Jimmy Higgins

Its only from a single source, says CIA in October, months before the speech!

I'm so confused. Are there people admitting that this is a lie or aren't they. The signals are so mixed, my head is starting to spin.

ex-idaho

It's actually pretty simple. The Whitehouse has admitted that the information contained in the SOTUA while factually correct should not have been included. The reason the info was "factually" correct was because they attributed the source to he British Govt instead of the CIA or some other US source. So technically they did not "lie". But they did deceive the people.

The CIA told the VP's office and Condi Rice that they were not comfortable with the assertion that Saddam had attmepted to buy uranium from Niger since the documents that made this claim were forgeries. Rice was dead set on making the claim and since the British were also claiming this same bit of intelligence they decided to use them. You see, if they can say we were just gonig by what our friend Tony Blair was saying then we were'nt lying we were just wrong.

Jimmy Higgins

Aw christ! The Clinton Admin redefined sexual relations while the Bush Admin is redefining the word lie.

Is it a lie? It certainly wasn't intelligence. There was only one source for the information. This is what made the CIA hesitant. There was no reliable information within the single source, that's why you always need more than one source. And usually the more important the idea, the more important a third+ source becomes!

While the administration didn't all out lie, they reported intel that was not reliable as fact! And that is a lie! Lying doesn't have to mean saying something that isn't true, it can also be alluding a portion of the information that is critical to the conclusion of the information. IE, we see fundies do this sort of thing all the time, misquoting sources! That we see our fundy resident doing the same is no coincidence.

They bloody lied!

Zar

There is no reason to be confused. Its a lie, plain and simple.

These people know damn good and well what they are doing. Don't fall for the idea that these superhawks are, to a man, as dumb as a box of rocks. That just doesn't wash. And what about the "accountability president"? I guess "No way in hell will the buck ever stop here" should be the motto on Bush's desk.

The CIA didn't think the information was reliable long before the State of the Union Address and so the administration decided to spread a "watered down" version of this claim through intelligence channels, because it was too juicy to pass up completely, even if it was based on a single, forged, comically shoddy source. It may be a mystery from whence the forgery came, but the abuse of the public trust is no mystery at all.

S2Focus

Are the Democrats finally growing a collective spine? Here's what Jay Rockefeller had to say about Condi Rice:


"I cannot believe that Condi Rice... directly, from Africa, pointed the finger at George Tenet, when she had known -- had to have known -- a year before the State of the Union."

"The entire intelligence community has been very skeptical about this from the very beginning," Rockefeller says. "And she has her own director of intelligence, she has her own Iraq and Africa specialists, and it's just beyond me that she didn't know about this, and that she has decided to make George Tenet the fall person. I think it's dishonorable."

(from http://www.npr.org/display_pages/fea...e_1335540.html)

Ion

It is a lie, because Bush knew the information being incorrect (no matter the source) and he used it for his agenda, anyway.

Bush is in charge with using the correct information to make the correct decisions.
It's his full time job.

To hope that nobody notices the lie, and if someone does notice it, to say "But so and so said it", that's being accomplice to the lie.

Zar

Ion,

I agree 100%. There just are no two ways about it. And this is just the form we should expect a lie like this to take.

Some people seem to almost expect a lie to take the form of Bush literally making stuff up on the fly during one of his speeches. That is a grave mistake. In that case, we'd impeach him for being unfit for office due to mental disease. No, palming this off onto other countries and other agencies like they have been doing would be the preferred way. They are testing the firewall they have built as we speak, hoping a gullible public will buy it.

I'm not a dog who enjoys being thrown those kinds of bones.

Godbert

The whole Niger thing is almost getting to much coverage for my taste. That kind of makes it look to the public like it was the only thing they were lying/truthtwisting about, while in fact pretty much everything they were saying was crap except for the part about Saddam being a bad guy (oh wait even that was truth twisting since they made it seem, without outright lying, that his evil deeds from back when they were helping him to commit them were going on right now). I still remember how disgusted I was after Powells UN presentation.
Even if there was some reason for focus this is just not a good part to focus on. I agree with Zar that it was not technically a lie since he just said that the British said it - so there is no legal/formal grounds to attack Bush on this. Overall I have to say the american government was a lot cleverer than the British in their lying- maybe that's partly because the British actually believed that Hussein was a threat or because they just had to lean further out of the window to convince their less bloodthirsty populace of the need for war.
I think the best way to nail the american government is over it's connections with the industry and resulting policy on the environment, taxes and yes also Iraq. After all, remember that the Iraq talk conveniently started last year just in time to distract from the corporate scandals. Another thing that could turn out bad for Bush is hte 9/11 investigation. When Bush tried to appoint Kissenger that pretty much convinced me that they at least had some info about 9/11 and took no counter measures since it was so extremely convenient for them.

But back on the topic. The CIA had been saying that Bush Iraq babble is nonsense (in well-chosen words of course) for months and noone in Washington gave a shit, so you can't really blame the CIA if they stopped talking to a wall at some point. And also how it was phrased it was not technically a lie so while I can see that the CIA should correct wrong information in presidential speeches it's really not their job to interpret them to a depth where they interpret the governments motives. If they read that the president intends to deceive the public using legal methods and no formally provable lies how is it their job to suggest otherwise? Oh man, what has the world come to when the CIA are the good guys!

Ion

Bush needs to be outed on any technical lie.

Do not dilute to out Bush:

.) take an obvious lie and even if small (like the White House wants to make this one now, given that Bush is 'right' in general) focus on it;

.) after all the lies that I have seen from Bush, hopefully a thoroughly proved lie that has tragic consequences on lives like this one, will shake Bush good enough in 2004.

How's Dean doing?

I read in this forum, that Zar and Red Dave have some reservations.

I hope, Dean works out well.

Zar

I'm sorry, but I have to disagree. A line like that is the typical line of government critics everywhere, but that's a very long term issue and will have zero effect in the short term on this presidency. And this talk about Iraq being used to cover up corporate scandals is virtually unprovable and has no hope of preaching to anyone but the already converted.


Indeed, the American public was a wall as well. Too many of them didn't seem to care who got bombed or why, as long as some sand-nigger ass got kicked. The only reason this is getting airplay now is that dead soldiers make a good story and that the instant-gratification American culture is getting restless over the idea that Iraq isn't so easy and that American boys and girls are dying. These aren't bad reasons to be upset, but it shows how little forethought many people give to things, or at least how they discount some things prior that take on a different hue after.

No, I think it was a lie, since there was no other information than the forged evidence to base any statement on, specific or generalized.


It seems to be the CIA's job to provide good intelligence information. They do not set policy. Therefore, the blame lies with the Bush Administration if they did anything that went beyond the evidence. It also lies with Tenet if he allowed policy to dictate the intelligence. Even if he got "tired" of speaking to a brick wall, that should not matter to the CIA. Even if the CIA is party to many shady dealings in the world, it is still important for them to know the truth. Even a government bent on dominating the world would do well to have at least one place to go that wasn't spoiled by sychophants and politicos as a prudential matter bearing on the survival of the state.

This is another reason I find it incredible that the CIA should so willingly become Bush's dirty launderer (though I don't really think people below Tenet are so eager to please.) The agency will be -- and probably already has been -- severely weakened if this open capitulation keeps up.