Bush Bestows Presidential Medal of Freedom Awards (Gen. Pace, Iraq War Intel Investigator Silberman)

Source: Associated Press

Bush bestows Presidential Medal of Freedom awards
By DEB RIECHMANN – 2 hours ago

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Bush on Thursday presented the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian award, to leaders in medicine, government, the judiciary and the military. In a ceremony in the East Room of the White House, Bush lauded and joked with five recipients and Annette Lantos, who accepted the award on behalf of her late husband, Rep. Tom Lantos, D-Calif.

- snip -

This year's recipients were:

- snip -

- Retired Marine Gen. Peter Pace: One of the Iraq war's military architects, Pace retired last year as 16th chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and first Marine to hold the post. "He performed his duties with a keen intellect, a sharp wit and a passionate devotion to our country," Bush said.

- Donna Shalala: Health and human services secretary under President Clinton and now president of the University of Miami, she helped lead a presidential commission charged with getting wounded military veterans better health care. Shalala was destined to be a leader, Bush said. "When Donna Shalala was 10 years old, a tornado struck her house in her neighborhood near Cleveland," the president said. "Her parents searched throughout the house for young Donna, but couldn't find her anywhere. She was finally spotted down the road, standing in the middle of the road directing traffic."

- Laurence H. Silberman: Appointed by President Reagan to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, he helped lead a presidential commission investigating flawed intelligence about Iraq's prewar weapons of mass destruction. "Judge Silberman has been a passionate defender of judicial restraint," Bush said. "He writes opinions that one colleague has described as always cutting to the heart of the matter — sometimes to the jugular. His questioning is crisp and incisive and at least one lawyer who was subjected to his inquiries actually fainted."

Read more: http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5jGNU4KCZC7Lv6U6mABWHg-Ptn89wD91D7MMG0

---

FROM WIKIPEDIA.ORG

ON PACE: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Peter_Pace

On November 29, 2005, Gen. Pace was present at a press conference given by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, where Rumsfeld said that "the United States does not have a responsibility" to prevent torture by Iraqi officials. Pace disagreed with Rumsfeld, saying "It is the absolute responsibility of every U.S. service member, if they see inhumane treatment being conducted, to intervene, to stop it".<6><7>
After White House officials asserted that Iran was supplying insurgents in Iraq with munitions, Gen. Pace questioned the validity of the claim in a February 2007 press conference. Specifically, Gen. Pace questioned the existence of direct evidence linking the Iranian Government to the supply of the weapons, explosively-formed penetrators.<8>
In a March 12, 2007 discussion with editors of the Chicago Tribune, Gen. Pace said, "I believe homosexual acts between two individuals are immoral and that should not condone immoral acts...I do not believe the United States is well served by a policy that says it is okay to be immoral in any way...As an individual, I would not want to be our policy." In the same discussion, however, Pace also said that he supports the "don't ask, don't tell" policy of The Pentagon, in which gay men and women are allowed in the military as long as they keep their sexual orientation private.<9> On March 13, 2007, Pace released a statement reading, "In expressing my support for the current policy, I also offered some personal opinions about moral conduct. I should have focused more on my support of the policy and less on my personal moral views."<10>
Retirement

Gen. Pace awaiting President George W. Bush in the auditorium of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building for a ceremony honoring his service as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
On June 8, 2007, Defense Secretary Robert Gates announced that he would advise the President not to renominate General Pace because of concerns about contentious confirmation hearings in the Democratic-controlled Congress.

ON SILBERMAN: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_Intelligence_Commission

Regarding Iraq, the Commission concluded that the Intelligence Community was "dead wrong" in almost all of its pre-war judgments about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and that this constituted a major intelligence failure. The Commission's report described in great detail the systemic analytical, collection, and dissemination flaws that led to the Community's erroneous assessments about Iraq's alleged WMD programs. Chief among these flaws were failures by certain agencies to gather all relevant information and analyze fully information on purported centrifuge tubes, insufficient vetting of key sources, particularly the source "Curveball," and somewhat overheated presentation of data to policymakers.
The 601-page document detailed many U.S. intelligence failures and identified intelligence breakdowns in dozens of cases. Some of the conclusions reached by the report were:
the report notes in several places that the commission's mandate did not allow it "to investigate how policy makers used the intelligence they received from the Intelligence Community on Iraq's weapons programs,"<2>
One of the main and crucial intelligence sources for the case for regime change in Iraq was an informant named Curveball.<1> Curveball had never been interviewed by American intelligence until after the war and was instead handled exclusively by the German Intelligence Agencies. An October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate that concluded Iraq "has" biological weapons was "based almost exclusively on information obtained" from Curveball, according to the report.<1>
Information about aluminum tubes to be used as centrifuges in a nuclear weapons program were found by the commission to be used for conventional rockets.
The Niger Yellowcake scandal was due to American intelligence believing "transparently forged documents" purporting to show a contract between the countries. There were "flaws in the letterhead, forged signatures, misspelled words, incorrect titles for individuals and government entities," the report said.<1>
While there were many reports that Curveball was actually the cousin of one of Ahmed Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress (INC) top aides. Bush's investigative report while discovering that at least two INC defectors were fabricators, but said it was "unable to uncover any evidence that the INC or any other organization was directing Curveball."<1>
It did not find even a single case of improper pressure on intelligence analysts to change or "cook" intelligence in order to support political positions. <3>

As in "how can we restrain the commission from finding anything incriminating?" that kind of restraint.

Here's your Medal of Honor, Muttley!

has been cravenly taken "off the table" in the interest of electoral victories! But think of the inaugural ball, and how fine all the democratic victors will look there. Just think of that. :-\