WMDgate: Fixing Intelligence Around Policy, Part 3A -- A Reminder on The White House Iraq Protocol (WHIP) for Deceiving the United States
by eriposte
This post is part of a series (see Introduction and Parts 1, 2A-1, 2A-2, 2A-3, 2A-4, 2A-5, 2B-1, 2B-2, 2C, 3) focused on building a case to demonstrate the Bush White House's intelligence manipulation, fixing and misrepresentation, mostly using published Congressional reports like the Phase I Senate (SSCI) Report, the Robb-Silberman WMD Commission Report, etc.
In Part 3 of this series I showed that deliberately lying to, or misleading, the public was in effect the Bush administration's official policy (also known as WHIP - the White House Iraq Protocol) - based on a statement made by a senior CIA official to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI).
Yesterday, George Bush said (emphasis mine):
It is true that much of the intelligence turned out to be wrong.
...
And I’m also responsible for fixing what went wrong by reforming our intelligence capabilities. And we’re doing just that.
Quite obviously the latter statement was a straight out lie. Bush conveniently failed to mention the inconvenient fact that as long as those who implemented the WHIP for him are rewarded with Presidential Medals of Freedom, the disinformation will continue and the so-called "intelligence failures" will continue. More importantly, the stated goal of the WHIP was to hide or suppress accurate intelligence from public view if such information contradicted the Bush administration's claims against potential enemies (and possibly provided such enemies a "cover story" - which was a pathetic cover story for intelligence manipulation). So, an obvious corollary to the WHIP is that as long as the WHIP is in effect (whether in the case of Iraq or Iran or anyone else), disinformation will dominate the Bush administration's claims because any accurate information that does not help the Bush administration's case would continue to be suppressed as much as possible. So here's a tip to all the heralded "bipartisan" Commissions and the media that's rushing to cover Bush's non-news "admission". Stop pretending that you don't see the elephant in the room. Make it clear that accuracy in intelligence is impossible as long as the WHIP is in effect. Then, hold Bush, Cheney, Rice, Tenet and others accountable for the damage they did to the reputation and security of the United States of America.
P.S. Dear Readers, please take a moment to write to your favorite columnists and/or reporters (national and local) and ask them (in your own words) to point out to their readers, listeners or viewers that:
(a) Deliberately lying to or misleading the public was, in effect, the Bush administration's official policy. The proof for this is in the post:
[Of course, the Downing Street Memo is another important piece of evidence for the same, not to mention the rich history of the Bush administration's documented lying and misrepresentation of the facts].
(b) Accuracy in intelligence is impossible as long as the WHIP is in effect.
[Here is some email contact information for reference: Dan Froomkin; Washington Post (letters); Al Franken; Rachel Maddow; Paul Krugman; New York Times (Editorial Page); Keith Olbermann (MSNBC)]