Will * also blame Tenet for the aluminum tubing and Saddam/Al Qaeda lies?

[TruthIsAll]

We have only just begun....
The fat lady is clearing her throat...
The chickenhawks have come home to roost..
Little Napolean has passed the Rubicon...
It was the worst of times, it was the best of times!
There must be a consequence.. (G.W. Bush)..
What goes around comes around...
Truth is stranger than fiction...
I love the smell of impeachment in the morning...

Enough of the cliches..even if they are all true.

http://www.buzzflash.com/theangryliberal/03/07/14.html


July 14, 2003 THE ANGRY LIBERAL ARCHIVES

Liar! Liar! Speech on Fire!

by The Angry Liberal

On Tuesday, the White House finally came clean and admitted what everybody else already knew: George W. Bush lied about Iraq's alleged attempt to purchase uranium from the African nation of Niger in order to reconstitute its nuclear weapons program. Here's what the White House statement said about Bush's inclusion of this lie in his 2003 State of the Union message:

snip

But the misstatements don't stop at a single one. The very next line in the State of the Union Message was as follows:

"Our intelligence sources tell us that (Hussein) has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production".

Really, George? In a paper released by the Institute for Science and International Security three months before the State of the Union Message, this conclusion was drawn:

Based on the available information, the intercepted aluminum tubing could have been intended for use in a centrifuge. It is far harder to confirm the Administration's view that the tubes were specifically intended for use in a centrifuge. The earlier shipment does not appear to be specific to centrifuges, as initially claimed by the Administration. The more recent shipment is hard to assess with the available information, but even the detection of efforts to make an outer casing of a centrifuge provides limited insight into Iraq's gas centrifuge efforts.

By themselves, these attempted procurements are not evidence that Iraq is in possession of or close to possessing nuclear weapons. They also do not provide evidence that Iraq has an operating centrifuge plant or when such a plant could be operational.

Next, we have this line from the speech:

"Evidence from intelligence sources, secret communications, and statements by people now in custody reveal that Saddam Hussein aids and protects terrorists, including members of al Qaeda".

And in today's Washington Times, we learn that two former Bush administration intelligence officials and a United Nations terrorism committee agree that this is a lie. In the article, former State Department intelligence official Greg Thielmann had this to say:

There was no significant pattern of cooperation between Iraq and the al Qaeda terrorist operation.

So, who's fault is it that the aluminum tubing and Al Qaeda lines appeared in the speech? Do we blame George Tenet again? Inserting these sorts of blatantly misleading statements into Bush's biggest speech of the year in order to deliberately trick the American public into supporting a war is lying on a scale that Bill Clinton never dreamed of. This is exactly the kind of tactic that Joseph Goebbels would have employed, had he been in charge of writing this speech.

more...