FLINT, MI--Governor Dean issued the following statement following CIA Director George Tenet's speech today. In that speech, Tenet conceded that CIA analysts "never said there was an imminent threat":
"George Tenet's statement today is further proof that the mistakes made in leading the country into war were fundamentally errors of political judgment and leadership.
"At the time, millions of Americans and I were asking tough questions about the nature of the threat posed by Iraq and whether it justified going to war. Only our representatives in Congress had the power to stop this radical Administration from its single-minded insistence on going to war. Instead, they gave the President a blank check.
"With each week, we are presented with more and more proof confirming that this was the wrong war at the wrong time--as some of us said all along. Meanwhile, our soldiers continue to die and our international reputation continues to deteriorate.
"I renew my call, yet again, for the appointment of a bipartisan commission that is truly independent to investigate the whole process by which we were led to war--not simply the intelligence."
In his remarks, Tenet stated: "Let me be clear: Analysts differed on several important aspects of these programs and those debates were spelled out in the estimate. They never said there was an imminent threat. Rather, they painted an objective assessment for our policy-makers of a brutal dictator who was continuing his efforts to deceive and build programs that might constantly surprise us and threaten our interests. No one told us what to say or how to say it."
Governor Dean supports the appointment of a commission that is truly independent (with members appointed by Congressional leaders in each party; the chair by the president), which would do its work in two phases:
Phase I, to be concluded before the elections, would examine what went wrong in the case of prewar intelligence/presentations re Iraq -- which goes to the judgment of our political leaders.
Phase II, to be concluded early next year, would focus on how the intelligence process should be reformed (here the Commission might want to examine data beyond Iraq).
Posted by Joe Rospars at 07:05 PM
http://blog.deanforamerica.com/archives/003568.html
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