Newyorker article on Iraq positions of Clinton, Obama, and Edwards

[karynnj]

To me it points out why you need Kerry. Obama is too green, Edwards is a complete phony with no core convictions.

Not a key part of the article, but I think this points where Edwards is going -- into the gutter.

"Edwards is careful not to rule out the use of military force against Iran, but he would much rather talk about other things—his recent interest in Africa, and his antipoverty ideas, which are at the core of his candidacy. Edwards is genial in conversation, but he became almost testy when I brought up his vote, in 2002, in favor of the Iraq-war resolution. Edwards has repudiated his vote, unlike Clinton, who has not renounced her own support for the war despite demands from her backers that she do so. Edwards worries that his vote will be seen as evidence that he was somehow fooled by the Administration into giving it his support. “I was convinced that Saddam had chemical and biological weapons and was doing everything in his power to get nuclear weapons,” he said. “There was some disparity in the information I had about how far along he was in that process. I didn’t rely on George Bush for that. And I personally think there’s some dishonesty in suggesting that members of the United States Senate relied on George Bush for that information, because I don’t think it’s true. It’s great politics. But it’s not the truth.”

When I asked who was making this suggestion, he said, “I’ve just heard people say, I can’t even tell you who, I’ve just heard people say, ‘Well, you know, George Bush . . . misled us.’ You know, it’s just— I was there, it’s not what happened.” (Edwards would not single out anyone, but he appeared to be referring to, among others, his 2004 running mate, John Kerry, who has often said that he was lied to by the Bush Administration about W.M.D.s. “We were misled. We were given evidence that was not true,” Kerry told a rally of liberal Democrats in June of last year.)

“I was on the Intelligence Committee,” Edwards went on, “so I got direct information from the intelligence community. And then I had a series of meetings with former Clinton Administration people. And they were all saying the same thing. Everything I was hearing in the Intelligence Committee was the same thing I was hearing from these guys. And there was nary a dissenting voice. And so, for me, the difficult judgment was not about the factual information, which I was convinced was accurate. It was about whether I was going to give authority to this President I didn’t trust. That was where the friction was for me. I decided to do it, and I was wrong. I shouldn’t have done it.”


He is weirdly trying to make himself appear more honest by calling Kerry and the others liars. His comment sounds like the RW - they all had the same intelligence. The fact is there were lies - Kerry (and others have listed them).

He also doesn't get that he was on the intelligence committee and got info that others didn't. (Not to mention that you can't prove a negative esp when there were no inspectors there.) On on Oct 2003 Hardball interview he said he backed it even though he didn't think there were WMD.

He also needs to explain why Kerry's statements were consistent before and after the vote - and why he spoke out.
http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/070115fa_fact

[whometense]

1. Can't wait to read it.

Ours just arrived yesterday and I haven't had a chance to look at it yet.

I had lunch with a friend yesterday who doens't pay a lot of attention to politics, but who always asks me about what Kerry's up to when we see each other. We got into a pretty long discussion of the 2008 dem contenders. It's always interesting for me to hear what she has to say because her values are pretty close to mine, but she's not tied into the online political world.

She has a way more positive view of Edwards than I do - she mentioned his concession speech and sympathy for what they had to go through with Elizabeth's illness. She wanted to know why I don't like him. Since I feel about him pretty much the same way you do, you can imagine - though I was gentle about it. ;-)

I consider her a thoughtful voter, and one who would be very likely to vote for JK again in the primary - the first question she asked me was about whether I thought he's run again. To judge by the online commentariat you'd think no one cares. But around here, at least, people seem to be very interested in his plans.

[wisteria]

3. You know, I have had people assume that because I support Kerry

I would automatically support Edwards. They are surprised when I express my opinion on Edwards. My biggest disappointment with the Edwards is Elisabeth. I really thought that woman was genuine and kind in 04, now I see a side of her I don't like, starting with the suggestion that the Kerry's think they are better than everyone else in her book.

[karynnj]

5. I'm with you on that - In 2004 through summer 2006,

the only thing that restrained me from agreeing that Edwards was as slick as they come was the perception that she was solid enough that she wouldn't have married him if he were. With that gone .......

[wisteria]

2. Edwards is out to distance himself from 04 and break away from

Kerry/Edwards. I can't blame him for that. He is in a new race. However, I agree that he comes off as insincere. It was obvious that he was referring to Kerry. The interviewer figured that out quickly, so why not just say it frankly if what he honestly thinks Kerry is playing politics with what George Bush told them and what he really knew.

This is going to be an interesting primary if Kerry announces.

[TayTay]

4. That is an interesting take.

Edwards floor-managed the bill. He can't shake it off as, I was a true believer and therefore and now guiltless. That is a very, very disengenuous game.

Kerry completely disavowed not only his vote but the entire war, from soup to nuts. That's what made that June speech so interesting and so amazing for those in the audience. He 'owned' his role in this. All his speeches after the April 5, 2006 NYTimes Editorial have been progressively more likely to assume responsibility and accuse the Admin of lies not only to the Congress but to the people.

Edwards glosses over the importance of the Downing Street Memos and what they portend for this Administrations intent to lie to everyone to get what they want. He also glosses over the FACT that this President unilaterally rescinded Congress' right to have classified information after 9/11. (Anyone remember this? The President of the United States, without so much as a hearing, unilaterally decided that a co-equal branch of government was not worthy of receiving classified information because there had been leaks. So no other Senators besides the Intelligence Committees were allowed information. Democrats were shut out of the loop completely.)

Edwards is a deep, deep disappointment on this. He should be reminded that truth is larger than any Presidential run. This is not just campaign spin, this is about deep issues that cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of people. This is an unconsionable rewrite of history. Shame on him.

[karynnj]

6. Nice analysis

I think he is playing to the leefty freepers who believe it was absolutely black and white. The bad thing is it partially absolves the Bush people for personal political gain.

I seriously think that he comes off as pretty shallow in other parts of the article - his view of what to do is pretty simplistic. (Obama may be green, but he's real and a deeper thinker.)

[wisteria]

7. well, when you put it that way, you are absolutely right. Edwards should

admit that he had access to intelligence that others did not. And, if he won't that he should be embarrassed by being reminded about it.

[MH1]

8. He cosponsored and floor-managed the bill, but media only notices his "vote"

And so he gets off the hook for having a much greater role than those who agonized over it before deciding the best course was to vote for it, imperfections and all.

THAT's what annoys me the most about these discussions around IWR. Well, second most. I still say that Dems rolled over for the republican spin in calling it "a vote for war." That is not how it was spun and sold at the time of the vote, and Dems should be making that differentiation clear.

[wisteria]

9. I agree, but then people add that they must of been aware that war

was a very real possibility. But, like you, it is not difficult to grasp, the differences in the IWR should be made clear.

[ProSense]

10. Here is what he didn't do,

that is what another member of the Intellegence Committee did:

Senator Graham seems to believe there is a serious chance that it is the final scenario that reflects reality. Indeed, Graham told CNN "there's been a pattern of manipulation by this administration."

Graham has good reason to complain. According to the New York Times, he was one of the few members of the Senate who saw the national intelligence estimate that was the basis for Bush's decisions. After reviewing it, Senator Graham requested that the Bush Administration declassify the information before the Senate voted on the Administration's resolution requesting use of the military in Iraq.

But rather than do so, CIA Director Tenet merely sent Graham a letter discussing the findings. Graham then complained that Tenet's letter only addressed "findings that supported the administration's position on Iraq," and ignored information that raised questions about intelligence. In short, Graham suggested that the Administration, by cherrypicking only evidence to its own liking, had manipulated the information to support its conclusion.

link

[beachmom]

18. Question: which senators went and looked at the classified intelligence?

I distinctly remember reading that there was intelligence that was classified and that senators had to go there in a room if they wanted to read it. Only a few did. Just was wondering which ones read it.

[TayTay]

20. That was the deeply flawed NIE

Which was a piece of crap anyway.

From the analysis section of the webstie for the Frontline show 'The Dark Side' about how the War in Iraq was hyped by Dick Cheney.

The NIE is the highest-level document generated by U.S. intelligence agencies. The one issued in October 2002 was titled "Iraq's Continuing Programs of Weapons of Mass Destruction" and was produced in just a few weeks because Congress was nearing a vote on going to war with Iraq. Its key findings were later proven wrong -- but not before they had seeped into President Bush's 2003 State of the Union speech and, a month later, into Secretary of State Colin Powell's U.N. presentation that argued the case for war. Here, a range of authorities give their views on this flawed document and the politics and decision-making that surrounded it.

... was so weak that if you go back now to all of the key judgments -- and I saw this estimate in a classified form as well as an unclassified form -- every key judgment was wrong. ...

What makes it so bad?

The unfortunate thing about that estimate was that from 1998 on, the intelligence really doesn't change in that we don't pick up any new intelligence. So if you look at CIA statements about Iraq and weapons of mass destruction before 1998, they're carefully written; there are caveats; there are gray areas. They recognize various subtleties in the argument. They know that you can't be sure about a lot of this.

1998 on, they lose the best intelligence collection they have; that is, the CIA had infiltrated the United Nations inspection team. There were CIA operational people on the U.N. inspection team. When the U.N. team leaves and then tries to get back in and Saddam says, "No, you left. You're not getting back in," the CIA basically lost its collection capabilities against weapons of mass destruction and against Saddam Hussein.

So their information becomes weaker and there's less of it, yet they become more certain, after October of 2002, , which leads Hans Blix to make that wonderful remark that I'll never forget, that he's never seen a situation in which a government could have 100 percent certainty of weapons of mass destruction and zero percent knowledge of where they are. And that's exactly what happened. And if you look at the key judgments of the national intelligence estimate -- all of this certainty, and all of the knowledge is wrong.

Tick them off for me.

Vast amounts of chemical weapons, vast amounts of biological weapons, UAVs that could attack the United States with chemical or biological weapons, a reconstituted nuclear program. The Niger forgery becomes a factor in the estimate. ...

You have said that Tenet didn't really want to . ...

The exact timing was September of 2002. Sen. Bob Graham -- to his credit -- wondered why no National Intelligence Estimate had been prepared. He was on the Senate (Select Committee on Intelligence), and he was told that no one asked for a National Intelligence Estimate. So Graham said, "Well, I will."

The fact of the matter is, the CIA didn't want to produce one. The White House didn't want one because they didn't want to allow any venting of whatever opposition there was to what they wanted to be the conventional wisdom on weapons of mass destruction. But Graham got his way, and the CIA produced this estimate in three or four weeks. They didn't produce it very well, but basically they produced the case that the administration wanted.

This was comparable to sort of judge shopping in the courthouse: If you want a certain verdict on a decision, you usually know which judge you can go to. ... George Tenet and John McLaughlin picked the very people in the National Intelligence Council ... who had a very hard line on all of these issues.

So three or four key people were picked to write this estimate that was a fraud; I don't know how else to describe that National Intelligence Estimate. It should be fully released. I don't know why they're protecting sources and methods because the sources were obviously specious or flawed in one way or another. The methodology, obviously, was a disgrace. And it should be studied; it should be part of the national understanding of how we went to war..."

--- Melvin Goodman
CIA, 1966-1986

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/darkside/themes/nie.html

[beachmom]

21. Puts it in perspective then

Damn those senators who didn't read our cooked up fraudulent NIE!!


(Still, I want to know their names -- I think it was 2 or 6 senators only just for purely curious reasons)

[TayTay]

22. Go here. Everything you ever wanted to know about cooked intel

Especially useful when insomnia strikes. (I kid.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senate_Report_of_Pre-war_Intelligence_on_Iraq

Look at the External links at the bottom.

Bush Intelligence Briefing Kept From Hill Panel

By Murray Waas, special to National Journal
© National Journal Group Inc.
Tuesday, Nov. 22, 2005

Ten days after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, President Bush was told in a highly classified briefing that the U.S. intelligence community had no evidence linking the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein to the attacks and that there was scant credible evidence that Iraq had any significant collaborative ties with Al Qaeda, according to government records and current and former officials with firsthand knowledge of the matter.

The information was provided to Bush on September 21, 2001 during the "President's Daily Brief," a 30- to 45-minute early-morning national security briefing. Information for PDBs has routinely been derived from electronic intercepts, human agents, and reports from foreign intelligence services, as well as more mundane sources such as news reports and public statements by foreign leaders.

One of the more intriguing things that Bush was told during the briefing was that the few credible reports of contacts between Iraq and Al Qaeda involved attempts by Saddam Hussein to monitor the terrorist group. Saddam viewed Al Qaeda as well as other theocratic radical Islamist organizations as a potential threat to his secular regime. At one point, analysts believed, Saddam considered infiltrating the ranks of Al Qaeda with Iraqi nationals or even Iraqi intelligence operatives to learn more about its inner workings, according to records and sources.

The September 21, 2001, briefing was prepared at the request of the president, who was eager in the days following the terrorist attacks to learn all that he could about any possible connection between Iraq and Al Qaeda.

SNIP

The Senate Intelligence Committee has asked the White House for the CIA assessment, the PDB of September 21, 2001, and dozens of other PDBs as part of the committee's ongoing investigation into whether the Bush administration misrepresented intelligence information in the run-up to war with Iraq. The Bush administration has refused to turn over these documents.

Indeed, the existence of the September 21 PDB was not disclosed to the Intelligence Committee until the summer of 2004, according to congressional sources. Both Republicans and Democrats requested then that it be turned over. The administration has refused to provide it, even on a classified basis, and won't say anything more about it other than to acknowledge that it exists.



http://nationaljournal.com/about/njweekly/stories/2005/1122nj1.htm

Gee Mr. Edwards, what about this?

[sandnsea]

23. Edwards was played

And he's too egotistical to admit it. Hillary was pro-war to get her hawk credentials. Bill was going to say whatever Hillary needed, as well as anyone who intended to work with/for a Hillary Presidency. I imagine a lot of them were complicit in spreading WMD fallacies in order to advance the tough on defense stance. That's what made Kerry's statement and vote unique to me. He didn't buy into the WMD completely, he just recognized the possibility and need for inspections. Kerry's issue WAS the intelligence, so in that sense, he was the one who called it right.

[whometense]

11. Taylor Marsh is in 100%

for Edwards.

http://www.taylormarsh.com/archives_view.php?id=25023

[Blaukraut]

12. well, you win some you lose some

If her support for JK was that light, and if she truly thinks Edwards is a better choice, so be it. Her loss.

[rox63]

13. She has also been very supportive of JK at times

So I wouldn't declare her a lost cause just yet. It's still early in the 2008 campaign. Let's have all the contenders declare their candidacies, and see where her support goes after that happens.

[Mass]

14. I noticed that a few weeks ago. It seems that a number of bloggers

have been seduced by the Edwards campaign and the outreach to the netroots. Taylor Marsh, Bob Geiger are among them.

Also, Edwards made a clear statement, and he will not have to cast a vote, so it is easy for him.

[karynnj]

15. There she clearly agrees on this issue

which is less brave of Edwards than of Kennedy. This doesn't mean she is committed to Edwards. I assume that both Edwards and Obama will have many bloggers push them - the question is if they can keep them.

[wisteria]

16. Oh well, maybe she will change her mind. She does seem a bit

fickle at times.

[TayTay]

17. She is glad that Edwards called it the McCain Escalation

That's fine. But A lot of what Edwards is saying is thin. Let's see how this shakes out. There is a lot of time left on the clock, after all.

[beachmom]

19. She supported Kerry up until the joke, then quickly turned against him

She's the one who put up that picture of the troops with the mocking sign. I remember that very well. I found that post very unhelpful at the time. She seems to be quite shallow if she is willing to abandon someone based on a right wing attack on one misplaced word.

Hope she reconsiders.

[cadmium]

25. Yes--she really did an

about face with the joke flap. I think Edwards people have been lobbying heavily among liberal pundits and they have probably been pushing her too . Maybe they got to her at a vulnerable moment durng the joke nonsense. Edwards really hasnt done much special besides giving the same speech relentlessly. In the 1970's Ronald Reagan honed and repeated one speech over and over with great success politically. Not my cup of tea but it is a time - tested tactic

[wisteria]

26. Regan had the ability to look like a commander in Chief, Edwards doesn't.

He also seems to going out of his way to do the opposite of Lieberman in 2004. Lieberman waited- out of respect- for Gore to make a decision, then when Gore said he wasn't running, Lieberman jumped in. Some have said this hurt him, I say, Lieberman hurt himself by being Lieberman,but Edwards didn't wait and he has shown no respect towards Kerry.He seems to take a dig whenever he can.

[ProSense]

24. Slightly off topic (Edwards, not Iraq), but

you've got to read this.

[wisteria]

27. Happy to hear that she is in an uncomfortable position right now.

I also noticed the part that says the public wants someone who can end this mess. Hummmm Kerry?
As for Obama, he should be able to keep getting away with I didn't vote for it, because that may be the case, but then he wasn't around to have to make it at all. He said it again last night in an interview. Disingenuous I think. I wouldn't have,if I could have-sure, easy enough to say that now.