Oct. Report Said Defeated Hussein Would Be (more of a) Threat

[kskiska]

By Walter Pincus
Monday, July 21, 2003; Page A01

Last fall, the administration repeatedly warned in public of the danger that an unprovoked Iraqi President Saddam Hussein might give chemical or biological weapons to terrorists.

"Iraq could decide on any given day to provide a biological or chemical weapon to a terrorist group or individual terrorists," President Bush said in Cincinnati on Oct. 7. "Alliance with terrorists could allow the Iraqi regime to attack America without leaving any fingerprints."

But declassified portions of a still-secret National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) released Friday by the White House show that at the time of the president's speech the U.S. intelligence community judged that possibility to be unlikely. In fact, the NIE, which began circulating Oct. 2, shows the intelligence services were much more worried that Hussein might give weapons to al Qaeda terrorists if he were facing death or capture and his government was collapsing after a military attack by the United States

"Saddam, if sufficiently desperate, might decide that only an organization such as al Qaeda, . . . already engaged in a life-or-death struggle against the United States, could perpetrate the type of terrorist attack that he would hope to conduct," one key judgment of the estimate said.

more…
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A20698-2003Jul20.html?nav=hptop_tb

[Old and In the Way]

1. Let's see....

Saddam's on the loose with his crazy sons and he has a $1BB......anyone want to argue that he's more dangerous now than when he was running Iraq?

[Sliverofhope]

2. Walter Pincus looks like the man to watch

He's sticking to this story like nobody else I've seen. He will be the one to uncover most of the dirt. If only he could be the dot connector.

[kainah]

3. Exactly right, sliverofhope

I was just thinking the same thing. Walter Pincus and, I believe, MSNBC. They are the "joke" of the cable news world and they have nothing to lose by going after this story ... and they appear to be doing so.

[paulthompson]

8. Pincus

Keep in mind that Pincus is not some enterprising reporter - he's where the CIA leaks go. Here's something about it from FTW:

"Pincus is a CIA mouthpiece who wrote a 1967 column titled, "How I traveled the world on a CIA stipend." He was the major damage control spokesman when Pulitzer Prize winner Gary Webb's 1996 stories blew the lid off of CIA connections to Contra-connected cocaine being smuggled into Los Angeles. If any journalist is a weathervane for the tides of political fortune in a scandal like this it is Pincus."

[Rose Siding]

4. Why'd the admin release all of this?

They say it's to prove a point about the uranium purchase but it exposes so much else.

And if a "guy is finished in Iraq" because "There is no public support for him" what chance does an American have?

[NNN0LHI]

6. Because the rest of it is a lot worse. A whole lot worse n/t

[Mal]

7. Maybe they're going to argue

that the reason they can't find any WMD is because Saddam has given it all to the terrorists?

[bpilgrim]

13. that info came out last fall i believe

so they really didn't reveal anything that wasn't already known, though as you have already said it is pretty damming especially now that the 'WMD' aren't accounted for as of yet...

you can only draw 2 conclusions from what we now know.

1. they knew there weren't any WMD and therefore are not worried about any 'fallout'

2. they want a wmd to go off. but that doesn't make any sense... does it?

i think it is number one. they have no fear. and that really makes me nervous :scared:

peace

[NNN0LHI]

5. Sonofabitch! This is exactly what Tenet said at Congressional panel n/t

[laconicsax]

9. This confirms that Bush didn't read all of it...

If you take out a few words here and there, you get statements pretty close to what he said...

for example:

Saddam, _{if sufficiently desperate}, might decide that only an organization such as al Qaeda, _{. . . already engaged in a life-or-death struggle against the United States}, could perpetrate the type of terrorist attack that he would hope to conduct,"

[lkinsale]

10. GRAHAM READ THIS CIA ESTIMATE IN THE SENATE!!!

Senator Graham's Floor Statement on the Iraq Resolution October 10, 2002

And the event is that international terrorist organizations will use United States actions against Iraq as a justification for striking us here in the homeland. Let me read a declassified briefing of the CIA report presented to the Select Committee on Intelligence:

"Baghdad, for now, appears to be drawing a line short of conducting terrorist attacks with conventional or chemical or biological weapons against the U.S.

"Should Saddam conclude that U.S-led attacks could no longer be deterred, he probably would become much less constrained in adopting terrorist actions.

"Such terrorism might involve conventional means, as with Iraq's unsuccessful attempt at a terrorsit offensive in 1991, or (chemical and biological weapons).

"Saddam might decide that the extreme step of assisting Islamic terrorists inconducting a attack against the United States would be his last chance of exact vengeance by taking a large number of victims with him."

Madam President, in other words, odds of another strike against the people of the United States by Al Qaeda or another international terrorist group goes up when we attack Baghdad.


So they all knew. They just didn't pay any attention.

*******

This is why Graham is my man. He's on top of it.

Click to subscribe to Graham04 on Yahoo Groups

Contribute to Graham For President Put down "Laura Kinsale" as your BobCat

[Feanorcurufinwe]

11. This is the biggest part of the story

This is the biggest part of the story. The intentional deception is the smoking gun, but this is the body.

[leQ]

12. doesn't anybody question why only portions of these reports

get declassified? i mean, hell, what's the point in keeping secret any part of it, now that the regime is clearly no longer a threat to the 'sources', so why can't the public see the whole report? i hate it when only portions of something, especially this important, is released. it's like looking through my glasses with only one lens in. it only makes me ask more questions. what are they hiding? why are they hiding what they're hiding?

[lkinsale]

14. It's time to tell the truth, we're NOT safer now

The more I think about this, the more steamed I get. Because the B*sh admin LIED about the nuclear threat, we have just made ourselves more insecure.


Last fall, as Congress began debating a resolution giving Bush authority to go to war against Iraq, CIA Director George J. Tenet ordered six intelligence services to develop over a 10-day period a common assessment of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs and the threat they posed. A few days after the NIE began circulating, at the request of members of Congress who wanted material they could use in public debate, the administration released a 25-page unclassified summary of the 90-page classified report.

Two days later, in response to pressure from Sen. Bob Graham (D-Fla.), then chairman of the Senate intelligence committee, Tenet released three pages of additional information from the NIE and a classified hearing that for the first time suggested that Hussein might only use chemical or biological weapons when under threat of attack.

Friday's declassified material from the NIE gave a much more complete picture of the intelligence in the form of all the key judgments of the intelligence community.

One of the judgments was that Hussein "appears to be drawing a line short of conducting terrorist attacks with conventional or against the United States fearing that exposure of Iraqi involvement would provide Washington a stronger case for making war."



I have to say, realizing how clearly this was all pointed out last fall in Congress, that attacking Iraq would be likely to make us MORE vulnerable to terrorism at home, it makes the B*sh lies about the nuclear threat truly criminal. It's not just "16 words," it was a deliberate effort to make Congress go along with a choice that would make this country more UNSAFE.

We all knew that. But we were shouted down. I hope to h*ll we don't pay the ultimate price for this egregious error in judgement by the admin.

*******

Click to subscribe to Graham04 on Yahoo Groups

Contribute to Graham For President Enter "Laura Kinsale" as your BobCat

[salin]

15. One big thing NOT mentioned in the article

at the end when he refers to Bush's flyboy speech where bush says the opposite of what this report suggests (that no WMD from Iraq will get to terrorist hands).... Wouldn't it be appropriate at that point to mention the looting of nuclear materials from Iraq - and the lack of "securing" those KNOWN locations (though they did immediately secure the oil) - and that the lack of securing of those facilities along with the ignoring of this concern in the NIE seems exceptionally foolhardy and potentially places the US at greater risk of terrorist attack than the US was before the invasion?

[lkinsale]

16. That ought to prove if anything...

That they didn't really believe Saddam had nuclear capabilities, or even much of use to terrorists in making a dirty bomb.

Their choices regarding that are:

1) CRIMINAL INCOMPETENCE: We knew there were dangerous nuclear sites, but we didn't bother to secure them immediately

2) DECEIT: We knew there wasn't anything dangerous there all along, so we didn't bother to secure them immediately

Not sure which I prefer, but I think I'd feel safer with #2.

******

Click to subscribe to Graham04 on Yahoo Groups

Contribute to Graham For President Enter "Laura Kinsale" as your BobCat