I'll tell you, right now, what will blow the lid off this WMD thing

[WilliamPitt]

It's simple, really. The fact that these dipsticks are trying to blame the British for this will be their undoing, because Blair has enough problems already without getting stabbed in the back by Bush. If not Blair, then someone over there will stick this straight up George's pooper.

---

In his State of the Union address on Jan. 28, Mr. Bush contended that Saddam Hussein was trying to develop a nuclear bomb. Among elements he cited to make his case was a statement that "the British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

Ms. Rice, in an appearance on "Fox News Sunday," said that "the statement that he made was indeed accurate. The British government did say that."

And Mr. Rumsfeld said on the NBC News program "Meet the Press" that "it turns out that it's technically correct what the president said, that the U.K. does — did say that — and still says that. They haven't changed their mind, the United Kingdom intelligence people."

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/14/international/worldspecial/14INTE.html

---

I'll tell you something else. If anyone resigns, it will be Condi. They'll let the woman walk the plank, and rightly so...for starters. If Condi and Rummy are left in the administration long enough for them to fully promulgate this 'Blame Britain' strategem, all hell will break loose.

Watch.

[Erika]

1. W tried to Control us by fears and lies.

All to make his rich contributors richer. As well as his own family interests. This guy truly needs to be impeached.

[nadinbrzezinski]

2. William I am calling for Condy to be the next one

to fall on her sword for Caesar, also we now have photos of bush working on the SOTU at Media Whores Online.

Those are the proverbial 17 minutes missing from the tapes.

Add to that, MI5 and MI6 warned Blair they had the goods on him.

You are right that is what it will explode this even further... the lid is already bubbling, and the cauldron is quite hot.

I expect this week to be interesting, perchance Condy will be offered hot on a plate by Friday? Tennet's head on a stick is doing nothing to calm the baying wolves.

(oh and on an aside, I called my Delegation when MSNBC came out and said, we suspect Tennet will fall on his sword... one of my Senator's secretaries said the phones were already ringing off the hooks, this was oh iirc two hours before the official fall on sword bit)

[BurtWorm]

3. Weird. They're clearly all on the same page over this.

Is it a page worth being on? I tend to agree with you. It's as though they're thinking "Who are the American people going to believe? Us or the Brits?" They're not even bothering trying to defend or explain why they would have "believed" the "Brits." They're pulling the old sixth grader blame game, "He made me do it!"

Is their reputation for brilliant political strategy overrated? It's beginning to look that way.

[WilliamPitt]

4. Any poker player will look brilliant

when they're palming four aces: The media, 9/11, the basic loyalty of the American people, and the stature of the offices they hold.

God help them when they get caught cheating, though. I've seen enough cowboy movies to know what's coming.

[mikeysnot]

5. Tar and Feather time

for the shrub....

[BurtWorm]

6. Only another 9/11 can save them now, it seems

If there's no pressure on the media to hold fire, such as there is when poll numbers aren't plunging, then they should act as they have always acted in the past, like sharks at the first smell of blood in the water. And if the media act as they always have acted, this Niger document will very quickly become such a small fish in the bigger feeding frenzy.

[WilliamPitt]

8. Yup

This is, truly, just getting warmed up.

[nostamj]

45. "another 9/11"

would be a disaster for the bushies...

ANOTHER INTELLIGENCE FAILURE??? the only thing they would get away with is a 9/11 type event - on foreign soil. a US attack would be the end for this cabal.

let's hope it's not needed to bring them down...

[BurtWorm]

46. I hope that's how they're thinking, too

I don't believe they would orchestrate another event of 9/11's magnitude, necessarily, but I do believe they would feel no shame in exploiting one if it shut up the critics and made 2004 more of a walk.

[Brian Sweat]

50. Bush is dependant on either

his own incompetence or his own malevolence to prop up his sagging number. He must allow another major terrorists attack to occur either by his inability to stop it or by choosing not to stop it in order to keep from getting trounced in one year.

[Brian Sweat]

52. Bush is dependant on either

his own incompetence or his own malevolence to prop up his sagging number. He must allow another major terrorists attack to occur either by his inability to stop it or by choosing not to stop it in order to keep from getting trounced in one year.

[Skittles]

7. LOL!

I'm sure Dubya has seen those same cowboy movies. :O

[Sick of Bullshit]

36. Yeah, he's watching reruns of the bad ones right now

Time to drag the Texas Tumbleweed into Roy Bean's court

[opihimoimoi]

25. It will be Gunfight at The DEM Coral

The Truth bullet is most devastating as it is the most enduring. The Truths will have it.

The Dems have the truth, the Dems will prevail.

[annagull]

37. Opi--God must have ears!

This is a true case of lies--no other wy to describe it. BTW, I am so happy to know another who is a critical thinker! My theory-working or stupid as it may be--is they are trying to intimidate us all. they are trying to keep us so scared and useless that we will be dominated. I refuse, I resist, and I dissent!

[opihimoimoi]

41. These guys are reactors not proactors, hence the presence of band

aids everywhere.

One lie to cover another, Bad.

Soon, the Lie to break the Back of the CaMeL will emerge if not already.

Now Bush attempts the Stones in Nixonesque wall Paper. Not gonna happen, People too cynical, highly suspicious of Bushies ulterior motives

[juajen]

29. Right, Will, it rings a bell

Like maybe "Gunfight at the OK Corral?

[RobinA]

43. They Are Good at Political Strategery

The problem is that they aren't as good as they think they are and they went too far on this war. They put so many demonstrable lies out there, that weren't very well crafted, the facts of which are known to too many people, that they can't control them all. Their strategy worked for so long that they got cocky and careless.

[BurtWorm]

47. Hubris to power!

[Magical]

9. "You're Either With Us or Against Us"

It's incredible how the hubris is coming back to bite the re-pukes. It is absolutely incredible that Bush could actually be convicted under the letter of the law of the Patriot Act as a terrorist.

Now every single person 'in the know' has to make a conscious moral decision...To LIE or not to LIE, that is the question.

'Am I with them (the LIARS) or Am I against them' (for Integrity) ?

As the heat has been turned up, you can just see the internal fractures occurring....eyes shifting, voices cracking, bodies fidgeting, tempers flaring, and fingers pointing.

It's like a structure undergoing resonant vibrations...each lie causing more instability until the whole structure falls like a house of cards....hey, didn't Byrd say something about a cheap house of cards?

[Pobeka]

10. I never really was one for popcorn

But this is going to last quite a while, and I'm going to want to snack on while watching the antics of an inept administration with the media and the public turning on them.

Pass the melted butter, would ya?

[aquart]

22. How about celery and carrot sticks?

The unraveling will take a bit and you'll need the fiber.

[Merlin]

11. I foresee a slightly different scenario.

I don't see Condi going. I know the arguments, and they're good ones. But Bushco maintains this fanciful conceit that they are in hot pursuit of traditionally liberal voter groups. They will see axing her as a serious negative--both black and a woman.

This next part may be wishful thinking. But it seems to me highly probable.

OSP will become a key issue eventually. The question of intelligence gathering and handling will not go away. Not with Americans dying daily, routine reminders of the cost of the war, and Saddam still on the loose.

OSP was/is a corruption of the normal patterns of gathering intelligence, distilling it, and transmitting the most reliable, non-political, factual info possible to the POTUS. That is what the American people have a right to expect.

IMO, especially in the wake of 9/11 and our creation of a Homeland Security Dept. to prevent recurrences, and in the historic context of the reasons behind formation of the CIA in the first place (e.g. to prevent another Pearl Harbor), it seems to me there is no way OSP can remain a non-issue for long. When it comes up, and it is subjected to scrutiny, both Rummy and Wolfy will have to go. Or they can stay and become an anchor for the Bushco to drag along in '04.

[calimary]

12. No, throwing Condi overboard doesn't sound implausible.

Especially if the 9/11 report winds up being "explosive" (the word I've already seen used in news reports from those who've read it). She botched that one, too. BIG TIME. If that report comes out and is nasty enough to live up to the word "explosive," most of Washington will be calling for her head anyway.

[Merlin]

14. Good point.

Hell, maybe they'll all go.

[Dr. Mullion Blasto]

13. There really is no way to contain the WMD thing.

In a way, we are fortunate in the surrogates that Bush has chosen to articulate his defense on this issue. They are uniformly arrogant and rather foolish. And, by the way, the statement in Bush's speech would be technically accurate if it said that the British have asserted that Iraq had recently sought to purchase uranium. As written, it says that the British government had learned of this supposed fact, a statement that implies a greater degree of certainty, and also a statement that was known by all the parties, with the possible exception of some of the Brits, to have been patently false.

The amusing thing about these weaseling games that politicians engage in when they are trapped is to note how precisely they wish to parse their language after the fact, and how loosely and misleadingly they have spoken beforehand.

The truth is that there is no way out for Bush and his minions on the WMD issue and the runup to the war so long as the attention of the public or the political class can be focused on the affair. Because either they lied or they were incompetent or they were dumb, none of which conditions do much to inspire confidence and legitimacy.

[Pobeka]

15. And the more pressure they get from the media

The more mistakes they will make. It's damn hard to keep a cover-up going, and have consistent stories from so many people.

I predict dubya will not be allowed to get near the press for anything but rehearsed speeches.

[juajen]

33. Easy prediction

As that is what's going on now.

[Merlin]

17. Weasel Games

The amusing thing about these weaseling games that politicians engage in when they are trapped is to note how precisely they wish to parse their language after the fact, and how loosely and misleadingly they have spoken beforehand.]

But interestingly, for Bill Clinton it worked in reverse. He was very specific in his original statement ("I did not have sexual relations..."). Yet what they nailed him for was proof of actions contrary to a rather loose interpretation of the term "sexual relations."

Good post overall.

And may I add that as long as troops are dying people will keep asking why and coming back to these questions. Hopefully the whole thing will just wrap itself around this administration and strangle it to death.

(I'm reminded of Churchill's wish that back in 1919 they had just "strangled Bolshevism in its cradle." We have a responsibility to do that in '04 with this corrupt regime representing such radical departure from good judgement, accepted practices and decency of purpose.)

[TahitiNut]

19. Excellent first post, DrMB!

Succinct and focused on the OSP. Nice. :hi: Welcome to DU!

[imhotep]

16. lets make a deal

I'll buy your "book" if any top level Bush cabinet member resigns.

[TahitiNut]

18. Yup. I suggested this in another thread.

Tony can pretty easily turn around and say that "Bush lied." He can describe how Bush* personally assured him that the CIA's "misgivings" weren't the whole story and that the CIA didn't have permission to share other critical data and maybe didn't incorporate some information from other sources. (Just speculating on what Bush* might've told Tony "off the record.") When and if Tony turns on Bush*, the blood will really be in the water.

[deacon]

20. it's beyond condi though, it goes back to cheney n/t

[deek]

21. Will

I don't quite get it about why Condi would be the one.

[WilliamPitt]

23. Because according to the Washington Post

Condi's crew at NSC were told by Tenet himself to bag the evidence.

--

CIA Got Uranium Reference Cut in October

Why Bush Cited It In Jan. Is Unclear
By Walter Pincus and Mike Allen
Washington Post Staff Writers

Sunday 13 July 2003

CIA Director George J. Tenet successfully intervened with White House officials to have a reference to Iraq seeking uranium from Niger removed from a presidential speech last October, three months before a less specific reference to the same intelligence appeared in the State of the Union address, according to senior administration officials.

Tenet argued personally to White House officials, including deputy national security adviser Stephen Hadley, that the allegation should not be used because it came from only a single source, according to one senior official. Another senior official with knowledge of the intelligence said the CIA had doubts about the accuracy of the documents underlying the allegation, which months later turned out to be forged.

http://truthout.org/docs_03/071403B.shtml

--

Because she's going on television making an ass of herself.

--

I mean, where's friggin' Regis when you need him?

The title of James Risen's piece in the Times tomorrow lashes Condi Rice and Don Rumsfeld with cruelly apt understatement: "Rumsfeld and Rice Adjust Defense of Iraq-Africa Claim."

The original line out of the White House was that the uranium allegation turned out not to be true. They didn't know it at the time. And with what we know now it shouldn't have been there. But it was an honest mistake: no harm, no foul.

Only that didn't go over so well, especially when people started taking a closer look at the timing of who knew what when. So, now, well, now it is true. Or, in the tellingly ubiquitous word we're hearing from administration officials, 'accurate.'

Risen picks the signature quote from Rice, the theme around which she spent Sunday morning weaving a fugue of cynicism and mendacity: "The statement that he made was indeed accurate. The British government did say that."

Rumsfeld, lacking Rice's musical bent, was shall we say a touch more wobbly: "It didn't rise to the standard of a presidential speech, but it's not known, for example, that it was inaccurate. In fact, people think it was technically accurate."

Oy ...

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com

--

Because the point man usually get shot in a combat situation, and Condi is the point man on this mission. She has been Excuse-Maker-In-Chief on TV lately.

--

The Dubious Suicide of George Tenet
By William Rivers Pitt
t r u t h o u t | Perspective

Monday 14 July 2003

http://truthout.org/docs_03/071403A.shtml

"Tenet's confession is designed to take the heat off," says McGovern, "to assign some responsibility somewhere. It's not going to work. There's too much deception here. For example, Condoleezza Rice insisted that she only learned on June 8 about Former Ambassador Wilson's mission to Niger back in February 2002. That means that neither she nor her staff reads the New York Times, because Nick Kristof on May 6 had a very detailed explication of Wilson's mission to Niger. In my view, it is inconceivable that her remark this week - that she didn't know about Joe Wilson's mission to Niger until she was asked on a talk show on June 8 - that is stretching the truth beyond the breaking point."

Andrew Wilkie crystallized the issue at hand by stating, "Remember that the sourcing of uranium from Niger was the only remaining pillar of the argument that Iraq was trying to reconstitute its nuclear program. By this stage, the aluminum tubes story about Iraq's nuclear program had been laughed out of the room. That had been laughable since 2001, leaving the sourcing of uranium as the last key piece of evidence about Iraq reconstituting a nuclear program. It's not just sixteen words.

"It is just downright mischievous to hear Condoleezza Rice on CNN this morning saying it was just sixteen words. It was worth a hell of a lot more than sixteen words. I can remember that October speech by Bush where he talked about "mushroom clouds" from Iraq. The nuclear story was always played up as the most emotive and persuasive theme. It wasn't just sixteen words."

--

Because she's the one out there on the plank.

[deek]

27. thank you

:::dabbing will's brow:::::

[julka]

31. if she's telling the truth, then why is her chief deputy still employed?

what's the guy's name, Handley? didn't Tenet say he was the one he told not to let the puppet use the uranium ploy last October?

if he didn't tell his boss about that, he should have been fired awhile ago, certainly no later than the day after the WH released its mea culpa last week.

could he be the first to go?

[MSchreader]

24. What do you know, Will?

My journalist radar is redlining! :evilgrin:

Martin

[WilliamPitt]

26. See post #23

:)

[MSchreader]

30. Oh, man

She's toast!

Oh well. At least she still has her supertanker. :silly:

Martin

[Sick of Bullshit]

39. She doesn't even have that anymore

The supertanker was renamed in June 2001-- it's now the Altair Voyager

http://aztlan.net/oiltanker.htm

[corarose]

28. Blair looks like he is going to blow a fuse

They are blaming everything on Tony the poodle and he looks like he is going to break at any moment. I think that Tony will take the
EVIL DUER down with him.

[julka]

32. yes, cora, and can you NOT WAIT for his trip here Thursday?

First they cancel giving him that stupid medal


next I wonder if he'll cancel the whole deal for some nebulous reason.

Mr. Bush, meet Mr. Frey

[Wapsie B]

54. Just hope that

Blair doesn't take any rides in small aircraft anytime soon.

[iangb]

34. But the Brits....

...say they have evidence other than the forged documents.

That may well be true. I understand that there is indeed verifiable evidence of an unsuccessful attempt by Iraq to obtain African uranium .

The qualifier on this evidence is that it dates from 1983. In that case the argument could well be reduced to the definition of 'recently'.

[julka]

35. did you say 1983?

[radfringe]

38. AWOL & Co. are all over the board

on this one... The British did it, CIA did it, Tenet did it, didn't know about it, we were fooled by it, just "16 little-bitty words..."

diffusion by confusion????

[Karenina]

40. Go check out LBN

NOW it's all the fault of FRENCH intel!!!

[Karenina]

44. Here's the link:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=12315&mesg_id=12315&page=

[DoYouEverWonder]

42. The WH story has switched direction so many times

that I think I've got whiplash.

[revcarol]

48. I think the Brit's intelligence defence(sic) will be limited by the

Official Secrets Act.

Blair/Straw and henchmen can claim all they want that they had OTHER SOURCES, and no one in the intelligence community can refute this because of the Official Secrets Act. Fer instance, they couldn't say: "yeah, they had other evidence but it dated from 1983" because they would end up in jail.So our hopes that this will implode from the British side by an intelligence leak are so much sighing in the wind.

Of course, this doesn't preclude a political implosion, such as Blair having to resign, but since they don't have anyone to replace him with, his resignation is in doubt.

[revcarol]

49. I get the booby prize

for being a thread killer.

[Terwilliger]

51. yep...Condi will be the fall girl...still, they made arguments...

that no one else should make decisions for the concerns of the security of the United States. If they "relied on British intelligence" then they were, in fact, relying on external governments for their decision-making process.

So, his threat to the UN that the US would do what it had to do...all falls on the ground.

That's why Zbig and Hank kept talking about credibility.

[MattNC]

53. Bush's second term

Aren't Rumsfeld, Powell and Rice already planning on not serving in Bush's second term - if he's re-elected?

[cap]

55. my suspicion is that some mid-level CIA employee flagged this

Niger uranium and cc'd somebody at least at the asst secretary level if not secretary level as being false. Especially as this story gained traction in the media. The CIA reads the NYT, too.

I don't think Joe Wilson's stuff got buried at a mid level. I believe that someone did pass it up the line.

Someone who would be pissed off at Rumsfeld's alternative intelligence group over at the Pentagon would have sent this email.

I believe that memo exists somewhere. We need an independent panel to investigate this.