The Dusty Dog

Lying By Omission (and assertion)

Our prez bubble boy proceeded to lash out at his critics during his Veterans Day speech, as discussed in this Washington Post article. We all know that if the war was going well, and the United States was actually "winning", bubble boy would not need to blame his blamers for his failed excursion into a foreign nation, regardless of the crimes of its leader. This blame by dumbya is, in and of itself, clear admission that he's lost control, or any modicum of perceived control that he may have had in the White Wash, I mean House. God knows his dismal approval ratings, now at a meeger 35%, are indicative of not only the failed war on terror, but also of the failed presidency, itself. Dubya is going down in history as a bumbling bubble boy, manipulated by his neocon death cult administration for whom he has never waivered in his support, thereby providing definitive testimony that he was, and still is complicit in the crimes that this administration has perpetrated against this nation, as well as the people of Iraq.

This is an article I found at Think Progress that discusses some of the detailed manipulation of intelligence that the White Wash, I mean House, has undertaken to drag our nation into this criminal war effort. May they all rot in fucking hell. Please, dear god, let the impeachments begin.


Today, President Bush attempted to defend his manipulation of pre-war Iraq intelligence by citing the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report.

BUSH: These critics are fully aware that a bipartisan Senate investigation found no evidence of political pressure to change the intelligence community’s judgments related to Iraq’s weapons programs.

As has been previously documented by ThinkProgress and others, the answer to whether there was political pressure was left to phase II of the investigation and was not addressed in the report.

What the Senate Intelligence Committee did report, however, is that there was plenty of evidence demonstrating that the intelligence assessments made by intel officials WERE changed.

The Los Angeles Times (7/10/04) reported, “[I]n the unclassified version of the NIE — the so-called white paper cited by the Bush administration in making its case for war — those carefully qualified conclusions [in the classified version] were turned into blunt assertions of fact.”

Here’s what the Senate Intelligence Committee reported about the administration’s use of intelligence:

The intelligence community’s elimination of the caveats from the unclassified white paper misrepresented their judgments to the public, which did not have access to the classified National Intelligence Estimate containing the more carefully worded assessments.

Essentially, the Bush administration took the intelligence that was presented to them in the classified NIE and twisted it to present a stronger case for war in the public version of the NIE. Here are some examples:

Classified NIE: “Although we have little specific information on Iraq’s CW stockpile, Saddam Hussein probably has stocked at least 100 metric tons” of such poisons.
Unclassified NIE: The phrase “although we have little specific information” was deleted. Instead, the public report said, “Saddam probably has stocked a few hundred metric tons of CW agents.”
[Senate Intel Cmte Report]

Classified NIE: “Iraq has some lethal and incapacitating BW [biological weapons] agents and is capable of quickly producing … a variety of such agents, including anthrax, for delivery by bombs, missiles, aerial sprayers and covert operatives.”
Unclassified NIE: The words “potentially against the U.S. homeland” are inserted at the end of the statement.
[Senate Intel Cmte Report]

Classified NIE: Stated Iraq was developing unmanned aerial vehicles “probably intended to deliver biological warfare agents.”
Unclassified NIE: A footnote in the classified version from the Air Force stating its disagreement with this claim was eliminated. The Senate Committee report stated the public NIE missed “the fact that… [the] agency with primary responsibility for technological analysis on UAV programs did not agree with the assessment.”
[Senate Intel Cmte Report]

Classified NIE: Included a reference to State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research dissenting view on whether Iraq would have a nuclear weapon this decade.
Unclassified NIE: Did not contain any mention of INR’s dissent.
[Senate Intel Cmte Report]


And, speaking of tanking ratings, this just in on the Newsweek website:

"After months of taking a pounding, the president tried to regain the political momentum this week. In a Veterans Day address on Friday he accused critics of his Iraq policies of sending “the wrong signal to our troops and to an enemy that is questioning America’s will.” But Democrats aren’t the only ones questioning the administration’s Iraq policies—almost 2 in 3 Americans (65 percent) disapprove of the president’s handling of Iraq."

Go read the entire article. It discusses the why's and what-fors that have led to the American peoples' recognition finally of our bubble boy's abject incompetence. The sheeple are finally waking up.

posted by Dusty Dog at 11/13/2005