Unforgivable Intelligence Giveaway
William Bennett nails Jay Rockefeller -- vice chairman of the US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence -- here.
On last weekend's Fox News Sunday, Jay Rockefeller announces that he made a trip in January 2002 and told Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Syria that the President was determined to go to war with Iraq.
To paraphrase what Bennett writes, What was he thinking?! That was before the President had even talked about war with Iraq. Yes, it probably is time for an investigation of what other government policy Rockefeller may have compromised or disclosed without authorization. No one's claiming that Rockefeller gave away "classified" information -- but by indicating that he was sharing his "views" so unreservedly, especially with Syria, a declared enemy of America, he certainly leads one to wonder. And it's worth asking whether such a tip-off might have helped precipitate a plan for Iraq to move some of its WMD's to Syria (a possibility that's routinely ignored).
How pathetic -- and how ugly and how disgraceful -- are the Democrats' efforts to slither out from under the votes they cast, so that they have more freedom to try to blame the President for anything that goes wrong in the war on terror.
On last weekend's Fox News Sunday, Jay Rockefeller announces that he made a trip in January 2002 and told Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Syria that the President was determined to go to war with Iraq.
To paraphrase what Bennett writes, What was he thinking?! That was before the President had even talked about war with Iraq. Yes, it probably is time for an investigation of what other government policy Rockefeller may have compromised or disclosed without authorization. No one's claiming that Rockefeller gave away "classified" information -- but by indicating that he was sharing his "views" so unreservedly, especially with Syria, a declared enemy of America, he certainly leads one to wonder. And it's worth asking whether such a tip-off might have helped precipitate a plan for Iraq to move some of its WMD's to Syria (a possibility that's routinely ignored).
How pathetic -- and how ugly and how disgraceful -- are the Democrats' efforts to slither out from under the votes they cast, so that they have more freedom to try to blame the President for anything that goes wrong in the war on terror.
posted by LadybugUSA at 8:25 AM
5 Comments:
Let's take a look at the offending language.
"No. I mean, this question is asked a thousand times and I'll be happy to answer it a thousand times. I took a trip by myself in January of 2002 to Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Syria, and I told each of the heads of state that it was my view that George Bush had already made up his mind to go to war against Iraq, that that was a predetermined set course which had taken shape shortly after 9/11."
Sorry Carol, there is no disclosure of any classified information in this statement. All Senator Rockefeller did is give his opinion as to where he thought the Bush administration was going. And in fact, he was correct.
Politicians, columnists, bloggers, and members of a free citizenry do this all the time. It's called a democracy. Why do you hate it so?
If there's any justice, the good citizens of West Virginia will show him to the door next time around.
If there is any justice, the Democrats will retake the Senate and the House in 2006, and impeach all of the members of the adminsitration that mislead this nation into a pre-emptive war of choice.
Just to cut off eLarson's disingenuous follow-up "What do you mean the administration mislead us into war?"
From the NY Times, "Mr. Bush says everyone had the same intelligence he had - Mr. Clinton and his advisers, foreign governments, and members of Congress - and that all of them reached the same conclusions. The only part that is true is that Mr. Bush was working off the same intelligence Mr. Clinton had. But that is scary, not reassuring. The reports about Saddam Hussein's weapons were old, some more than 10 years old. Nothing was fresher than about five years, except reports that later proved to be fanciful.
"Foreign intelligence services did not have full access to American intelligence. But some had dissenting opinions that were ignored or not shown to top American officials. Congress had nothing close to the president's access to intelligence. The National Intelligence Estimate presented to Congress a few days before the vote on war was sanitized to remove dissent and make conjecture seem like fact."
Twister will be disappointed again come 2006.
The essential question is What in the hell was Rockefeller doing going to these places? Particularly Syria.
First he claimed he went alone and now as he has backpedaled and says it was with the backing of the State Dept?
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