Every time Powell opens his mouth these days he consigns himself to a deeper level in Hell.
Posted by Brian Boru at April 11, 2006 10:40 PMI see... Falling off the cult of personality bandwagon gets you sent to hell... OK, then...
On a more serious note... Does anyone recall the Reagan comments in response to an inquiry from a Philadelphia report on the Iran-Contra:
"Mr. President... What about the Vice President?"
"He did not object."
Nothing came off that. Almost everyone was convinced that Reagan could not have planned the whole arms-for-hostages deal and its even more illegal follow-ups and support structure--he was not smart enough for that. But someone like a former CIA director could have done that. In fact, they ended up blaming it all on another former CIA director. But they circled their wagons around the VP because he was being protected for the run in 1988.
The situation with Cheney is the opposite. Bush is even more of a dimwit than his idol predecessor. But the VP has no plans for becoming President. And the wagons are always circled around W. Cheney never had much popularity and he's particularly unpopular now. Jettisoning him from the team would harm neither the team nor him. His approval rating is half of W's, so it would not cost much if all the issues that would cause presidential popularity and approval to plummet even further could be dumped on him with impunity. So, as long as the issues are lies, distortions, and other quasi-legal problems, Cheney will take the blame to protect W. Even some of the illegal issues seem to be floating his way, perhaps not all intentionally.
Powell may not be a True Believer, but he is still a loyal soldier. He will not go against W. I wonder if he is playing his part in the strategic game by pinning ALL the blame on Cheney. What he said may well be true. But we have to ask--does he protests too much?
Posted by buck at April 12, 2006 12:54 AMYou forgot to mention that George Tenet also "lied" about the mobile trailers for a year.
Or, maybe, just maybe, neither Bush nor Tenet were made aware of the report.
Nah. Never. We don't need evidence that they knew. We only need to assume, and then we can call Bush a liar. SOP.
Posted by Seixon at April 12, 2006 04:38 AMFAUX New$ just reported that everyone lies - except seixon.
Posted by pessimist at April 12, 2006 05:28 AMMaybe Bush didn't know? Are you kidding? It's his job to know. Of course he was told, did you ever hear that "We have found the weapons of mass destruction" comment again? If he hadn't been told he would still be crowing about his great victory today.
Posted by ann at April 12, 2006 05:35 AMYou forgot to mention that George Tenet also "lied" about the mobile trailers for a year.
Or, maybe, just maybe, neither Bush nor Tenet were made aware of the report.
I'm not sure the Tenet defense makes much of a case for your point:
"Still, as late as February 2004, then-CIA Director George J. Tenet continued to assert that the mobile-labs theory remained plausible. Although there was "no consensus" among intelligence officials, the trailers "could be made to work" as weapons labs, he said in a speech Feb. 5."
Now how could he know about there being "no consensus" among intelligence officials if he didn't know about this report amongst intelligence officials? Are we going to be that naive enough to state that the director of the CIA was not aware of one of the most debunked pieces of intelligences on Bush's assertions, especially in lieu of him saying there was "no consensus" among intelligence officials in the first place?
"Tenet, now a faculty member at Georgetown's Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, declined to comment for this story."
Hmm, I wonder why? Mr. Slam Dunk stated no comment?
Another interesting piece:
"Spokesmen for the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency declined to comment on the specific findings of the technical report because it remains classified. A spokesman for the DIA asserted that the team's findings were neither ignored nor suppressed, but were incorporated in the work of the Iraqi Survey Group, which led the official search for Iraqi weapons of mass destruction."
They were neither ignored nor suppressed.
And I could be wrong on this following statement, but if they were incorporated into the Iraqi Survey Group, a group in which we would have to be horribly blatantly ignorant to think the CIA wasn't aware of each and every stone they turned over, how can we possibly come to a conclusion that Tenet, the Director of the CIA, was not made aware?
Again, I don't think that's the straw you want to reach for, sir.
We don't need evidence that they knew. We only need to assume, and then we can call Bush a liar.
So whats your point, Sexman? We don't have to "assume" anything. There is more than ample evidence that the liar-in-chief is just that: a liar.
Posted by Hank at April 12, 2006 06:54 AMNow, why exactly would conclusions from reports from official WMD weapons teams in Iraq NOT be finding their way to Tenet and Nero Jr in May 2003? I guess it wasn't much of an issue at that time, right Gas-bag?
Or maybe there were positive instructions that no weapons reports which contradicted the flapping WMD lies of Deadeye and Nero were to be brought to their attention. I guess the Reactionary Right would be happier with that conclusion.
For someone who supposedly doesn't lie, Nero sure ends up saying a lot of things which ultimately turn out to be false. Ever wonder about that, Seixon? Nah, probably not.
Posted by euzoius at April 12, 2006 06:59 AMMisterOpus,
You neglected the rest of Tenet's comment.
His "could be made to work" as mobile weapons labs.
A very specific qualification that Bush did not make in his May 30th announcement that "we found the banned weapons, we found the mobile laboratories". Why would Tenet make such a qualification if he was not aware of the fact that there were serious dissents about the "mobile labs"?
And "could be made to work as" is a joke. One of the members of the technical team when asked if they could "be made to work" as weapons labs responded that you would be better off starting with a bucket.
Posted by snark at April 12, 2006 06:59 AMNotice how Seixon redirected the post away from Bush towards Tenet. Usual tactic of the cultists.
For the record, after reading Risen's book "State of War", I have no doubt that Tenet contributed towards Bush's disaster by only telling him what he wanted to hear and withholding contrary intelligence. Yet Bush had available to him intelligence which went against the case he wanted to make, and had a Vice President cheerleading for a war and cherry-picking intelligence right underneath Bush's nose. Bush went ahead after being told that the mobile weapons lab story was garbage, and kept spinning the tale for a year. You can't tell me that some time in that year someone didn't try and tell him "Sir, you are barking up the wrong tree here."
Worse yet, Bush's National Security Advisor had all of this intelligence and yet failed to give the president a complete picture of the full range of the Intel community's thinking. And his Secretary of State didn't have the guts to privately challenge the VP and the NSA over this, and resign if this was all Cheney's fault as Powell wants to claim now.
Posted by Steve Soto at April 12, 2006 07:40 AMWhy didn't Colin Powell come clean about this at the beginning? Everyone wants to portray him as one of the rare GOP "good guys."
I don't buy it.
Powell has had his nose buried deep in the Republicans craw for 40 years. He's as bad as Bush or Cheney, in my view.
Posted by Christopher at April 12, 2006 09:30 AMI don't get it. Didn't Tenet go before the Senate Intelligience Comittee in 2002 and tell them Saddam was no threat?
Posted by Daryl at April 12, 2006 12:10 PMI consider the information in this post a significant revelation. It confirms how gross and blatant is the dishonesty and hidden-agenda mindset of this administration.
What I don't understand (forgive me if I'm naive) is why, despite all the publicity highlighting this administration's lack of integrity, there isn't more of an effort -- even if only at a grassroots level -- insisting upon accountability from Bush, Cheney, Powell, etc.
How do they get away with such utter nonsense?
Posted by Richard Harlos at April 12, 2006 12:37 PMHeh, Colin Powell "gets religion?" Gotta love the irony! :)
Colin Powell may not be as evil as the friends he has made, but until the bastard gets down on his knees and weeps in front of the world, begging for our forgiveness for the devestation his gang has caused, he'll get no sympathy from me. I don't care that he was once honorable (if he truly were). I don't care that he left the administration. I don't care that he's pointing out, here and there, what's wrong with the administration, and confirming what all sane people already know. He was complicit in unspeakable horrors.
Or, maybe, just maybe, neither Bush nor Tenet were made aware of the report.
Viewed in its best light, this argument is tantamount to saying, "Hey! It's not that we're idiots, it's that we're morons!" I started a war because I had bad information that I didn't bother to check out is not a defense for a man who sought the most powerful position in the world.
But anyway, there's no reason to look at anything they might say in its best light, or to give them any benefit of the doubt. George Bush could walk up to me, shake my hand, and say, "Hi, I'm George Bush," and I wouldn't believe him.
Posted by Liveliest Crib at April 12, 2006 01:10 PMGeorge Bush could walk up to me, shake my hand, and say, "Hi, I'm George Bush," and I wouldn't believe him.
Me neither. But I'd spit on the guy just on the off chance that it really was him.
Posted by snark at April 12, 2006 01:20 PMSteve Soto,
Where is your evidence that Bush was told that the story was garbage? Come on. You really think that Bush, told that something was definitely not true, would go and say that it was? You don't really give Bush much credit for being even a good liar.
This is what I was talking about assumptions for. You are all letting the Washington Post guide you to a conclusion that there is still no evidence for.
Let's just use Occam's Razor for a sec.
The CIA/DIA publish a report on May 28, 2003 saying unequivocally that the trailers are BW labs.
Bush says on May 29, 2003 exactly the same thing as in the public report from the CIA/DIA.
The simple and logical conclusion here is that Bush was briefed on this report, and repeated its content.
Now, as far as Cheney saying this in September 2003, I think that is a tougher sell. However, even David Kay didn't even know about this stuff until later in 2003, the guy who was making the actual report about the WMDs.
The simple and logical conclusion is that there was disagreement about the trailers, with the heavy hitters, DIA and CIA, saying that the labs were BW-related, while other analysts didn't agree.
Whatever Cheney, Bush et al knew depends entirely on what they were presented. Seeing that Tenet kept saying that the labs were capable of being used for BW in February 2004, you have to conclude that Bush and Cheney would not have known anything better than that at the time. Tenet was the one who would have informed them about any information.
Of course, that is not the conclusion you want, so you'll just ignore everything I just said. Happy hunting for the evidence you will never find. Don't say I didn't warn you.
Posted by Seixon at April 12, 2006 06:39 PMSome people are awfully content to accept the fact that Bush and his inner circle were kept woefully ill informed by the CIA, DoD and DoS.
If it's the ignorance and incompetence defense that you want to take go right ahead.
I'm perfectly willing to accept that George Bush is a bumbling half wit who doesn't know what's really going on.
Posted by snark at April 12, 2006 08:36 PMsnark,
I see you picked up right where Dean left you. How is the president incompetent if his own workers aren't doing their job?
Here's a hint to why the CIA and DIA didn't give a damn about the report they got that the WaPo is screaming about: it was carried out by nongovernmental scientists. Think that had anything to do with the unwillingness to accept their assessment?
Hmmmmm. I do.
Posted by Seixon at April 13, 2006 09:34 PM