Bush's Control of Congress
Josh Marshall sums up the findings of the Senate Select Intelligence Committee report on the Iraq intelligence failure very clearly. The report:
"a) places all the blame for the intelligence failures on the CIA, b) specifically -- and quite improbably -- rules out administration pressure as a cause of the problem, and c) avoids any discussion of how or whether the administration manipulated or distorted intelligence community findings to build their case for war."
The Republicans control Congress. What is most amazing is what the Democrats have agreed to:
"...in his comments at the press conference [Sen.]Rockefeller seemed to say that each of these conclusions was either false or so incomplete as to be deeply misleading.
"As one of the first reporters to get a question in perceptively asked, why exactly then did they vote for it?"
As Marshall says, there was a time when Bush people were putting out the story that the CIA were stodgy bureaucrats who refused to see the extreme danger posed by Iraq. They had to be dragged into the light of day by key, hard-driving political staff--especially Feith's operation. There are lots of indications that Bush and his people had decided to invade Iraq, based on a combination of Chalabi and who knows what, and they were searching high and low for the evidence to justify this move. Now we are told the wicked old CIA misled the poor Bushies, who had no independent source of information, into invading one of the most defenceless countries on earth, and taking out a regime that had nothing to do with 9/11. Not Machiavelli, or Chalabi, or oil, or a real war to justify homeland security, or the 2004 election campaign--just Gomer Pyle.
(See also this piece, which at least mentions Chalabi--remember him?--although not by name; via pie filling in for Atrios).
And, hard to believe though it may be, the Niger story is still alive. (See here). Bush defenders now say (as I understand it) that the statement in the State of the Union address was based on forgeries. It's all the fault of the bad old CIA, and it shouldn't have happened. The White House did the decent thing and admitted that mistake. All along, however, there was earlier and much more solid evidence from the Europeans to the effect that Saddam was trying to get uranium from Niger. For some reason, the White House chose not to get out of the SOTU issue by bringing this evidence forward, but it is coming forward now.
The Bush White House, which is able and willing to spin on little or nothing, had something solid and chose not to use it for a favourable spin? Josh Marshall says he has more on this, and Glenn Reynolds joins in the challenge to him to produce what he has.
Marshall today: contrary to a WP story, the CIA was very consistent in believing and stating that there was no credible evidence that Iraq had tried to purchase uranium from Niger. (Link via Kevin Drum, who focusses on the Joe Wilson story that has never interested me very much).
UPDATE July 12: Laura Rozen actually looks at the older, supposedly better Niger documents, and reports that they are laughable forgeries.
As a political operation, including its control of spin, the Bush White House may be one of the best ever. Even its control of Republicans in both the House and the Senate is a real accomplishment. The U.S. Congress,in contrast to a British-stle parliament, is famous for a lack of party discipline, for the presence of "renegades." Republicans today, by contrast, even McCain, can pretty well be counted on not to criticize the President. No doubt they fear that if they cross the White House, they could get the full Max Cleland treatment--a full-scale negative campaign because you are not on-side on key votes.
The price the White House seems willing to pay is to let every Senator and Congressperson spend on practically anything they can think of.
UPDATE: How would the White House get the answers it wanted out of the CIA, or at least suppress answers it didn't want, without actually "telling anyone what to say?"?
Kevin Drum has an example: a more senior CIA person telling a less senior one that "the powers that be" have no interest in hearing that one of Chalabi's golden witnesses on Iraq weapons is probably a fraud. The word radiates down as to what is wanted and what is not wanted. This might include removing certain risk assessments: "Don't anyone say that if a tree is cut down with little preparation, it might fall on someone." Just don't say it.
Ken Pollack has written that the Bush political people had a way of reporting only a worst-case scenario, out of what had been a range of possibilities.
I pulled together a description of Rumsfeld's style in shaping briefings, based on both Pollack and Fallows, here (toward the end).
UPDATE July 11: Suddenly there seem to be lots of examples where Administration officials doctored up documents to make a different case than the CIA itself had made.
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