DEAD WRONG was DEAD WRONG.

[katsy]

I'm thoroughly disgusted.

"Slam Dunk" and "Tenent" that's what this is about.

Tenent resigned and he fell on his sword for his king.

Powell took the biggest hit next to tenent.

CNN spewed bush/blair lies about the DSM.

CNN runs this garbage about WHAT????

This wasn't an indictment about the nation's most corrupt administration EVER! This wasn't investigative IN THE LEAST.

This is a white wash. This is a fucking white wash. It's COVER for bush. THAT'S what CNN has accomplished.

They provided cover by laying the blame at the CIAs feet.

WHY THE FUCK DID CHENEY'S ENERGY TASK FORCE HAVE MAPS OF IRAQ LAID OUT WHEN THEY MET?

This program has aquitted bush of all his fucking crimes.

DEAD WRONG was DEAD WRONG. Correction... it was DEAD MISLEADING.



:nuke: :nuke: :nuke: :nuke: :nuke: :nuke: :nuke: :nuke: :nuke: :nuke: :nuke: :nuke: :nuke: :nuke: :nuke: :nuke:

[jsamuel]

1. while that may be true it showed the facts about what was hidden before

[Captain Hilts]

2. They didn't mention Miller or Chalabi about the mushroom cloud...

stuff.

And they just breezed past the Office of Special Plans.

[shugah]

37. miller and the mushroom cloud were there

not glaringly, but there was a point in the program where they scanned over a NYT issue and you could see miller in the byline and "mushroom cloud" in the text.

[Media_Lies_Daily]

42. They also discussed the use of the phrase "mushroom cloud" in....

...public speeches given by Condi and Herr Busch, and showed clips of their exact comments. CNN then followed up with why their public statements were false.

[Son of California]

3. They might not of gone as far as you wanted

but having watched the small section that did, felt the presence of more than one or two pregnant assertions that will lead more than one person to see the truth about the stupidity of this war and the ment hat led us into it.

[katsy]

11. Okay.

I can respect your opinion and I'll watch it again when they rerun it with an open mind. I promise.

I just can't accept what passes for "investigative reporting" anymore.

Truth be told... I give up. Those in power can chew us up and spit us out. Our kids will continue to die in their illegal wars. Corporations run this government and policy. Our intel agencies are there to serve the powerful, not America. Game over. They won.

[goclark]

17. Never, never, never give up-never! nt

[Son of California]

27. NO GIVING UP!!!!!!!

"I HAVE NEVER NEEDED THE HOPE OF VICTORY TO SPUR ME ON TO FIGHT!"

[Al-CIAda]

4. Whitewash, limited hangout, gloss-over, etc., yes sir. nt

[chookie]

5. Sounds about right

Someone else posted the notion that this program was a sign that CNN was jumping off the neocon ship -- which I was very skeptical about.

Your analysis seems more likely.

I find it highly unlikely that any of the messages -- apart from slapping the face of George Tenent -- will reappear in coverage of the news or Iraq during their more watched programs.

I hope you and I are wrong....

[lonestarnot]

6. Not what I heard! I heard he was made the "scapegoat."

[FreedomAngel82]

7. What were you expecting?

[kentuck]

8. I tend to agree...

If a picture is worth a thousand words, Tenet was as guilty as sin. The average person will read it as an intelligence failure of the CIA and the "slam dunk" will be what they remember. Bush and the Repubs will be able to convince their followers they were only following the intelligence they were given. When, in fact, they convinced Tenet to go along with their scheme. So Tenet becomes the fall guy for the entire Administration. He was not innocent but he was lower down the ladder.

[katsy]

18. kentuck... that's EXACTLY what was accomplished here.

<<<< The average person will read it as an intelligence failure of the CIA and the "slam dunk" will be what they remember. >>>>



I tell you with complete confidence that these bastards just made up a "PLAUSIBLE" scenario with about as much investigation put into it as would be exerted in finding the killer of an ANT.

This was a wholesale marketing of plausible deniability for the administration, created for john q. public, JUST as things seemed to be going to hell for this criminal cabal.

It was a sci-fi. Yes, they used facts... but these facts were twisted to lay the blame on tenent and powell. If I heard "slam dunk" once, I heard it ten times. It's the same wholesale marketing that laid the blame for the acts of torture at Abu Gharaib solely at the feet of "a few bad apples". All sci-fi. All to absolve the powerful of responsibility for horrendous acts of crimes against humanity.

[kentuck]

20. Intentional or not, that will be the result.

I agree with you.

[radio4progressives]

9. That was my take n/t

[Webster Green]

10. It was far more balanced than I thought it would be.....

It showed that the intelligence was being hand-picked and manipulated by BushCo Inc., and that the war was indeed based on lies.

We at DU, being political and news junkies are armed with a lot more information than your average viewer, so we would like to see a really scathing indictment of the chimp, but, for CNN, this wasn't too bad at all.

I can tell you that the freepers threw tarps over their TVs and hid under the bed.

[tomg]

12. I have to agree with you.

And you are right about the Freepers. All pretty much the same: "I didn't watch it. It was all lies anyway" nonsense.

[shraby]

24. If they didn't watch it, how could they

possibly know it was all lies? :evilgrin:

[FrenchieCat]

13. I'll take what I can get....

And pray for a Dead Wrong Part Deux!

[truebrit71]

14. I disagree...

Whilst it didn't go far enough, they placed the blame EXACTLY where it belonged. For example the former CIA guy saying that the CIA chief ALWAYS got the blame when stuff went wrong even though it was the President that set the policy based on the intel. There were numerous mentions of alternative intelligence groups at the Pentagon and the WH countering the "there is no link" mantra coming from the CIA. There were numerous clips of the liars in the admin overstating the intel, Senator Dick Durbin stating categorically that he heard something completely different in the classified briefing from what was being issued from the WH. The CIA's #2 guy who was in the room when Tenet allegedly said "slam dunk" disputing not only that characterization, but also that mindset as being an accurate representation of the CIA director.

In this day and age you have to take babysteps to get through all of the bullshit that has been stuffed down people's throats. You have to tackle the mountain of lies one stage at a time. In a conspiracy case you build up from the outside, working your way inside until you finally uncover the truth. If you start going off on tangents about Ambassador Wilson, or Crook Cheney's energy grab you'll lose most people. Keep it simple. Focus on reiterating the most obvious glaring lie and hammer it home. There were no WMD, they KNEW there were no WMD, there was no imminent threat, they KNEW there was no imminent threat, and yet they lied us into war.

IMHO there was more than enough there to start the ball rolling, to get people to ask the same questions, and to wonder exactly why it is that after tens of thousands of US forces have been killed or injured, the pretzeldent STILL refuses to admit he was wrong.

If WH personnel get indicted by Fitzgerald over the Plame incident, the house of cards will start to crumble.

Remember, Watergate began with a bungled burglary and yet it wound up ending the Nixon Presidency.

This was a good start.

[katsy]

32. And I want you to be right.

I'm a flaming liberal who comes here to keep up with the news about my country because of a bad bad stench emanating from washington dc.

Now, I'm not the brightest star in the sky. But I'm an ex-art director with Time Warner with more than a few excellent creative notches in my belt to make up for the lack of brains. I have never seen a more blatant whitewash coming out of an "investigative" report.

Let me explain... you can hide a shitload of devasting facts in one pretty package. People will remember how pretty the package was after it was tied up. What was repeated over and over again? "Slam Dunk", tenent, powell, cia failures.

By repetition... by rote, cnn managed to tie the ugly truth into a pretty package for john q. public JUST by avoiding to end the program by asking why would this administration be so hell bent to go to war.

IMO, what they want people to remember is one & the same as whom george bush wants the public to blame for his criminal acts: "Slam Dunk", tenent, powell, cia failures. CNN formed a conclusion instead of ending the program with provocative questions for john q. public to answer.

People won't even remember the name of that cia guy.

I want to be wrong. I want you to be right and if it turns out the way we BOTH hope... I'll be around to take my spanking.

[Not_Giving_Up]

15. They said that he resigned to take the heat off of *

There was one guy (I'm awful with names) who said that's how it always is. He ran the list of times when the CIA has taken a hit for the WH.

[kentuck]

21. Larry Johnson...

ex-CIA , I think?

[Not_Giving_Up]

26. Could have been

I'm taping it at 1 AM CST.

[Armstead]

16. It was bettr than expected IMO

I almost didn;t watch it, for fear of raising my blood pressure over a coverup.

But I was "pleasantly" surprised at how it didn;t let the administration off the hook.

Although it did put a lot of blame on Tenant, it also showed how the administration put pressure to get the results they wanted and then ignored contrary evidence that was presented to them.

We have a tendency to want journalism to reflect our own biases. But that's not its role. In this case, CNN was surprisingly even handed in exposing the determination to go to war and exagerate the "evidence."

[wli]

19. pretty much, my girlfriend agrees, too n/t

[Carolab]

22. I agree. They keep passing the buck to the intelligence community

when all the while, as the DSM tells us, the administration (read, Bush, Cheney, Rice, et al) had PLANNED it and was FIXING THE INTEL.

This was reported on LAST summer...

They are trying to exempt the White House in this. I knew when Tenet "resigned" what the story was. I wish he'd spill the beans.

[kentuck]

25. Maybe he's waiting for a more appropriate time ?

Like about 2 or 3 weeks before the next election? :)

[HereSince1628]

38. I have to agree, if the story had turned to the Plame leak it would have

pointed an accusatory finger at the administration. As it was the toughest thing it said about the administration was that they wanted intelligence to support a policy.

[Skip Intro]

23. I agree.

[Bluebear]

28. It is a start

[punpirate]

29. No television... haven't seen it, so I need...

... a question answered. How much time was spent on the Office of Special Plans, apart from just incidental mention?

Because, folks, that little den of iniquity is the key to the whole issue of faked v. faulty intelligence.

Here's why I think that way. The intelligence services are the ones getting the intelligence. That's obvious. So, if you're the White House and you want to start a war, but need a phony pretext to convince Congress of the need for that war, what do you do when the intelligence services don't give you the evidence you need? You need a place to introduce your phony evidence into the system.

The OSP, buried deep in the civilian leadership of the Pentagon, got that information into the system. They took it directly from sources which the other intelligence services had already discredited. They then pushed it through two pipes, to the DIA and to the White House, without the attribution and multiple-source vetting that the other services would normally do. When that information reached the White House, it could then be sent back down to the CIA from Cheney's office and the NSC, with demands--not so much the "is this true?" demand, but the "why didn't you tell us about this?" demand. That immediately put the highly-politicized leadership of the CIA on the defensive and served to legitimize the value of the phony intelligence.

Under pressure to come up with politically satisfactory evidence, the CIA leadership found analysts who were either personally or politically motivated to vet falsehoods. A prime example of the latter was the CIA analyst who pronounced the aluminum tubes "perfect" for centrifuge use--even though the DOE and the NRC said that claim was poppycock--and any dolt with first-year inorganic college chemistry and a first-year statics and mechanics course would know to be false, as well.

That's one of the reasons why the OSP is gone now--it was dissolved after it had accomplished its task of introducing phony information into the system. Much harder to investigate an office that no longer exists.

OSP was a new manhole into that piping system for intelligence, placed at just the right point to get false information into the system where it could do the most good, and now the manhole's been paved over.

Cheers.

[Generator]

47. Excellent post about the OSP

Does anybody know to answer your question? I don't watch CNN..but this has been an interesting read.

[oasis]

30. Damage to Bush from 1 to 10 on the Mclaughlin scale. Eleanor would say 9

Tony Blankley, shaking in his boots, would say 7, Pat Buchannan an 8 and Lawrence O' Donnell rates it an enthusiastic 10.

The program's damage to Bush gets a 10 from me.

[Mr_Spock]

31. It was a very good report - I wasn't even expecting it

I have to wonder what reality some people here are living in? This was unexpected and very complete IMHO. Yeah, every unprovable theory isn't there - but there is more than enough real evidence to soil these folks - and they showed the tapes to prove it. I liked it.

[Straight Shooter]

33. Hello, I'm with the Name Police. The name is Tenet, not tenent.

Critical player in this critical FUBAR. Sorry, but I see his name misspelled so often that I just had to say something.

Thanks for the info on the program. I don't have television, and it's good to know what's being shown to America. They should have a marquee running at the bottom of the program, "For the whole truth, go to democraticunderground.com"

[Bluebear]

34. Thank you, Officer.

I hate to be pesky but he is indeed a critical part of the equation.

[katsy]

35. Thanks...

I'll remember that and appreciate the heads up.

[mtnsnake]

36. I disagree. This was a good start & CNN is just did what our Dem leaders

have failed miserably to do. They spoke up in clear terms about what's really going on.

[MidnightWind]

39. Agreed-they kept trying to push the idea that Bush was just badly

"advised". My ass!

[Media_Lies_Daily]

40. Interesting. Did you watch the same program I watched?

[RagAss]

41. I need to watch it again...

I may be dead wrong but what I saw was more the ignoring of intelligence by the WH more so than bad intelligence....

[Media_Lies_Daily]

43. Bingo. In fact, the inference was clear that the NeoCon Junta........

...deliberately ignored the real intelligence because they had already decided to attack Iraq.

[rocktivity]

44. I've been calling CNN on it since Friday, Katsy

When I read their own advance publicity: "The program...pieces together the events leading up to the mistaken WMD intelligence that was presented to the public."

My response? "...the title of this program really bothers me. If its premise is that Bush was the innocent victim of incompetent intelligence, it's PROPAGANDA! There WERE no weapons, they KNEW there were no weapons, and thanks to the Downing Street Minutes, we now KNOW that they knew there were no weapons!"

:headbang:
rocknation

[katsy]

45. Did you like how they glossed over the DSM...

like, it depends on the whose definition of "fixed" is applied.

:puke:

[bpilgrim]

46. I agree, this left a LOT out considering what we all now know

& knew at the time, especially the M$MW's cheerleading of the war and that the blogosphere and GLOBAL protesters and media who KNEW, before we ILLEGALY invaded - which they still haven't even ADDRESSED as noted by the head of the U.N. - that it was BS.

until they - american M$MW's - admit this was an ILLEGAL war, based on a PACK OF LIES, which was KNOWABLE & KNOWN before hand, by those pay'n attention, they deserve NO reprieve!

i am going to make an mp3 and post it on my site for any interested.

Thank GORE he 'invented' the INTERNETs :bounce:

peace