Bush, Aides Ignored CIA Caveats on Iraq( Clear-Cut Assertions ) Wash Post

[jbfam4]

Bush, Aides Ignored CIA Caveats on Iraq
Clear-Cut Assertions Were Made Before Arms Assessment Was Completed
By Walter Pincus and Dana Priest
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, February 7, 2004; Page A17


In its fall 2002 campaign to win congressional support for a war against Iraq, President Bush and his top advisers ignored many of the caveats and qualifiers included in the classified report on Saddam Hussein's weapons that CIA Director George J. Tenet defended Thursday.

In fact, they made some of their most unequivocal assertions about unconventional weapons before the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) was completed.

Iraq "is a grave and gathering danger," Bush told the United Nations on Sept. 12, 2002. At the White House two weeks later -- after referring to a British government report that Iraq could launch "a biological or chemical attack in as little as 45 minutes after the order" is given -- he went on to say, "Each passing day could be the one on which the Iraqi regime gives anthrax or VX -- nerve gas -- or someday a nuclear weapon to a terrorist ally."

Three weeks later, on the day the NIE was delivered to Congress, Bush told lawmakers in the White House Rose Garden that Iraq's current course was "a threat of unique urgency."

On Thursday, summarizing the NIE's conclusions, Tenet said: "They never said Iraq was an imminent threat."

The administration's prewar comments -- and the more cautious, qualified phrasings of intelligence analysts -- are at the heart of the debate over whether the faulty prewar claims resulted from bad intelligence or exaggeration by top White House officials -- or both.


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A20194-2004Feb6.html

[Dr Fate]

1. Good editorial- does not let Bush get away witht he "imminent" spin...

...if you notice- the author intentionally gives several Bush quotes that are alternatives to the word "imminent"-

[xchrom]

2. how many ways

can it be presented that only in the bushco admin did anybody raise the bar on the threat that iraq posed?
it's bizarre that the congress is yawning behind it's hand over the grave situation bushco has created for america.

[nixonwasbetterthanW]

3. WMD Commission has an easy task

1.) Read this story.

2.) Read Sy Hersh's work in The New Yorker.

That is all you need to know. The intelligence was right. It was misused, politicized and so twisted as to endanger this country far more than any scenario of which the former leader of Iraq was capable.

Case closed.