who's lying here: CIA, or junta, re==> who requested the fateful PDB?

[buycitgo]

fatslob Thompson all the spinners will be concentrating on this talking point, assuring all that the chimp was on top of this banana from the getgo, insisting he be notifed of all pertinent terrafax.

right

if it's shown that the WH never requested this (of COURSE, they didn't), you know what that means, in terms of their ever-decreasing credibility

Now.....

This excellent summation from slate goes a long way hypothesizing how things might really work, and connects some theoretical dots

Bush was the president in name only, a genuine figurehead, with no intellectual decisionmaking capability whatsoever, and that Cheney was the actual president at least with respect to national security matters. The information in the Aug. 6 "PDB"—the presidential daily briefing—wasn't given to the actual president. Nor were Tenet's daily oral and written reports. They were given only to the figurehead president, and not transmitted to the real one, who already had determined the administration's national security agenda and therefore wasn't interested in them.

......

Among the more annoying euphemisms in currently in vogue among the punditry is the one they use to acknowledge that Bush is very seriously lacking in intellectual capacity: they say he is "incurious." But stupid as I recognize him to be, even I wouldn't have suspected that, handed information that the FBI indicates patterns of suspicious activity in the United States consistent with preparations for hijacking, and handed information that al Qaeda was planning an attack it thought would cause a huge uproar, George W. Bush would be so incurious as to not phone the FBI director and ask what exactly were those patterns of suspicious activity in the United States consistent with preparations for hijacking.

But now, thanks to Rice's testimony yesterday, I and all the world know that that wasn't tasked to Bush. It was tasked to Cheney—or rather it would have been, had Cheney rather than Bush been the one to receive the Aug. 6 PDB, and had he been the one to meet daily with Tenet.

I had thought throughout the Clarke controversy, until yesterday, that the real political damage to Bush from would come from the recognition by a majority of the public, finally, that it makes us less rather than more safe—both physically and economically—to have a strong-'n-decisive leader whose strength-'n-decisive leadership amounts to determining policy based purely on ideology and patronage rather than on the actual needs of the county and on facts, and who forces through these polices irrespective of circumstances and evidence about their actual effects on the country. But I think now that that, even more than that, the political damage Bush will suffer will come from the ultimate epiphany that the most damning caricature of this president is true: He's jaw-droppingly stupid, and so Dick Cheney is the actual president. Cheney isn't obsessively secretive for nothing.
http://slate.msn.com/id/2098339/

[Old and In the Way]

1. Since this is the Presidential DAILY Briefing.

Are we to assume GWB asks for each briefing independently?

Nah, it's obvious that Condi was spinning the damage. I'm sure they'd like to give the impression that Dimson was paying attention, but we know this is the most uncurious pResident ever selected.

Proof is in the pudding, so to speak. What did Curious George do after 8/6/01? Stayed on vacation. Was there any increase in security? No. Remember, this administration has told us that there were only 4 planes on active duty on 9/11/01. How much would a few dozen fighters have cost our $400BB/year military to have on full alert?

[aquart]

2. Bushco is lying.

It's no skin off the CIA's nose if they provided a memo that Bush ordered. So they don't have to lie about it. Doing their job either way.

Bush, however, only looks even vaguely good if he ordered the memo. (Which he didn't act upon so bye bye looking good.) Ergo, Bush lied.

Besides, you know the CIA sometimes lies but you know Bush ALWAYS lies. So what does that tell you? BUSH IS LYING.

[buycitgo]

3. heh.....sound logic!

and did you know that Woodward NAMED the PDB's title over two years ago?

TBogg has a good roundup of the left blogosphere's reaction to Condi's testimony (but I think this is the link to Billmon he wanted), and this amusing delusion from the right. It's weird that, as Billmon notes,
Woodward reported in the Washington Post almost two years ago that the title of the August 6 President's Daily Brief was "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.," but this seems to have gotten little attention at the time. Does anyone else find it strange that Bush showed the PDB to Woodward (author of the sycophantic "Bush at War," and 2002 Media Whore of the Year), but initially refused to show it to the 9/11 Commission on grounds of "national security," even though all of the commissioners have top security clearances? It is amazing how cynically the Bushies use bogus invocations of national security.
http://home.earthlink.net/~fsrhine/

little attention? how bout NONE?

[buycitgo]

4. look

it was all out there over TWO years ago!

this is Xfiles stuff

deja vu, anybody?

The document, known as the President's Daily Briefing, or PDB, is prepared at Langley by the CIA's analytic directorate, and a draft goes home with Tenet each night. Tenet edits it personally and delivers it orally during his early morning meeting with Bush. On most days it contains a distillation of the most noteworthy "current intelligence."

The Aug. 6 briefing, according to officials with first-hand knowledge, was different. Along with current intelligence, it had a 1 1/2-page analysis -- largely speculative -- of what bin Laden might have been planning. The summary analysis was requested by Bush, according to White House spokesman Ari Fleischer.

That portion was reprinted verbatim in the Aug. 7 Senior Executive Intelligence Briefing, which has a wider, though still strictly limited, distribution among top national security officials, sources said.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A30219-2002May16¬Found=true

get ARI up to the hill.......NOW!

a gigantic amount of what's been "revealed" is in this article!

[AlCzervik]

5. I guess the leesons learned

during watergate about screwing with the cia have been unlearned. The CIA will get to the point if they are not there already when they will start leaking things to the press. That imho could actually sink him for real.

[buycitgo]

6. I edited the double post......check THAT one out!

this whole thing is VERY old news!