserting both that they were suspected chemical weapons facilities AND that there was an al Qaeda presence there. As Hayes puts it, "These facilities, according to both Clinton administration spokesmen and senior intelligence officials, were the result of a collaborative effort between Iraqi scientists, the Sudanese Military Industrial Corporation and al Qaeda terrorists. Clinton administration officials stand by those claims today."
So someone tell me: Was the Clinton national security team "lying" too?
How ironic that it's implicitly chastising President Bush for being so driven by an agenda that he failed to take all the facts into account -- when it's doing the same thing.
As Stephen Hayes points out, there's plenty that the Times is overlooking:
1. "The head of the U.S. intelligence community made the same claim Bush did--using almost exactly the same words--some four months after Bush's speech." This suggests that, in fact, Administration officials didn't go beyond the intelligence in making claims about Iraqi training of Al Qaeda -- their statements were perfectly consistent with the intelligence they wee given by the CIA.
2. Carl Levin, who now criticizes the inclusion of the alleged fabricator's statements in Colin Powell's address to the UN, in the past signed off on the Senate Intelligence Committee's report that, in fact, stated both that Powell's speech had been carefully vetted by the appropriate personnel and that none of the intelligence reporting in Powell's speech differed from previous intelligence assessments.
3. The CIA produced a classified analysis in September of 2002 that stated, "The general pattern that emerges is of al Qaeda's enduring interest in acquiring chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear (CBRN) expertise from Iraq." With that background, the alleged fabricator's statements gained added credibility.
4. After striking pharmaceutical factories in Sudan back in 1998, the Clinton Administration justified the strikes by asserting both that they were suspected chemical weapons facilities AND that there was an al Qaeda presence there. As Hayes puts it, "These facilities, according to both Clinton administration spokesmen and senior intelligence officials, were the result of a collaborative effort between Iraqi scientists, the Sudanese Military Industrial Corporation and al Qaeda terrorists. Clinton administration officials stand by those claims today."
So someone tell me: Was the Clinton national security team "lying" too?
posted by LadybugUSA at 10:58 AM
4 Comments:
cross-posted at Huffington Post
Part of this person's problem in looking at the world (also seen in her citations of 'authoritative sources' from THE WALL ST JOURNAL) is that she is enamored of institutional legitimation of information. Rather than maintain the kind of skepticism -- indeed, such skepticism is perhaps a part of the 'blue-state' worldview, she looks to authority as the source of truth.
I am reminded of those people who defend a position by quoting some Papal Encyclical (or for that matter, quoting Marxist dogma), as the received truth. Here, you have the CIA, the possibility of their 'intelligence' being tainted by the Administration's agenda somehow being assumed away -- but no! we are told from earlier that some other authority in the government claimed that the CIA was untainted. In short, Liebau is someone whose very CONCEPT of information is inseparable from the idea of 'getting with the program and justifying the lying'; the measure of the truth of an assertion is how much the powers that pee insist that the assertion is true.
Notice how feeble the sources cited are -- Senate information reports being routinely signed off on, etc. BUT IT'S THE SENATE! That august institution! The CIA claiming there was no taint.
One of the reason most journalists tend to be liberal (though not the OWNERS of newspapers) -- a fact seen as discrediting while the fact that the officer corps in the military is rightwing is seen as a plus for the right (catch-22) -- is that they are taught a different MENTAL FRAMEWORK about information.
If Dick Clarke steps forward, like others (including Wilson) being routinely slimed by the Administration (and you can imagine how such RATS, especially when cogent like Clarke) are viewed in the Liebauian universe, comes forward and describes W Bush THE DAY AFTER 9/11, asking him to find a link to Iraq, not asking about links to other countries, or even further questions about Al Qaeda, this kind of fact is powerful because indicative of fact truth to most journalists. But to Liebau, it is, above all,
"unauthorized" and unconforming to the kind of truth her kind BELIEVES in, "agenda truth". The test of truth is whether it is getting with the program of the powerful. It is the ideology of those who believe in the doctrine of seditious libel, of lese majeste, in short, of the Tories that the American revolution was fought against. It is also the ideology of W Bushies. Authority not reality. Or rather, authority IS reality. Agenda truth (claimed to be fact truth) over fact truth. Truth being what the most powerful say it is, especially if rightwing.
None of the sources cited in any way refute the NY TIMES' point that someone who was recorded as being unreliable was in fact passing bogus information to the Bush people, which he Bushies found useful politically and so they used it. What if both Powell and Rice, in public statements, newsclips of which appear in FAHRENHEIT 9/11 (BOOO HISSSS, this guy reveals what shouldn't be! ) stating ACCURATELY that intelligence as of early 2001 made clear that Saddam had NOT been able to reconstitute his WMD program, dismantled by the inspections, and was NOT in a position to project conventional OR WMD power AGAINST HIS NEIGHBORS. Did most of the jeering Repuglicans at the Convention actually SEE his film? Or did any of them ever put out a serious refutation of this point or the Clarke interview or the mountains of other valid information put forward in the film? Or do they have a few claim to have seen it and then vouch for the rest (the usual way compatible with this 'authority-centered' notion of truth). After all, as with Oliver Stone's docudrama, all you need is to justify the lying and have a chorus of people trash something. Again, truth or validity is a function of what is DOMINANT, not what is ACCURATE.
The point is not whether the CIA or the best intelligence experts say this or that, the point is to examine what institutional claims are made ALWAYS with an eye to their interests and politics, to be skeptical across the board. After all, Clinton's bombing of a supposed chemical factory in DOWNTOWN Khartoum was fulfilling an item on the Pentagon/National Security Establishment's wish list. There is much evidence (the issue is highly disputed) that it in fact produced pharmaceuticals and had nothing whatsoever to do with chemical weapons. Is it possible that this act as well as Bush's was foolish? SURE. But were the consequences of Clinton's going with the program as grave, or the misuse of information (it would seem Liebau has never heard of Downing Street Memos I and II, or handles the info the way Repuglican delegates deal with FAHRENHEIT 9/11) so systematically deceptive on this issue as Bush was?
I by the way do NOT defend the Clinton Administration on this point, or on the so-called diplomacy that led up to the Kosovo War. Disinformation and propaganda were not invented by Bush. No one has accused Bush of INVENTING lying, only of PRACTICING it, bigtime.
The Liebau mentality is like that of those who defended Nixon to the very end, and it is not rooted in nor susceptible to factual or logical evidence. I doubt that she even bothered to read the many lengthy informative posts (not those that were only invective)in response to the "not that they will listen" column. She certainly doesn't respond to their substance.
"Listening" for rightwingers is often a code word for 'subordination', like some use other code-words like 'comprehend' or 'grasp'. Those who believe in truth as a function of "serving" (power -- what else?) don't of course really believe in truth. After all, POWER is reality, and the "reality" is that those who toe the line of power are rewarded and those who defy it punished, as the world should be, right? (Well, maybe they went a little too far in doing basically the right thing with Valerie Plame, but the basic PURPOSE, of sliming critics, is holiness itself to these folk). So REALITY is that going with the winds of POWER is what pays off, and that is enough truth for the hardcore RWer.
Posted by: cloudy on November 06, 2005 at 03:33pm
Was the Clinton Administration lying about an al Qaeda presence in Iraq in 1998? Republicans everywhere said so at the time; remember "Wag the Dog"? Are the righties now saying Clinton was right? And can they say this without their lips falling off?
No matter. What Ms. Liebau doesn't see is that the Bush Administration plus sympathizers in the CIA and elsewhere were cherry-picking intelligence--puffing up whatever made their case to invade Iraq, burying whatever didn't. A close reading of Mr. Jehl's piece in the Times revealed that the DIA report probably was not shared with the 9/11 commission (or else the 9/11 commission deliberately ignored it) and not seen by the Senate Intelligence panel on Iraq. Nor was this information shared with the Senate when it voted to give the president war powers in October 2002.
We can debate whether they were deliberately trying to deceive the public or whether they were fooling themselves as well. Yes, there were differences of opinion about Saddam Hussein's capabilities. But the "evidence" presented to the public and, apparently, to the Senate did not reflect those differences. We only heard the evidence the Bushies wanted to believe and wanted us to hear. The rest was buried.
Would the public have supported the war if they'd heard all sides of the argument? I rather doubt it.
Further, justifying a war begun in 2003 based on what somebody may have said in 1998 is outrageous. By March 2003 the overwhelming consensus of the world's intelligence community, including the IAEA inspectors in Iraq, had concluded Saddam Hussein had no active nuclear weapons program, and the UN weapons inspectors in Iraq said they were not finding evidence of biochemical and other WMDs and needed more time.
And all along the "evidence" of collusion between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein was highly questionable, yet those who questioned it before the war were quickly shouted down.
The Bushies and their apologists are either liars or fools, or both. Take your pick.
It's CLINTON'S FAULT!
It would not be so odd if Clinton's team did lie. If someone says, 'You lied,' showing that other people have or may have too does nothing to show that you didn't. I can understand making this point against people who support the Clintons and oppose the war and say we were lied to start to finish. You are just a poor observer of politics however, if you think that these groups are largely coextensive. The people who have been loudly proclaiming that the WMD and Al Qaeda cases were bogus from before the war even began are not Clinton fans. Hilary Clinton supports the war, and has at every relevant juncture. Wesley Clark (their chosen candidate for 04) supported the war, and has at every juncture. The DLC (the Clinton wing of the Democratic party) has supported the war all along. They quibble with Bush about how to run it, they think that Bush rushed in when in their minds a slower crime is better than a fast one, but the differences are very small. The far left critics of the war, who have been saying consistently that the case for war was bogus, are no freinds of the Clintons, and never have been. You score no points for pointing out that Clinton is a liar.
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