'Goof' caused uranium-to-Iraq claim - CNN

(Reads Rules. Feels reasonably confident.)


Fact-checkers blamed for Bush's uranium speech

http://www.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/12/24/white.house.uranium/index.html

No one checked their facts carefully," said the source, speaking on condition of anonymity. "It was a mistake that propagated itself. They should have known better to check and ask more questions about the information."

mean anything like propaganda?

How much dif is there really between CNN & Faux?

line, but i agree... a "goof" certainly was responsible. the unelected "goof." 8^)

...but I thought I did.

...oh wait. I put in the LINK title from the CNN Main Page. My bad. (Dang. I thought I finally had it right. Cursed Christmas cheer. It's warping me!) ^_^

Kisses XXOOXX
Jen

Hmph. Untold thousands of confirmed Iraqi civilians killed. More confirmed children killed than the amount of American non-combatants that died on 9/11.

Bush administration to Iraq: "Woopsie-doodle! Aint we silly!" (Gives meek grin).


And Americans wonder why the world hates them so? Here's a prime example. "Goof", indeed.

Oh yeah, merry X-mas! (It's X-mas here in Australia. We live in the future, which is cool). ^_^


Kisses XXOOXX
Jen

Last I heard, the Brits still say Sadaam tried to get this material and that Bush's statement is true. Have the Brits come to the same conclusion as US intelligence that this was false?

....and it would never occur to a manager to check over the work of a young intern to see if the work was accurate on a subject like THERMONUCLEAR WEAPONS, EBOLA, OR VX...

...and the reporter accepted that at face value...

...mutter, mutter, mutter...

On edit... can't believe the headline wasn't "WHITE HOUSE INTERNS BLOW IT AGAIN!"

glad for the post. This story is central to our "engagement" in Iraq and a glimpse into the Admin's workings. If you think folks here are conspiratorial check out the neo-cons.....

:bounce:

Another lie about a lie. It never ends.

The fact checkers checked. Cheney didn't find those particular facts convenient.

They lied, plain and simple, and they're looking for some way to make it look like something else from what it is. Pigheaded, stubborn arrogance that has cost thousands of lives.

How does something like that "propagate itself"?

otherwise it's a dodge...........

What are their names?
Another anonymous group to blame.

While I'm not a big CIA fan, I'd think they have mor4 expertise in this kind of thing than Perle's little ad hoc group.

Working at his desk in the Oval Office, President Bush reviews the State of the Union address line-by-line and word-by-word.


http://www.whitehouse.gov/stateoftheunion/behindthescenes/05.html

to the memory hole with it

Which means he checked line for line to make sure that Iraq was indeed part of the "Axis of Evil".

Who thinks this stuff up? Did they hire Gallagher or something? This stuff is good material. Maybe the SNL writers are contributing?

:nuke:

So who got fired, George? So far nobody. Was this a trivial matter? Nope--it was about an allegation of a nuclear threat to the United States, and it got into the SOTU address. I used to think it was the National Security Adviser's job to, y'know, keep an eye on things like this. But apparently not, huh?

"It was a mistake that propagated itself." Well, there you go. Nobody responsible, just a self-propagating mistake.

Kinda like that phrase. Self-propagating mistake.

Not a bad capsule description of W himself, come to think of it.

"I take personal responsibility for everything I say, of course. Absolutely. I also take responsibility for making decisions on war and peace." After playing Master Weasel over the SOTO travesty, bush makes his profound statement of personal responsibility just before alerting us to a strong potential for terror attacks on U.S. ports as he ducks out and scurries to Crawford for his month-long vacation.

Condoleeza Rice: "I certainly feel personal responsibility for this entire episode."

So who gives a flyin' rat's patooie if someone scraping the bottom of the totem pole didn't check their facts? bush is responsible.

:mad:

It was calculated and deliberate deception.

We know, georgie. Your new lies are too late.

:eyes:

they lied,

In another country... this was called Lying to Congress and WAS
an impeachable offense.

We may see that country come back some day, but only if we take the
country back

They did not check for the 11 months between Ambassador Wilsons report back to the office of Dick Chenney, they did not check any of Chenneys speeches over the next year that he mentioned that in. They did pull it from a few speeches in the fall that Bush was to give, this is where their lie really takes off. They did not put a stop to it when he presented this to congress, they did not put a stop to it when he presented it to the U.N. They let it go in the SOTU address, they did not put out a correction the following day. They did not correct it when on 3/7/03 when Reuters news service ran a story about the IAEA,s findings that this was a false accuasation. They did not correct Colin Powells address to the U.N. in February of this year. It seems that they did not proof read the speeches, they did not put out corrective statements, they did not check with the office of Dick Chenney or Ambassador Wilson. I guess all they did was sit around drink coffee and collect a pay check, with health insurance and a retirement plan.

...this particular LIE in his address to the UN. He did use many other lies, and even resorted to cartoon drawings to prove that Iraq was an immediate threat to the US. But the LIE about the Niger Uranium was TOO much for even Powell to use.

The fact that Powell rejected this particular bush*/republican lie about the Niger Uranium discredits the latest version of the LIE (fault of a low level staffer).

I got into a rant and I got myself to believe that aluminum tube was yellow cake. My mistake, thanks for the correction.

Watch for a return volley in the next couple of weeks.

The Plame affair died a tidy death ... Goof my arse !

This article contains new and significant information that wasn't included in the linked-to article within the original thread.

For more information on the story as it broke, please see this LBN Thread:

Advisory Board Faults White House on Iraq Nuke Claim (Drudge Flash)

DU Moderator

Bush 'skewed facts to justify attack on Iraq'

A growing number of US national security professionals are accusing the Bush Administration of slanting the facts and hijacking the intelligence apparatus to justify its rush to war in Iraq.

A key target is a four-person Pentagon team that reviewed material gathered by other intelligence outfits for any missed bits that might have tied Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein to banned weapons or terror groups.

This team, self-mockingly called the cabal, “cherry-picked the intelligence stream” in a bid to portray Iraq as an imminent threat, said Patrick Lang, a former head of worldwide human intelligence gathering for the Defence Intelligence Agency, which coordinates military intelligence.
…
The INC, which brought together groups opposed to Saddam, worked closely with the Pentagon to build a case against Iraq. “There are current intelligence officials who believe it is a scandal,” Mr Cannistraro said.
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/05/31/1054177765483.html

Cheney Investigated Forged Niger Uranuium Document

As though this were normal! I mean the repeated visits Vice President Dick Cheney made to the CIA before the war in Iraq. The visits were, in fact, unprecedented. During my 27-year career at the Central Intelligence Agency, no vice president ever came to us for a working visit.

During the '80s, it was my privilege to brief Vice President George H.W. Bush, and other very senior policy makers every other morning. I went either to the vice president's office or (on weekends) to his home. I am sure it never occurred to him to come to CIA headquarters.

The morning briefings gave us an excellent window on what was uppermost in the minds of those senior officials and helped us refine our tasks of collection and analysis. Thus, there was never any need for policy makers to visit us. And the very thought of a vice president dropping by to help us with our analysis is extraordinary. We preferred to do that work without the pressure that inevitably comes from policy makers at the table.

Cheney got into the operational side of intelligence as well. Reports in late 2001 that Iraq had tried to acquire uranium from Niger stirred such intense interest that his office let it be known he wanted them checked out. So, with the CIA as facilitator, a retired U.S. ambassador was dispatched to Niger in February 2002 to investigate. He found nothing to substantiate the report and lots to call it into question. There the matter rested – until last summer, after the Bush administration made the decision for war in Iraq.
…
http://feeds.bignewsnetwork.com/?sid=6e9d5502599dc6a2
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=5858&mesg_id=5858&page=

Plans For Iraq Attack Began On 9/11

(CBS) CBS News has learned that barely five hours after American Airlines Flight 77 plowed into the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld was telling his aides to come up with plans for striking Iraq — even though there was no evidence linking Saddam Hussein to the attacks.

That's according to notes taken by aides who were with Rumsfeld in the National Military Command Center on Sept. 11 – notes that show exactly where the road toward war with Iraq began, reports CBS News National Security Correspondent David Martin.
…
Now, nearly one year later, there is still very little evidence Iraq was involved in the Sept. 11 attacks. But if these notes are accurate, that didn't matter to Rumsfeld.

“Go massive,” the notes quote him as saying. “Sweep it all up. Things related and not.” (Sec. of Defense Donald Rumsfeld hours after 9/11 attack)
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/09/04/september11/main520830.shtml
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=53315&mesg_id=53315&page=

A call to maintain CIA independence.

As the White House searches for every possible excuse to go to war with Iraq, pressure has been building on the intelligence agencies to deliberately slant estimates to fit a political agenda. In this case, the agencies are being pressed to find a casus belli for war, whether or not one exists.

“Basically, cooked information is working its way into high-level pronouncements, and there's a lot of unhappiness about it in intelligence, especially among analysts at the CIA,” Vince Cannistraro, the agency's former head of counterterrorism, told The Guardian, a London newspaper.

This confirms what Knight-Ridder reporters found: “A growing number of military officers, intelligence professionals and diplomats privately have deep misgivings about the administration's double-time march toward war,” the news service reported recently. “They charge that the administration squelches dissenting views and that intelligence analysts are under intense pressure to produce reports supporting the White House's argument that Saddam poses such an immediate threat to the United States that pre-emptive military action is necessary.”
…
http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/2002-10-24-oped-bamford_x.htm

U.S. Insiders Say Iraq Intel Deliberately Skewed
…
The DIA was “exploited and abused and bypassed in the process of making the case for war in Iraq based on the presence of WMD,” or weapons of mass destruction, he added in a phone interview. He said the CIA had “no guts at all” to resist the allegedly deliberate skewing of intelligence by a Pentagon that he said was now dominating U.S. foreign policy.

Vince Cannistraro, a former chief of Central Intelligence Agency counterterrorist operations, said he knew of serving intelligence officers who blame the Pentagon for playing up “fraudulent” intelligence, “a lot of it sourced from the Iraqi National Congress of Ahmad Chalabi.”
…
They believe the administration, before going to war, had a “moral obligation to use the best information available, not just information that fits your preconceived ideas.”

CHEMICAL WEAPONS REPORT 'SIMPLY WRONG'

The top Marine Corps officer in Iraq, Lt. Gen. James Conway, said on Friday U.S. intelligence was “simply wrong” in leading military commanders to fear troops were likely to be attacked with chemical weapons in the March invasion of Iraq that ousted Saddam.

Richard Perle, a Chalabi backer and member of the Defense Policy Board that advises Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, defended the four-person unit in a television interview.
…
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=578&ncid=578&e=2&u=/nm/20030530/ts_nm/iraq_intelligence_dc

CIA had doubts on Iraq link to al-Qaida

The debunking of the Bush administration's pre-war certainties on Iraq gathered pace yesterday when it emerged that the CIA knew for months that a connection between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida was highly unlikely.

As President George Bush was forced for the second time in days to defend the decision to go to war, a new set of leaks from CIA officials suggested a tendency in the White House to suppress or ignore intelligence findings which did not shore up the case for war.
…
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,974182,00.html

Ex-CIA Officers Questioning Iraq Data

A small group composed mostly of retired CIA officers is appealing to colleagues still inside to go public with any evidence the Bush administration is slanting intelligence to support its case for war with Iraq.

Members of the group contend the Bush administration has released information on Iraq that meets only its ends -- while ignoring or withholding contrary reporting.

They also say the administration's public evidence about the immediacy of Iraq's threat to the United States and its alleged ties to al-Qaida is unconvincing, and accuse policy-makers of pushing out some information that does not meet an intelligence professional's standards of proof.

“It's been cooked to a recipe, and the recipe is high policy,” said Ray McGovern, a 27-year CIA veteran who briefed top Reagan administration security officials before retiring in 1990. “That's why a lot of my former colleagues are holding their noses these days.” ---
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20030314/ap_on_go_pr_wh/us_iraq_intelligence_4
http://www.democraticunderground.com/duforum/DCForumID61/18413.html

Public was misled, claim ex-CIA men

A GROUP of former US intelligence officials has written to President Bush claiming that the US Congress and the American public were misled about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction before the war.

The group’s members, most of them former CIA analysts, say that they have close contacts withsenior officials working inside the US intelligence agencies, who have told them that intelligence was“cooked” to persuade Congress to authorise the war.

The manipulation of intelligence has, they say, produced “a policy and intelligence fiasco of monumental proportions”. They write in the letter to Mr Bush: “While there have been occasions in the past when intelligence has been deliberately warped for political purposes, never before has such warping been used in such a systematic way to mislead our elected representatives into voting to authorise launching a war.

“You may not realise the extent of the current ferment within the intelligence community and particularly the CIA. In intelligence, there is one unpardonable sin — cooking intelligence to the recipe of high policy. There is ample indication that this has been done in Iraq.”
…
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,5944-698028,00.html

MEMORANDUM FOR: The President
FROM: Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity
http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0207-04.htm

U.S. diplomats also tried to stop this invasion:

U.S. Diplomat's Letter of Resignation
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/27/international/27WEB-TNAT.html

Letter of Resignation (Mary Wright)
http://www.snopes.com/politics/soapbox/marywright.asp

U.S. Mongolian Diplomat Resigns Over Iraq (Fourth U.S. Diplomat)
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&cid=542&e=84&u=/ap/20030327/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/war_diplomat_resigns_2

Third U.S. Diplomat Resigns Over Iraq Policy
http://truthout.org/docs_03/032303G.shtml

Second US Diplomat Resigns in Protest
http://www.wagingpeace.org/articles/03.03/0314krieger_diplo_resign.htm
U.S. diplomat resigns over Iraq war plans
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N10105063.htm

Niger-Uranium Timeline
http://www.deanforamerica.com/site/PageServer?pagename=niger_timeline

THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION AND WMDs: THEN AND NOW
http://www.deanforamerica.com/site/PageServer?pagename=bush_wmd_summary

A goof that put a goof in office leading to a string of goofs.

Actually the sixteen words make a dishonest travesty of the U.S. presidency, but I guess we can use "goof" in the headlines to save ink.