Bill Nelson: Senators Told Saddam's Weapons Could Hit U.S.

[QC]

U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson said Monday the Bush administration last year told him and other senators that Iraq not only had weapons of mass destruction, but they had the means to deliver them to East Coast cities.

Nelson, D-Tallahassee, said about 75 senators got that news during a classified briefing before last October's congressional vote authorizing the use of force to remove Saddam Hussein from power. Nelson voted in favor of using military force.

Nelson said he couldn't reveal who in the administration gave the briefing.

The White House directed questions about the matter to the Department of Defense. Defense officials had no comment on Nelson's claim.

http://www.floridatoday.com/!NEWSROOM/localstoryN1216NELSON.htm

Edited to put correct Sen. Nelson in subject line.

[nadinbrzezinski]

1. You know the sad part is

if many of us had that briefing we may have voted for the resolution as well... what if?

But truth be told more and more lies are emerging

[ShimokitaJer]

7. You are absolutely right

This goes some way toward absolving the Senators who voted for the resolution if they did so in this context. Of course, it also increases the responsibility of those same Senators to hold Bush accountable for disinformation. If it was incorrect, hold accountable those who made the mistake. If it was deliberately deceptive, hold accountable those who lied.

[MuseRider]

16. Although I will stay

with my choice it certainly changes my thoughts on some of the other candidates. I will stick with my choice but I feel much better about moving the others around in my mind. Given this information it would have been difficult to vote against it. Perhaps he brought this up to give our candidates some more leverage at a time when they are certainly going to need it.

[CMT]

2. another white house falsehood

which Bush should be taken to task over.

[truthspeaker]

3. couldn't reveal?

Why not? He knows it's a lie. If it's not true it can't be classified.

[LizW]

17. What does the White House have on everyone

that they can keep this a secret? How can they keep 75 senators silent about this lie?

[LeahMira]

24. Why not?

Why not? He knows it's a lie. If it's not true it can't be classified.

I suspect he's grown fond of his job, his family, and his life in general. Wilson-Plame?

[cthrumatrix]

39. It's called a classifed "lie".....period.

[joanski01]

4. I suppose Senator Nelson

will get called a traitor for saying this. But I do wonder why he is saying this now instead of earlier.

[NewJeffCT]

15. fear

Maybe he is fearful of what this regime has done to others who have crossed them?

[Hong Kong Cavalier]

26. Or he could get a package of white powder delivered to his house.

Hey, it domesticated Daschle, right?

[proud patriot]

5. bush defrauded Congress

he lied to everyone

[Hubert Flottz]

14. That's why I forgave the Democrats who were lied to!

But it was hard to do! I trust Bill Nelson more than the administration! I have a great deal of respect for Mr Nelson!

[blm]

6. I heard last September that Powell was the one

pressuring Senators and promising that the use of force was only a coercive measure and that war would be only a last resort. That was the smaller Senate Committee, anyway. I don't know if he was the one speaking at Nelson's briefing.

[ShimokitaJer]

9. I doubt it was Powell

If anyone in the administration was able to recognize how flawed the intelligence was, it was him. Wasn't he heard to have said "This is shit" when presented with the intial case to be made to the UN?

[atreides1]

21. He Went Along With It

The truth didn't seem to matter to Powell, remember his speech at the UN Security Council. He stated that the vans that were pictured were
used to make anthrax and he held up a vial of some powder to make his point.

Turns out those vans were used to inflate balloons for artilley units,
and they were sold to the Iraqi army by the British.

And he did all this after Bush promised to send money to Africa to help fight AIDS, after Powell joined with the rest of the band.
Turns out that the Republican controlled Congress decided that it would be wasting money, by sending it to an area of the world which
really has nothing to do with the US's national interests, and besides
most of the countries in Africa that need the help don't have any oil.

Now Powell is trapped by his own words, and it's too late for him to say anything, his loyalty is commendable, but because of it the population of many African countries will decrease over the years.

In my opinion Powell sold out, and received nothing for his troubles.

So yes it's conceivable that Powell was at least one of the adminstrations representatives applying pressure to some members of the Senate, after all he thought he was working for a good and noble cause, turns out he is the house slave that Harry Belafonte described him as.

Flame away if you want

Happy Holidays to all.

[blm]

28. Yes, but he still went along with it.

All I meant was that Powell is the one who promised more diplomacy to the Committee members, including Kerry. I don't know who else they would have used to speak to the greater group.

[htuttle]

8. That means 3/4 of the Senate KNOWS they were lied to

...so why don't we hear more about this briefing?

Time for another letter to Russ, I guess...

[dennis4868]

27. so why don't we hear more about this briefing?

Because the person lying is not Bill Clinton and about a BJ! Now a BJ is a major national security issue compared to sending our young men and women off to war to die! I am being sarcastic of course....

[Rainbowreflect]

10. Which Nelson was it? Ben or Bill?

You have Ben in your subject line & Bill in the message.

[QC]

13. Oops--sorry about that.

Will correct.

[mmonk]

11. If this is true

why nothing more about it? Why not outrage?

[zbdent]

12. Watch them try to spin this as something Clinton "knew" and "said"

My counter to that is "And you always said that Clinton couldn't tell the truth if his life depended on it. Hey, Clinton also probably backed that terrorism report that Bush shelved because it 'needed more study'!"

[jbfam4]

18. Is there a Ginsburg in the house?

Nelson will be labeled as a traitor and all the others will hide behind the Classified part........so lies can be told for votes and you can't talk about it.

The fact remains, that anyone who voted to give the president the right to declare war.......didn't follow the constitution that they swore to uphold and protect.

[Democat]

19. Is this impeachable?

Lying to congress to go to war?

Probably not.

Lying about a blowjob. Yes.

[dansolo]

20. With what?

Even North Korea, which has a much more advanced missle program tha Iraq ever had, can't even get their missles accurately near the West Coast, and they are a lot closer. How was Saddam supposed to be able to deliver these alleged WMDs?

[soup]

22. 'about 75 Senators'

So, were the 23 who voted NO not at this briefing?

California Barbara Boxer (D): No
Florida Bob Graham (D): No
Hawaii Daniel Akaka (D): No Daniel Inouye (D): No
Illinois Richard Durbin (D): No
Maryland Barbara Mikulski (D): No Paul Sarbanes (D): No
Massachusetts Edward Kennedy (D): No
Michigan Debbie Stabenow (D): No Carl Levin (D): No
Minnesota Mark Dayton (D): No Paul Wellstone (D): No
New Jersey Jon Corzine (D): No
New Mexico Jeff Bingaman (D): No
North Dakota Kent Conrad (D): No
Oregon Ron Wyden (D): No
Rhode Island Lincoln Chafee (R): No Jack Reed (D): No
Vermont James Jeffords (I): No Patrick Leahy (D): No
Washington Patty Murray (D): No
West Virginia Robert Byrd (D): No
Wisconsin Russell Feingold (D): No
from:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/onpolitics/transcripts/senaterollcall_iraq101002.htm

and what about Senator Graham - Chairman of the Intelligence Committee? Wouldn't he have been privy to a lot of info that others weren't?

further on in the article:
>snip<
Nelson wouldn't say what the original source of the intelligence was, but said it contradicted other intelligence reports senators had received. He said he wants to find out why there was so much disagreement about the weapons. "If that is an intelligence failure . . . we better find that out so we don't have an intelligence failure in the future."
>snip<
So after receiving drone attack info in a secret meeting from some unnamed source that contradicted other reports, they voted to go along with this insanity?

[bobthedrummer]

23. Office of Special Plans operations

might include overstating the strength of the enemy and the types of weapons in the field to convey a paper tiger and get a war on.

And now we are going to get the first Bush show trial of an election year-WooHAH!

[in_cog_ni_to]

25. OK, the Senators

were LIED to so the warhawks could illegally invade Iraq. When will they be brought up on charges for it? Isn't that a CRIME? It HAS to be a crime and every last one of them should be prosecuted for it! :grr: This is un-fucking-believable! NO WONDER they voted to invade....DAMN am I pissed...AGAIN!

[salin]

29. Time to re-read this: Stove Pipe... Hersh

http://truthout.org/docs_03/102203E.shtml

The Admin- contrary to regular protocol - was not keeping the intel memos (briefings) didn't happen until Senator Durbin requested it before the vote. They pulled it together - with little analysis - and much of the deceptive stuff (read the article explaining how that happened) and created one. My guess is that the briefing that Sen. Nelson is refering to - is the Tenet/Cia briefing (I can't remember if others were involved in the briefings just before the vote).

I don't have time to reread the article - but would love to see how info in it would fit with this revelation from Sen. Nelson.

[Fleshdancer]

30. Shouldn't lying to Senators to start a war be illegal?

When the President lies to Congress, then the President is basically lying to all Americans. This lie cost American lives, security, and a shit load of money. Now what?

[neverforget]

31. I don't know what's worse: lying to the Senators or the Senators

buying that garbage? Anybody with a brain would realize that Iraq had been under sanctions for 12 years and his resources for "delivery" were extremely limited, like a bicycle or a pogo stick. God what a bunch of gullible, spineless fools.

[NewYorkerfromMass]

41. I think calling the Senators gullible, spineless fools

is pretty bad myself.

[w4rma]

32. “a four-person Pentagon team...self-mockingly called the Cabal”

Bush 'skewed facts to justify attack on Iraq'

A growing number of US national security professionals are accusing the Bush Administration of slanting the facts and hijacking the intelligence apparatus to justify its rush to war in Iraq.

A key target is a four-person Pentagon team that reviewed material gathered by other intelligence outfits for any missed bits that might have tied Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein to banned weapons or terror groups.

This team, self-mockingly called the cabal, “cherry-picked the intelligence stream” in a bid to portray Iraq as an imminent threat, said Patrick Lang, a former head of worldwide human intelligence gathering for the Defence Intelligence Agency, which coordinates military intelligence.
…
The INC, which brought together groups opposed to Saddam, worked closely with the Pentagon to build a case against Iraq. “There are current intelligence officials who believe it is a scandal,” Mr Cannistraro said.
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/05/31/1054177765483.html

Cheney Investigated Forged Niger Uranuium Document

As though this were normal! I mean the repeated visits Vice President Dick Cheney made to the CIA before the war in Iraq. The visits were, in fact, unprecedented. During my 27-year career at the Central Intelligence Agency, no vice president ever came to us for a working visit.

During the '80s, it was my privilege to brief Vice President George H.W. Bush, and other very senior policy makers every other morning. I went either to the vice president's office or (on weekends) to his home. I am sure it never occurred to him to come to CIA headquarters.

The morning briefings gave us an excellent window on what was uppermost in the minds of those senior officials and helped us refine our tasks of collection and analysis. Thus, there was never any need for policy makers to visit us. And the very thought of a vice president dropping by to help us with our analysis is extraordinary. We preferred to do that work without the pressure that inevitably comes from policy makers at the table.

Cheney got into the operational side of intelligence as well. Reports in late 2001 that Iraq had tried to acquire uranium from Niger stirred such intense interest that his office let it be known he wanted them checked out. So, with the CIA as facilitator, a retired U.S. ambassador was dispatched to Niger in February 2002 to investigate. He found nothing to substantiate the report and lots to call it into question. There the matter rested – until last summer, after the Bush administration made the decision for war in Iraq.
…
http://feeds.bignewsnetwork.com/?sid=6e9d5502599dc6a2
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=5858&mesg_id=5858&page=

Plans For Iraq Attack Began On 9/11

(CBS) CBS News has learned that barely five hours after American Airlines Flight 77 plowed into the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld was telling his aides to come up with plans for striking Iraq — even though there was no evidence linking Saddam Hussein to the attacks.

That's according to notes taken by aides who were with Rumsfeld in the National Military Command Center on Sept. 11 – notes that show exactly where the road toward war with Iraq began, reports CBS News National Security Correspondent David Martin.
…
Now, nearly one year later, there is still very little evidence Iraq was involved in the Sept. 11 attacks. But if these notes are accurate, that didn't matter to Rumsfeld.

“Go massive,” the notes quote him as saying. “Sweep it all up. Things related and not.” (Sec. of Defense Donald Rumsfeld hours after 9/11 attack)
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/09/04/september11/main520830.shtml
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=53315&mesg_id=53315&page=

A call to maintain CIA independence.

As the White House searches for every possible excuse to go to war with Iraq, pressure has been building on the intelligence agencies to deliberately slant estimates to fit a political agenda. In this case, the agencies are being pressed to find a casus belli for war, whether or not one exists.

“Basically, cooked information is working its way into high-level pronouncements, and there's a lot of unhappiness about it in intelligence, especially among analysts at the CIA,” Vince Cannistraro, the agency's former head of counterterrorism, told The Guardian, a London newspaper.

This confirms what Knight-Ridder reporters found: “A growing number of military officers, intelligence professionals and diplomats privately have deep misgivings about the administration's double-time march toward war,” the news service reported recently. “They charge that the administration squelches dissenting views and that intelligence analysts are under intense pressure to produce reports supporting the White House's argument that Saddam poses such an immediate threat to the United States that pre-emptive military action is necessary.”
…
http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/2002-10-24-oped-bamford_x.htm

U.S. Insiders Say Iraq Intel Deliberately Skewed
…
The DIA was “exploited and abused and bypassed in the process of making the case for war in Iraq based on the presence of WMD,” or weapons of mass destruction, he added in a phone interview. He said the CIA had “no guts at all” to resist the allegedly deliberate skewing of intelligence by a Pentagon that he said was now dominating U.S. foreign policy.

Vince Cannistraro, a former chief of Central Intelligence Agency counterterrorist operations, said he knew of serving intelligence officers who blame the Pentagon for playing up “fraudulent” intelligence, “a lot of it sourced from the Iraqi National Congress of Ahmad Chalabi.”
…
They believe the administration, before going to war, had a “moral obligation to use the best information available, not just information that fits your preconceived ideas.”

CHEMICAL WEAPONS REPORT 'SIMPLY WRONG'

The top Marine Corps officer in Iraq, Lt. Gen. James Conway, said on Friday U.S. intelligence was “simply wrong” in leading military commanders to fear troops were likely to be attacked with chemical weapons in the March invasion of Iraq that ousted Saddam.

Richard Perle, a Chalabi backer and member of the Defense Policy Board that advises Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, defended the four-person unit in a television interview.
…
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=578&ncid=578&e=2&u=/nm/20030530/ts_nm/iraq_intelligence_dc

CIA had doubts on Iraq link to al-Qaida

The debunking of the Bush administration's pre-war certainties on Iraq gathered pace yesterday when it emerged that the CIA knew for months that a connection between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida was highly unlikely.

As President George Bush was forced for the second time in days to defend the decision to go to war, a new set of leaks from CIA officials suggested a tendency in the White House to suppress or ignore intelligence findings which did not shore up the case for war.
…
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,974182,00.html

Ex-CIA Officers Questioning Iraq Data

A small group composed mostly of retired CIA officers is appealing to colleagues still inside to go public with any evidence the Bush administration is slanting intelligence to support its case for war with Iraq.

Members of the group contend the Bush administration has released information on Iraq that meets only its ends -- while ignoring or withholding contrary reporting.

They also say the administration's public evidence about the immediacy of Iraq's threat to the United States and its alleged ties to al-Qaida is unconvincing, and accuse policy-makers of pushing out some information that does not meet an intelligence professional's standards of proof.

“It's been cooked to a recipe, and the recipe is high policy,” said Ray McGovern, a 27-year CIA veteran who briefed top Reagan administration security officials before retiring in 1990. “That's why a lot of my former colleagues are holding their noses these days.” ---
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20030314/ap_on_go_pr_wh/us_iraq_intelligence_4
http://www.democraticunderground.com/duforum/DCForumID61/18413.html

Public was misled, claim ex-CIA men

A GROUP of former US intelligence officials has written to President Bush claiming that the US Congress and the American public were misled about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction before the war.

The group’s members, most of them former CIA analysts, say that they have close contacts withsenior officials working inside the US intelligence agencies, who have told them that intelligence was“cooked” to persuade Congress to authorise the war.

The manipulation of intelligence has, they say, produced “a policy and intelligence fiasco of monumental proportions”. They write in the letter to Mr Bush: “While there have been occasions in the past when intelligence has been deliberately warped for political purposes, never before has such warping been used in such a systematic way to mislead our elected representatives into voting to authorise launching a war.

“You may not realise the extent of the current ferment within the intelligence community and particularly the CIA. In intelligence, there is one unpardonable sin — cooking intelligence to the recipe of high policy. There is ample indication that this has been done in Iraq.”
…
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,5944-698028,00.html

MEMORANDUM FOR: The President
FROM: Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity
http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0207-04.htm

U.S. diplomats also tried to stop this invasion:

U.S. Diplomat's Letter of Resignation
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/27/international/27WEB-TNAT.html

Letter of Resignation (Mary Wright)
http://www.snopes.com/politics/soapbox/marywright.asp

U.S. Mongolian Diplomat Resigns Over Iraq (Fourth U.S. Diplomat)
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&cid=542&e=84&u=/ap/20030327/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/war_diplomat_resigns_2

Third U.S. Diplomat Resigns Over Iraq Policy
http://truthout.org/docs_03/032303G.shtml

Second US Diplomat Resigns in Protest
http://www.wagingpeace.org/articles/03.03/0314krieger_diplo_resign.htm
U.S. diplomat resigns over Iraq war plans
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N10105063.htm

Niger-Uranium Timeline
http://www.deanforamerica.com/site/PageServer?pagename=niger_timeline

THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION AND WMDs: THEN AND NOW
http://www.deanforamerica.com/site/PageServer?pagename=bush_wmd_summary

[Hep]

33. And it only took a year to tell us?

What gives?

[DjTj]

34. An Honest Question: Can we prove Bush lied?

When it turned out that the British intelligence had made up information about arms deals, could we say that Bush lied? I think all that showed was that he had faulty information and was negligent in not verifying it.

I'm sure if this is investigated it will turn out that somebody had provided intelligence to corroborate this claim; it may turn out that someone in the CIA lied, someone in the military lied, or we could again blame it on foreign intelligence. Does that mean that Bush lied? I think that again only shows that Bush was negligent.

I forgive our Senators for voting for the IWR in the face of this lie, but the same logic can be applied to Bush. I fear that if this is pursued, some lower-level person will lose their job and Bush will get away scot-free because he'll still be riding the *success* of Saddam's capture.

[NewJeffCT]

36. Calling Harry Truman

The buck should stop with the Commander-in-Chief.

[Capn Sunshine]

35. I know what's worse

the corporate media won't mention this story at all.

[neverforget]

37. You got that right!

[NewJeffCT]

38. Did anybody pick this up at all?

Did any of the major news orgs pick this up?

[cthrumatrix]

40. this is why we want the "liar" out of office

[onecitizen]

42. I believe that.........

Randi Rhodes said on her show at one time that Rep. Shiela Jackson Lee said that the Admin. flat out lied to them about what Saddam could do with his weapons. They were scared, very scared. And that was why they voted the way they did. My question is why didn't they tell US at the time? I mean, didn't we have the right to know after all? Rep. Jackson Lee had been on Randi's show when she revealed this info. I didn't hear that show so I cannot say for sure. But that is what Randi has said in the past.

[cthrumatrix]

43. Rush...if you'er reading....share this with your listeners...!