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Originally Posted by aceventura3
I read it. I agree with Rumsfeld and saw information in a new light as well. I my view having a defiant dictator with control of billions of dollars and a history of agression and using chemical weapons was not acceptable.
You don't need Tenet's o.k. to go to war. The question does not point to lies by Bush. What does "imminent" mean anyway? Ask 100 people about an "imminent danger" you get 100 answers, who is telling the truth and who is telling the lie, the term is subjective.
I am just looking for the specific facts that were the basis of the lie prior to our invasion of Iraq.
True - we did not "do everything to avoid war" we could have bent over and took it up the *** for peace, we didn't. I think most people see that as a figurative statement, and most people would see that we did do a hell of alot prior to the invasion. So if that is what you consider a lie, you have one.
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ace, I don't think that you consider yet what Tenet's interview changes. If you haven't, please watch the entire interview at the crooks and liars link that I already posted.
Tenet says that revealing Valerie Plame's name had a serious negative effect on the people who he managed and led at CIA.....<b>that's the opposite of what you and other Bush/Cheney supporters have maintained:</b>
Quote:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/...75_page6.shtml
April 25, 2006 (top of page 6 of 7)
......When it became clear there were no weapons of mass destruction, a rift split the White House and CIA. A former ambassador named Joe Wilson wrote an article debunking the uranium claim that had slipped into the State of the Union address. The White House retaliated, leaking a story that exposed the identity of Joe Wilson’s wife, Valerie Plame, as an undercover CIA officer.
<b>"She's one of my officers. That's wrong. Big time wrong, you don't get to do that," Tenet says. "And the chilling effect that you have inside my work force is, 'Whoa, now officers names are being thrown out the door. Hold it. Not right.'"</b>
Asked how much damage that did, Tenet says, "That's not the point. Just because there's a Washington bloodletting game going on here and just because her husband's out there saying what he's saying. The country's intelligence officers are not fair game. Period. That's all you need to know."
"They didn't seem to know that in the White House," Pelley remarks.
"I'm done with it. I've just told you what I think," Tenet says. .........
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Tenet says that the "Slam Dunk" attribution made about him, could only have been told to Bob Woodward by four other people, besides Andy Carr, and Tenet did not think that Carr did it. He did say that Bush was one of the four. Since Tenet says he was saying "Slam Dunk" about the CIA's ability to greatly improve a presentation about the Iraq threat that Bush had seen and been very disappointed in, and not about the "case"...the justification to go to war, he regarded the distorted "Slam Dunk" leak to Woodward as a white house effort to discredit him, to scapegoat him as the one who told Bush that war against Iraq was justified. Tenet resigned just a short time, afterwards, and Bush/Cheney <b>have only now.....lost the "cover" of their false assertions that Tenet said justification for going to war was a "Slam Dunk"</b>:
Quote:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/...in612067.shtml
Woodward Shares War Secrets
Journalist Describes Secret Details On White House's Plans For War
April 18, 2004
Bob Woodward reveals secret details of the White House’s plans to attack Iraq in an exclusive interview. (CBS)
Woodward told 60 Minutes that Saudi Prince Bandar has promised the president that Saudi Arabia will lower oil prices in the months before the election - to ensure the U.S. economy is strong on election day.
(CBS) Journalist Bob Woodward calls his new book, “Plan of Attack,” the first detailed, behind-the-scenes account of how and why the president decided to wage war in Iraq.
It’s an insider’s account written after Woodward spoke with 75 of the key decision makers, including President Bush himself.
The president permitted Woodward to quote him directly. Others spoke on the condition that Woodward not identify them as sources.
Woodward discusses the secret details of the White House's plans to attack Iraq for the first time on television with Correspondent Mike Wallace.
Woodward permitted 60 Minutes to listen to tapes he recorded of his most important interviews, to read the transcripts, and to verify that the quotes he uses are based on recollections from participants in the key meetings. Both CBS News and Simon & Schuster, the publisher of Woodward's book, are units of Viacom.
Woodward says that many of the quotes came directly from the president: “When I interviewed him for the first time several months ago up in the residence of the White House, he just kind of out of the blue said, ‘It's the story of the 21st Century,’ his decision to undertake this war and start a preemptive attack on another country."
Woodward reports that just five days after Sept. 11, President Bush indicated to National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice that while he had to do Afghanistan first, he was also determined to do something about Saddam Hussein.
”There's some pressure to go after Saddam Hussein. Don Rumsfeld has said, ‘This is an opportunity to take out Saddam Hussein, perhaps. We should consider it.’ And the president says to Condi Rice meeting head to head, ‘We won't do Iraq now.’ But it is a question we're gonna have to return to,’” says Woodward.
“And there's this low boil on Iraq until the day before Thanksgiving, Nov. 21, 2001. This is 72 days after 9/11. This is part of this secret history. President Bush, after a National Security Council meeting, takes Don Rumsfeld aside, collars him physically, and takes him into a little cubbyhole room and closes the door and says, ‘What have you got in terms of plans for Iraq? What is the status of the war plan? I want you to get on it. I want you to keep it secret.’"
Woodward says immediately after that, Rumsfeld told Gen. Tommy Franks to develop a war plan to invade Iraq and remove Saddam - and that Rumsfeld gave Franks a blank check.
”Rumsfeld and Franks work out a deal essentially where Franks can spend any money he needs. And so he starts building runways and pipelines and doing all the preparations in Kuwait, specifically to make war possible,” says Woodward.
“Gets to a point where in July, the end of July 2002, they need $700 million, a large amount of money for all these tasks. And the president approves it. But Congress doesn't know and it is done. They get the money from a supplemental appropriation for the Afghan War, which Congress has approved. …Some people are gonna look at a document called the Constitution which says that no money will be drawn from the Treasury unless appropriated by Congress. Congress was totally in the dark on this." Woodward says there was a lot happening that only key Bush people knew about.
”A year before the war started, three things are going on. Franks is secretly developing this war plan that he's briefing the president in detail on,” says Woodward. “Franks simultaneously is publicly denying that he's ever been asked to do any plan.”
For example, here's Gen. Franks’ response to a question about invading Iraq, in May 2002, after he's been working on war plans for five months: “That’s a great question and one for which I don’t have an answer, because my boss has not yet asked me to put together a plan to do that.”
But according to Woodward, the general had been perfecting his war plan, and Vice President Dick Cheney knew all about it. <b>Woodward reports that Cheney was the driving force in the White House to get Saddam. Cheney had been Secretary of Defense during the first Gulf War, and to him, Saddam was unfinished business – and a threat to the United States.
In his book, Woodward describes Cheney as a "powerful, steamrolling force obsessed with Saddam and taking him out."
"Colin Powell, the secretary of state, saw this in Cheney to such an extent, he, Powell, told colleagues that ‘Cheney has a fever. It is an absolute fever. It’s almost as if nothing else exists,’” says Woodward, who adds that Cheney had plenty of opportunities to convince the president.</b>
”He’s just down the hall in the West Wing from the president. President says, ‘I meet with him all the time.’ Cheney's back in the corner or sitting on the couch at nearly all of these meetings.”
The president had hoped Saddam could be removed in some way short of war. But early in 2002, Woodward reports, the CIA concluded they could not overthrow Saddam. That word came from the CIA's head of Iraq operations, a man known simply as “Saul.”
"Saul gets together a briefing and who does he give it to first? Dick Cheney. He said, ‘I can count the number of sources, human sources, spies we have in Iraq on one hand,’” says Woodward. “I asked the president, ‘What was your reaction that the CIA couldn't overthrow Saddam? And the president said one word. 'Darn.'"
The vice president led the way on declaring that Saddam Hussein definitely had weapons of mass destruction. Before that, the president had said only that Saddam “desires them.”
But ten days later, the vice president said Saddam already had weapons of mass destruction. And 12 days after that, the president too had apparently been persuaded: “A lot of people understand he holds weapons of mass destruction.” Three months later, on Dec. 21, 2002, Woodward says CIA Director George Tenet brought his deputy, John McLaughlin, to the oval office to show the president and the vice president their best evidence that Saddam really had weapons of mass destruction.
”McLaughlin has access to all the satellite photos, and he goes in and he has flip charts in the oval office. The president listens to all of this and McLaughlin's done. And, and the president kind of, as he's inclined to do, says ‘Nice try, but that isn't gonna sell Joe Public. That isn't gonna convince Joe Public,’” says Woodward.
In his book, Woodward writes: "The presentation was a flop. The photos were not gripping. The intercepts were less than compelling. And then George Bush turns to George Tenet and says, 'This is the best we've got?'"
Says Woodward: “George Tenet's sitting on the couch, stands up, and says, ‘Don't worry, it's a slam dunk case.’" And the president challenges him again and Tenet says, ‘The case, it's a slam dunk.’ ...I asked the president about this and he said it was very important to have the CIA director – ‘Slam-dunk is as I interpreted is a sure thing, guaranteed. No possibility it won't go through the hoop.’ Others present, Cheney, very impressed.”
<b>What did Woodward think of Tenet’s statement? “It’s a mistake,” he says. “Now the significance of that mistake - that was the key rationale for war.” It was just two weeks later when the president decided to go to war.</b>
Quote:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/...75_page6.shtml
<h3>Compare what Woodward was "fed" by the Bush white house, to Tenet's first public response to it, exactly three years later:</h3>
April 25, 2007 (center of page 6 of 7)
......"I never got off the couch, I never jumped up, there was no pantomime. I didn’t do my Michael Jordan, Air Jordan routine for the president that morning," Tenet tells Pelley.
"What did you mean by slam dunk?" Pelley asks.
"I guess I meant that we could do better," Tenet says.
"Do better?" Pelley asks.
"We can put a better case together for a public case, that’s what I meant. That’s what this was about," Tenet explains.
Tenet says the president wasn’t happy with the presentation. So he was telling Mr. Bush that improving the presentation would be a slam dunk. But Tenet says the leak to Woodward made the remark look like the decisive moment in the decision to go to war.
"I'll never believe that what happened that day, informed the president's view or belief of the legitimacy or the timing of this war. Never," Tenet insists.
In addition to five from the CIA, the only people in the room were the president, vice president, Condoleezza Rice, and Chief of Staff Andrew Card.
"Somebody who was in the Oval Office that day decided to throw you off the train. Was it the president?" Pelley asks.
"I don't know," Tenet says.
"Was it the vice president?" Pelley asks.
"I don't know," Tenet says.
"Who was out to get you, George?" Pelley asks.
"Scott, you know, I'm Greek, and we're conspiratorial by nature. But, you know, who knows?" Tenet says. "I haven't let myself go there, but as a human being it didn’t feel very good."
Tenet says, when he saw "slam dunk" in The Washington Post he knew the breach with the White House was total. He called his principal contact in the president’s office.......
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“That decision was first conveyed to Condi Rice in early January 2003 when he said, ‘We're gonna have to go. It's war.’ He was frustrated with the weapons inspections. He had promised the United Nations and the world and the country that either the UN would disarm Saddam or he, George Bush, would do it and do it alone if necessary,” says Woodward. “So he told Condi Rice. He told Rumsfeld. He knew Cheney wanted to do this. And they realized they haven’t told Colin Powell, the Secretary of State.”
“So Condi Rice said, ‘You better call Colin in and tell him.’ So, I think probably one of the most interesting meetings in this whole story. He calls Colin Powell in alone, sitting in those two famous chairs in the Oval Office and the president said, ‘Looks like war. I'm gonna have to do this,’” adds Woodward.
“And then Powell says to him, somewhat in a chilly way, ‘Are you aware of the consequences?’ Because he'd been pounding for months on the president, on everyone - and Powell directly says, ‘You know, you're gonna be owning this place.’ And the president says, ‘I understand that.’ The president knows that Powell is the one who doesn't want to go to war. He says, ‘Will you be with me?’ And Powell, the soldier, 35 years in the army, the president has decided and he says, ‘I'll do my best. Yes, Mr. President. I'll be with you.’” And then, the president says, ‘Time to put your war uniform on.’"
Woodward says he described Powell as semi-despondent “because he knew that this was a war that might have been avoided. That’s why he spent so much time at the United Nations.” But, it turns out, two days before the president told Powell, Cheney and Rumsfeld had already briefed Prince Bandar, the Saudi ambassador.
”Saturday, Jan. 11, with the president's permission, Cheney and Rumsfeld call Bandar to Cheney's West Wing office, and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Gen. Myers, is there with a top-secret map of the war plan. And it says, ‘Top secret. No foreign.’ No foreign means no foreigners are supposed to see this,” says Woodward.
“They describe in detail the war plan for Bandar. And so Bandar, who's skeptical because he knows in the first Gulf War we didn't get Saddam out, so he says to Cheney and Rumsfeld, ‘So Saddam this time is gonna be out, period?’ And Cheney - who has said nothing - says the following: ‘Prince Bandar, once we start, Saddam is toast.’"
After Bandar left, according to Woodward, Cheney said, “I wanted him to know that this is for real. We're really doing it."
But this wasn’t enough for Prince Bandar, who Woodward says wanted confirmation from the president. “Then, two days later, Bandar is called to meet with the president and the president says, ‘Their message is my message,’” says Woodward.
Prince Bandar enjoys easy access to the Oval Office. His family and the Bush family are close. And Woodward told 60 Minutes that Bandar has promised the president that Saudi Arabia will lower oil prices in the months before the election - to ensure the U.S. economy is strong on election day.
Woodward says that Bandar understood that economic conditions were key before a presidential election: “They’re [oil prices] high. And they could go down very quickly. That's the Saudi pledge. Certainly over the summer, or as we get closer to the election, they could increase production several million barrels a day and the price would drop significantly.” For his book, Woodward interviewed 75 top military and Bush administration officials, including two long interviews with the president himself. Mr. Bush spoke on the record, but others talked to Woodward on condition that he not reveal their identities.
60 Minutes won’t name those Woodward interviewed, but we've listened to the tapes and read the transcripts of his key interviews to verify that his accounts are based on recollections from people who took part in the meetings he describes, including a historic meeting on March 19, when Bush gives the order to go to war.
He’s with the National Security Council, in the situation room. Says Woodward: “They have all these TV monitors. Gen. Franks, the commander, is up on one of them. And all nine commanders, and the president asks each one of them, ‘Are you ready? Do you have what you need? Are you satisfied?’ And they all say, ‘Yes, sir.’ and ‘We're ready.’”
Then the president saluted and he rose suddenly from his chair. “People who were there said there were tears in his eyes, not coming down his cheeks but in his eyes,” says Woodward. “And just kind of marched out of the room.”
Having given the order, the president walked alone around the circle behind the White House. Months later, he told Woodward: “As I walked around the circle, I prayed that our troops be safe, be protected by the Almighty. Going into this period, I was praying for strength to do the Lord's will. I'm surely not going to justify war based upon God. Understand that. Nevertheless, in my case, I pray that I be as good a messenger of his will as possible. And then, of course, I pray for forgiveness."
Did Mr. Bush ask his father for any advice? “I asked the president about this. And President Bush said, ‘Well, no,’ and then he got defensive about it,” says Woodward. “Then he said something that really struck me. He said of his father, ‘He is the wrong father to appeal to for advice. The wrong father to go to, to appeal to in terms of strength.’ And then he said, ‘There's a higher Father that I appeal to.’"
Beyond not asking his father about going to war, Woodward was startled to learn that the president did not ask key cabinet members either.
”The president, in making the decision to go to war, did not ask his secretary of defense for an overall recommendation, did not ask his secretary of state, Colin Powell, for his recommendation,” says Woodward.
But the president did ask Rice, his national security adviser, and Karen Hughes, his political communications adviser. Woodward says both supported going to war.
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Quote:
http://www.defenselink.mil/transcrip...nscriptid=2555
Presenter: Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld April 29, 2004
Secretary Rumsfeld Interview with Chris Matthews, MSNBC
......MATTHEWS: Mr. Secretary, let me ask you about the war in Iraq and the boldest question I could put to you here in the Pentagon. Did you ever advise the president to go to war?
RUMSFELD: Well, Chris, I saw some clipping of your interviews on this subject. When you asked that question of Woodward, Woodward said that the president said he had not asked me, now – so why would you ask me? You have it from the horse’s mouth.
MATTHEWS: Because – well, that’s right, in that circumstance in that room, but all those months in the run up to war I would imagine that at some point sitting in the interstices of the West Wing he would have said, hey Don, do you think we ought to go? I mean, is there any – weren’t you ever asked your advice?
RUMSFELD: I don’t know who he might have asked their advice.
MATTHEWS: Well, apparently he asked the vice president.
RUMSFELD: Possibly. I just don’t know that. I haven’t read the – all these –
(Cross talk.)
MATTHEWS: He didn’t ask his father. We know that.
RUMSFELD: Is that right?
MATTHEWS: Well, that’s all I go by – these books –
(Cross talk.)
RUMSFELD: You ought to get a life. You could do something besides read those books. (Laughter.)
<b>MATTHEWS: This is my life. (Laughter.) Let me ask you about something a little more (pointed ?).
RUMSFELD: Well, let me answer your question.
MATTHEWS: Did you advise the president to go to war?</b>
RUMSFELD: Yeah, he did not ask me is the question, and to my knowledge there are any number of people he did not ask. It’s his response –
MATTHEWS: Did that surprise you as secretary of defense?
RUMSFELD: Well, I thought it was interesting. He clearly asked us could we win and I said, obviously, that the military are sure that they can prevail in that conflict in terms of the – changing the regime. He asked if they had everything they needed. We – he must have asked about 5,000 questions over a period of a year about this, that, and the other things. What could go wrong? What about a humanitarian crisis? What about an environmental crisis? What about internally displaced people? What about a fortress Baghdad? Thousands of questions along those lines and – as a president should, to have looked at the risks and concerns that –
MATTHEWS: So he knew the tally sheet of costs and benefits without asking you the bottom line?
RUMSFELD: You bet. You bet. I gave him a list. I gave him a list –
MATTHEWS: He knew that the chances of resistance down the road –
RUMSFELD: – of about 35 things that could go wrong.
MATTHEWS: He knew the difficulties of occupation? The chances we’d have to face the Ba’athist remnants? The difficulties between these different groups – the Shi’a and the Sunni and the Kurds? He knew all that?
RUMSFELD: And the risk of ethnic cleansing. The –
MATTHEWS: By the winners.
RUMSFELD: Yeah. No question he worried through all of those issues in a very thoughtful and probing way. I keep coming back to this question you asked: it does not surprise me that he didn’t. His response, I thought, was –
MATTHEWS: But isn’t that the role of the cabinet – to advise the president?
RUMSFELD: Goodness, we advise him all the time, but his point was he said I knew where Rumsfeld was, so he didn’t have to.
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.....ace, what has changed is that "Slam Dunk" was not a "reco" from Tenet that Bush should order US troops to invade Iraq, like the white house wanted us to believe, for exactly the laat three years.
We know that Bush claimed to "make an effort to avoid going to war".
How did he do that, when he did not ask his key cabinet and intelligence leader, or even his father something like,
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....knowing what we know....if you were in my shoes, would you invade and occupy Iraq? Can you suggest how to avoid war and contain and bring down Saddam?
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but... Bush did not ask this from his father, his Sectary of Defense, of State, or of his CIA director.
Who the hell is Bush, and what was he thinking? I find these revelations of extreme concern and alarm, and you probably find it appealing....
How can a president claim to be making every effort to avoid war, without asking anyone but NSA's Rice and Karen Hughes, whether to do it, and how to avoid it, if possible?
Last edited by host; 05-01-2007 at 12:07 AM..
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