Tenet knew there were no WMD. Secret British documents reveal not only that Tenet told his British counterpart the intelligence was being “fixed” around the policy. They also show that Washington and London developed a scheme to “wrongfoot” Saddam Hussein by insisting on the kind of UN inspections they were sure he would reject, thus providing a convenient casus belli.
Saddam outfoxed them by allowing the most intrusive inspection regime in recent history. At the turn of 2002-03 UN inspectors were crawling all over Saddam’s palaces, interviewing his scientists, and pursuing every tip they could get from Tenet—and finding nothing.
What did satellite imagery show? Nothing, save for the embarrassingly inconclusive photos that then-Secretary of State Colin Powell displayed on Feb. 5, 2003 at the UN. Were there any photos of those biological weapons trailers reported by the shadowy Curveball? None. And so “artist renderings” were conjured up to show what these sinister trailers might look like.
At least the renderings produced by the CIA graphics shop were more professional than the crude forgeries upon which the fable about Iraq seeking uranium in Africa was based. And the Cheney-Rice-Judith Miller story about aluminum tubes for uranium enrichment got bent hopelessly out of shape as soon as genuine scientists (as opposed to Tenet’s stable of malleable engineers) got hold of them.
Exactly four years ago, amid the euphoria of Mission Accomplished and the incipient concern over the trouble encountered in finding WMD, then-deputy defense secretary Paul Wolfowitz told writer Sam Tanenhaus of Vanity Fair that Iraq’s supposed cache of WMD had never been the most important casus belli. It was simply one of several reasons:
“For bureaucratic reasons we settled on one issue, weapons of mass destruction, because it was the one reason everyone could agree on...Almost unnoticed but huge is another reason: removing Saddam will allow the U.S. to take its troops out of Saudi Arabia...”
Absence of Evidence
Who needs real evidence as opposed to allegations of WMD, when the name of the game is removing Saddam? But how to explain the blather about WMD in the lead-up to the war, when not one piece of imagery or other intelligence could confirm the presence of such weapons? Easy. Apply the Rumsfeld maxim: “The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.” And then explain further that the lack of evidence proves nothing but how clever the Iraqis have become at hiding their weapons. Don’t laugh; that’s what Rumsfeld and the neocons said.
That foolishness had run its course by March 2003 when, despite the best “leads” Tenet could provide and the intrusive inspection regime, the UN inspectors could find nothing. It was getting downright embarrassing for those bent on a belli without an ostensible casus, but by then enough troops were in place to conquer Iraq (or so thought Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz). At that point Bush told the UN to withdraw its inspectors promptly and let them watch the fireworks of shock and awe from a safer distance on TV. (The real shocker is President Bush repeated insistence that Saddam threw out the inspectors. But, again, he has so successfully “catapulted” this piece of propaganda that most Americans do not realize it is a lie.)
How did the White House conspirators think they could get away with all this? Well, don’t you remember Cheney saying we would be greeted as liberators...and Ken Neocon Adelman assuring us that it would be a “cakewalk?” We would defeat a fourth-rate army, remove a “ruthless dictator,” eliminate an adversary of Israel, and end up sitting atop all that oil with permanent military bases and no further need to station troops in Saudi Arabia. At that point, smiled the neocons, what spoilsport will be able to make political hay by insisting: Yes, but you did this on the basis of forgery, fakery; and where, by the way, are the weapons of mass destruction?
Granted that over recent weeks George Tenet has shown himself a bit dense beneath the bluster. Nevertheless, there is simply no defense on grounds of density—or gross ineptitude or momentary insanity. He clearly played a sustained role in the chicanery.
Okay; if you insist: let’s assume for a moment that Rumsfeld did actually succeed in convincing Tenet that the reason there was no evidence of WMD was because the Iraqis were so good at hiding them. What then?
Tenet does not get off the hook. There was, in fact, no absence of well sourced evidence that Saddam’s WMD had all been destroyed shortly after the Gulf War in 1991—yes, all of them.
You Go With the Evidence There Is
In 1995, when Saddam Hussein's son-in-law, Hussein Kamel, defected with a treasure trove of documents, he spilled the beans on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. There were none. He knew. He was in charge of the chemical, biological, nuclear, and missile programs and ordered all such weapons destroyed before the UN inspectors could discover them after the war in 1991. He told us much more, and the information that could be checked out was confirmed.
The George-and-Condoleezza-must-have-just-missed-this-report excuse won’t wash, because Newsweek acquired a transcript of Kamel’s debriefing and broke the story on Feb. 24, 2003, several weeks before the war, noting gingerly that Kamel’s information “raises questions about whether the WMD stockpiles attributed to Iraq still exist.”
Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, the publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in Washington, DC. During his 27-years as a CIA analyst, he chaired NIEs: he is now on the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).
Tenet, like the rest of the politicians in this criminal governmet lie as part of their living. Politics, politicians and lying have gone hand in hand for centuries.
George is no different than the other lying George in power. Steal, kill, distort, spy and lie.
No one even mentions the boxes of data from Iraq about their Weapons and their disposal.
Remember there was thousands of documents, yet, 'they' still said that Iraq had not accounted for them all.
Scott Ritter said that there was no way that they could have accounted for every one of them.
bushco was making Iraq prove a negative. Making it impossible to stop the US from attacking Iraq.
Our media was telling us that the inspectors were still not permitted to inspect all they wanted. Then they wanted to inspect the palace bunkers. I'm sure that bush would let inspectors, reporting back to Iran, know where he would go in an emergancy, and what exact precautions had been taken to protect our congress and government. LOL
by
LYNNE KRINGLER (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 55 comments)
on Tuesday, May 15, 2007 at 11:32:26 PM
The first and foremost, in my mind, is the question of logic.
Why would you bomb the hell out of a country, village, and/or city, to get a few thugs?
Wouldn't that be like bombing Ireland to get the IRA's?
Like bombing Las Vegas, Chicago and New jersy to get the mofia?
Like bombing LA, San Francisco, chicago, NY to get the gangs?
Like bombing Texas, NY, CA., Florida, NM, and others to get the drug dealers?
I'm really serious about this. Kerry suggested that it should be handled the same as any other crime, using special forces, CIA, FBI ect. He was mocked by everyone. I think, he is absolutely right.
I watched as the troops and an 'embedded' reporter, on the way to Baghdad, stopped to wait for the rest of the column. They went into a huge ammo dump (al caucau, mispelled), they broke and entered a sealed bunker, (no special protective gear), opened boxes of white powdery stuff, there were stacks of them. Weapons were everywhere. As they left the bunkers and were sitting there, a pickup with Iraqis zoomed by with 4-6 men (inside the ammo dump) and waved at them. Later an UN inspector explained what we had seen. It was one of the largest dumps in Iraq. The little seal was an UN seal. That dump had just been inspected earlier that month, and was intact. The powdery stuff was highly explosive, (used for construction of tunnels and such) 'a small handful could bring down a 707 (?) airplane'. Next we heard, the dump had been left unguarded and was empty. They tried to say that it had already been emptied. Whoops! the film had been on the way into Baghdad and had just been inspected (intact). Then they tried to show a satellite photo of 1 truck and explained that it must of been the Russians. Whoops! no Russians after the invasion. I believe that that powdery stuff and the rest of the munitions out of unguarded ammo dumps, all over Iraq, are killing our troops and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. Where was the logic in this?
1. Why would they pull the inspectors out to bomb Iraq?
2. Why would they have to lie about tubes and Niger if they had all of that other 'proof'?
3. Why wouldn't they secure the ammo dumps? the borders?
4. Why was bremmer allowed to give those 100 orders before leaving Iraq? Why are most of them still in effect?
5. Why won't the State Dept let the Pentagon re-open the state owned, shuttered factories?
6. Why are we letting the US multi-nationals plunder Iraq and protecting them with our troops and billions or trillions of tax-payer dollars?
Who are we fighting and how do our troops know which is which as they are kicking down doors, arresting, imprisoning, beating, torturing or even killing them?
Why have we not repeated and echoed over and over, and over "the facts are being fixed around the policy"?
Hope you can answer some of these questions. It seems as though my congressmen cannot or will not.
by
LYNNE KRINGLER (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 55 comments)
on Wednesday, May 16, 2007 at 12:16:54 AM
"not always successful," (unlike your analyses Mr. McGovern)
This is worth being awake at 3:14 am! Nothing like real history to explain the lies and deceit of the ultimate Mandarin, the so-called Democrat from the HIll, George Tenet.
....not always successful!!! The Tenet flack phrase needs explamation marks. Let's see, there was 911, then the botched opportunities in Afghanistan, and, reaching his perroration, Tenet is the nation;s midwife for Iraq.
My undertanding is that Leon Jaworski convicted the Watergate crew on a simple statute called defrauding the federal government: your work is so pathetic, it's fraud to take a paycheck. There so many in the WH that merit this distinction but no cabinet member more deserving than Tenet. He knew better.
Outstanding article. Thanks for being our best source on the truth about intelligence and, in the case of Tenet and the neo conseravtive cadre, the lack thereof.
by
Michael Collins (95 articles, 16 quicklinks, 5 diaries, 344 comments)
on Wednesday, May 16, 2007 at 2:31:16 AM
4 comments
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