The Bush Administration's "Noble Lies"

[AGENDA21]

Dick Cheney’s 19% approval rating makes him about as popular as an IRS agent at a bingo parlor. Cheney may have even one less admirer these days -- the president himself. The reason is both simple and compelling: the man Bush relied on to provide him with unvarnished advice may have buffed up the intelligence reaching Bush so that the president would reach a pre-determined conclusion. In other words, Cheney provided the president with information and advice that favored war while suppressing intelligence that might have led the president to reach a different conclusion.

This would fit a well-established pattern with Bush going back to his days as the governor of Texas. As reported in Vanity Fair, Alberto Gonzales provided then-governor Bush with one-sided and wholly inadequate death penalty briefs upon which Bush was asked to make life and death clemency decisions. Similarly, as Stephen Hall reports in his book Merchants of Immortality, Bush was inadequately briefed on the merits of stem cell research; the president listened to two ethicists on different sides of the political spectrum, but both opposed stem cell research. Unfortunately, Bush, who has boasted he doesn’t read newspapers or follow the media, has put himself at the mercy of advisors who may have an agenda.

This would also explain why elements in the administration were so worked up about Joseph Wilson. Wilson’s “crime,” as far as his detractors were concerned, was that he publicly discredited a sixteen-word statement Bush made in his State of the Union Address to justify the invasion of Iraq (that Saddam had been seeking Uranium from Niger). According to Wilson, the administration should have known months in advance of the president’s speech that such an assertion had been debunked.

How could such a dubious assertion end up in a presidential State of the Union Address that is subject to an extraordinary level of vetting? Is the White House’s explanation, that information from deep in the “bowels of government” hadn’t quite made it up the chain of command, really convincing? That doesn’t quite jibe with the vitriolic full-fledged attack campaign that was launched against Wilson by elements within the administration (particularly the vice-president’s office), nor why “Scooter” Libby would feel so skittish about the affair that he would deliberately lie so transparently to a federal prosecutor, as has been alleged.

http://www.interventionmag.com/Secondary/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=1209&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0&POSTNUKESID=e1b94cd246eae25558d7facdc376a886

[neoblues]

1. Maybe so, but...

don't kid yourself, if Cheney reworked the intel to lead Bush to his decision (which I don't doubt he did), he either did it in full agreement with Bush or was merely telling him exactly what he wanted to hear. Even then, I'm sure Bush wasn't unaware that the real intelligence indicated no such threat and that it had to be reworked repeatedly (and that the CIA didn't fudge it until it was made patently obvious they were required to).

[Crunchy Frog]

2. Is this article yet another attempt to let him off the hook?

Of course his advisors all have an agenda. They all have his agenda. Bush was never going to not invade Iraq. Any attempt to blame this on Cheney is simply scapegoating and yet another evasion of responsibility.

When is someone finally going to hold the fucker accountable for his own decisions?:grr:

[linazelle]

3. Again we have an attempt to buffer and innoculate Bush against blame

I think that this scandal is extremely important--because it is the first time in the Bush reign that the finger has been squarely pointed at Bush!

Libby allegedly worked directly for Cheney yet under testimony he pointed the finger at Bush. That is damning.

Let Bush fend for himself.