Talking Points Memo outlines the hostile questioning new White House press secretary Scott McClellan when asked if President Bush took responsibility for his words in the State of the Union speech. Read the whole transcript...it's truly amazing, and one almost feels sorry for McClellan. Money quote one:
QUESTION: And so when there's intelligence in a speech, the President is not responsible for that?
Money quote two:
QUESTION: Scott, on Keith's question, why can't we just expect, basically what would be a non-answer, which is, of course the President is responsible for everything that comes out of his mouth. I mean, that's a non-answer. Why can't you just say that?
Scott McClellan: This issue has been addressed over the last several days.
QUESTION: Why won't you say that, though, that's, like, so innocuous and benign.
Scott McClellan: The issue has been addressed.
...need I remind all and sundry that Bush campaigned on a platform of responsibility? (TPM also takes note of the fact that George Tenet apparently named names in Senate testimony about just who at the White House kept pushing for inclusion of the bogus African uranium claim in Presdiential speeches.)
But hold on -- that was jyst Bush's newbie press flack. Surely, given the opportunity, Bush would accept responsiblity himself, right?
Ummm....no.
Busy, Busy, Busy has a follow-up on Bush being asked the same question later that's so good I just have to cite the whole thing:
MR. BUSH: "Well, first, I take responsibility for putting our troops into action. And I made that decision because Saddam Hussein was a threat to our security and a threat to other nations. I take responsibility for, making the decision, the tough decision to put together a coalition to remove Saddam Hussein. Because the intelligence, not only our intelligence but the intelligence of this great country [gesturing towards P.M. Blair], made a clear and compelling case that Saddam Hussein was a threat to security and peace. I say that because he possessed chemical weapons and biological weapons. I strongly believe he was trying to reconstitute his nuclear weapons programs. And I will remind the skeptics that in 1991 it became clear that Saddam was much closer to developing a nuclear weapon than anyone had imagined. He was a threat. I take responsibility for dealing with that threat. We're in a war against terror. And we will continue to fight the war against terror. We're after al- Qaeda, as the Prime Minister accurately noted and we're dismantling al-Qaeda. The removal of Saddam Hussein is an integral part of winning the war against terror. A free Iraq will make it much less likely that we will find violence in that immediate neighborhood. A free Iraq will make it more likely we'll get a Middle-Eastern peace. A free Iraq will have incredible influence on the states that could potentially unleash terrorist activity on us. And, yeah, I take responsibility for making the decisions I made."
The portion of Mr. Bush's response in which he takes responsibility for his own words is highlighted in bold.
Last night at the dinner table, I was telling my lovely wife about the Administration's unconvincing performance, when our (nearly) four-year-old asked us who Bush was.
Cecilia: Who's Bush?
Me: He's our president, and he did something that he won't take responsibility for.
Cecilia: But I do.
It's a truly sad commentary when not only is a (nearly) four-year-old generally more willing to accept responsibility for her behavior, but that she recognizes how wrong it is when a President tires to weasel out of it.
Byzantium's Shores keeps its eye on the ball with regard to the continuing arguments about prewar intelligence.
[T]his wasn't a case of bad intelligence. It was a case of bad intelligence that was identified as bad intelligence, and then was used anyway by people who either should have known it was bad intelligence and were thus inept, or did know it was bad intelligence and were thus deceitful. I'm always amazed at the sheer amount of smoke-and-mirrors foolery that can erupt around something that's really not that complicated.
I give Tony Blair full marks for passion and eloquence, but Jaqandor's point is spot-on. It isn't a matter of history "forgivng" him and Bush if they were wrong about the threat they portrayed Saddam as posing. As many are pointing out across the the blogosphere -- for example, the just-back-from Europe Matthew Yglesisas -- the humanitarian benefits of removing Saddam are not in dispute. But Blair and Bush didn't base their case on humanitarian intervention, they based it on claims of an Iraqi threat that are appearing increasingly threadbare day by day.
Speaking of which, this morning's op-ed by David Ignatius in the WaPowonders why we haven't heard more from several acptured Iraqi officials -- unless their statements would undermine Bush's and Blair's contentions.
History may forgive Blair and Bush for launching an unprovoked war to depose Saddam. History should not forgive them for deceiving their citizens in order to do so.
Update: John Dean examines the case for war Bush outlined in the State of the Union speech and concludes that the evidence seems to support hardly any of it at all, let alone the bogus uranium claim. Dean -- who knows the ramifications of such a statment -- calls for a special prosecutor.
Kevin Drum points to a trio of articles indicating that Administration officials -- who are security-obsessed when it comes to maintaining secrecy about their own actions -- appear to have blown a CIA agent's cover as part of an effort to discredit an Administration critic. CalPundit comments:
This just gets uglier and uglier, and I hope the mainstream press — having finally smelled blood — will follow this up. If Corn's accusations are true, this is an appalling abuse of power by the administration that not only blows an agent's cover, but reduces the effectiveness of an important CIA program and makes it harder for the CIA to recruit similar agents in the future.
I hope they think it was worth it.
I would point out, of course, that lack of "human intelligence" assets has been one of the problems plaguing the CIA recently.
This development is simply outrageous. Perhaps this time, principled conservatives who genuinely care about national security with join in condemning this reprehensible action. Heads need to roll on this one -- an administration official who blows the cover of a CIA agent should lose his or her job at the very least.
Update: Mark Kleiman has a "Say it ain't so, Joe" moment:
If true, it would be just too ugly for words: much, much lower and shabbier, by the rules these folks play by, than anything else this Administration has done to date.
...If Wilson's wife isn't a CIA agent, her ability to do her actual job (she works for a consulting firm) has been compromised, as have her personal relationships. The lives of people she has met with abroad, who might be suspected of having given her sensitive information, have been put at risk. Perhaps she has been put at risk, too.
If she is a CIA agent, her life has certainly been put at risk, and the lives of her foreign sources have been put at grave risk. That reduces our ability to collect intelligence in the future. Of course, on this hypothesis her career is over, now that her cover has been blown. In addition, whoever gave Novak the information (though not Novak himself) is guilty of a felony punishable by five years in prison.
...[T]his latest -- if true, which we, or at least I, don't know -- would involve a completely different magnitude of villainy. Deliberately outing one of your own spies as an act of political revenge would be a truly unforgivable deed, and one that wouldn't become any more forgivable if tomorrow MI5 produced an invoice for 300 tons of yellowcake with Saddam Hussein's signature and thumbprint on it as the recipient.
As Mark Kleiman said more eloquently than I, it *doesn't freakin' matter* if Mrs. Wilson is CIA or not. What matters is that two -- count 'em, two -- sources in the Amdinistration told a journalist for use in publication -- in short, blew her cover. The only alternative explanation I can come up with is that Novak just made the whole thing up (in which case he's set himself up for a dandy libel suit).
If she is not a CIA agent, her professional and personal reptuations have been damaged.
If she *is* a CIA agent, her professional and personal reputations have been damaged, her value as an intel asset is now zilch, and the information may literally have put her life -- or more likely, the lives of her contacts -- in danger.
And for what?
There's simply no good interpretation to this sordid event. At the very least, Mrs. Wilson's repuation has been sullied, whether the information is true or not. But what's worse is that this Administration that is definitely obsessed with secrecy and, we're supposed to believe, concerned about national security apparently did so out of sheer pique. It's simply unforgivable.
Unforgivable indeed. Novak could and indeed should protect the identities of his sources, but the Bush Administration, if it has an ounce of integrity, should either expend every effort to discover and discipline the authors of this smear or apoligize abjectly to Mrs. Wilson -- at the very least.
Republican state attorneys general in at least six states telephoned corporations or trade groups subject to lawsuits or regulations by their state governments to solicit hundreds of thousands of dollars in political contributions, according to internal fundraising documents obtained by The Washington Post.
One of the documents mentions potential state actions against health maintenance organizations and suggests the attorneys general should "start targeting the HMO's" for fundraising. It also cites a news article about consolidation and regulation of insurance firms and states that "this would be a natural area for us to focus on raising money."
These documents obtained by the WaPo certainly give the appearance of an implied quid pro quo for campaign contributions.
Opponents of campaign finance reform cite free speech concerns, and they have a point. However, free speech can be limited for a compelling interest, and I contend that dissolving a campaign finance system that becomes tantamount to open bribery is one such interest. The American people must have assurances that big campaign contributions don't buy access and influence.
Stephen Charest summed it all up nicely in a comment thread at The Left Coaster: "No matter how noble your goals are, when you lie to the people, especially about a cause in which you are asking our men and women to give their lives, you have breached your trust."
Meanwhile, P.L.A. documents how conservatives Jonah Goldberg and Bill Bennett are on record as agreeing that Presidential honesty matters.
Update: The ever-reliable Billmon has yet another series of quotes tracing the Adminitration's prevarication characterization of the resistance to the US occupation.
This morning's analysis by Dana Milbank in the Washington Post of the woes the Bush Administration is experiencing now that they're being held accountable for their claims on Iraq contains a zinger in the fourth graf:
It is too early to know whether the controversy will fade or provide Democrats with political traction. For the moment at least, Bush has little to fear. The majority Republicans in the House and Senate, convinced the Democrats have overreacted, are nearly unanimous in opposing hearings on the matter. But that could change. [Emphasis added]
Perish forbid the GOP would let partisan politics impede the investigation of what's now obvious was majorly flawed presentation of intelligence to sell Bush's war.
And is it just me, or does that sentence imply that Bush has something to fear from hearings?
There's also this:
Some Democrats think the damage to Bush could go well beyond the Iraq issue. One of Bush's most valuable attributes has been his reputation for honesty and straight talking. But the controversy has caused the White House to appear slippery. In moments reminiscent of the Clinton presidency Bush and his aides have sought to parse phrases -- they have called the disputed claim "technically accurate" because it was pinned on British intelligence -- and they have said it is time to "move on," the same phrase Clinton aides used. Also, a president who came to office criticizing those who would blame others for their problems has put responsibility on the CIA and the British.
These notions, of course, are nothing new to those who read this blog and others. The difference is that now editors appear to have stopped assuming Bush is a "straight shooter" and are taking a look at whether Bush's rhetoric matches reality. As I've observed many times in the past, that development can't be good for Bush.
Walter Pincus in a page-one story in today's Washington Post points out that the African uranium claim was far from the only bit of bogus information in Bush's 2003 State of the Unions speech, In fact, the uranium claim -- while known to the Administration at the time to be bunk -- was the only element of Bush's attempt to paint the frightening picture of a nuclear-armed Saddam that hadn't yet been publicly challenged.
In recent days, as the Bush administration has defended its assertion in the president's State of the Union address that Iraq had tried to buy African uranium, officials have said it was only one bit of intelligence that indicated former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was reconstituting his nuclear weapons program.
But a review of speeches and reports, plus interviews with present and former administration officials and intelligence analysts, suggests that between Oct. 7, when President Bush made a speech laying out the case for military action against Hussein, and Jan. 28, when he gave his State of the Union address, almost all the other evidence had either been undercut or disproved by U.N. inspectors in Iraq.
By Jan. 28, in fact, the intelligence report concerning Iraqi attempts to buy uranium from Africa -- although now almost entirely disproved -- was the only publicly unchallenged element of the administration's case that Iraq had restarted its nuclear program. That may explain why the administration strived to keep the information in the speech and attribute it to the British, even though the CIA had challenged it earlier.
For example, in his Oct. 7 speech, Bush said that "satellite photographs reveal that Iraq is rebuilding facilities at [past nuclear] sites." He also cited Hussein's "numerous meetings with Iraqi nuclear scientists" as further evidence that the program was being reconstituted, along with Iraq's attempts to buy high-strength aluminum tubes "needed" for centrifuges used to enrich uranium.
But on Jan. 27 -- the day before the State of the Union address -- the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reported to the U.N. Security Council that two months of inspections in Iraq had found that no prohibited nuclear activities had taken place at former Iraqi nuclear sites. As for Iraqi nuclear scientists, Mohamed ElBaradei told the Security Council, U.N. inspectors had "useful" interviews with some of them, though not in private. And preliminary analysis, he said, suggested that the aluminum tubes, "unless modified, would not be suitable for manufacturing centrifuges."
The next night, Bush delivered his speech, including the now-controversial 16-word sentence, "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."
Of his October examples, only the aluminum tubes charge remained in January, but that allegation had a subtle caveat -- he described the tubes as merely "suitable" for nuclear weapons production. Without the statement on uranium, the allegation concerning aluminum tubes would have been the only nuclear-related action ascribed to Hussein since the early 1990s.
And the tubes had already been questioned not only by IAEA, but also by analysts in U.S. and British intelligence agencies.
The story goes on to explain in detail just how smelly the nuclear-tube claim was; this was no mere dispute over two possible uses, but rather a group of hardline analysts (*cough*Cheney*cough) clinging to a threadbare story despite the fact that the tubes were entirely unsuitable for nuclear weapons production without extensive modification.
Bush, of course, didn't admit any question of their purpose in the SotU, but rather used the weasel word "suitable" to describe their potential.
It's high time principled conservatives wake up and smell the coffee. Regardless of their individual belief that war against Iraq was justified, there's no question now that the President was used highly deceptive scare tactics to gain support for a war that the public was not exactly enthusiastic about. Ignoring these developments, linking to a conservative columnist questions some minor component of the avalanche of evidence, or playing intricate parsing games to come up with some interpretation of Bush's words that might technically be true do not at all absolve them of responsibility for supporting a war launched under false pretenses.
Frankly, the conspicuous failure of several of my conservative friends whom I generally regard as principled to own up to the flaws in Bush's case -- even if it will mean conceding that skeptics like myself were right in their prewar questioning of that case -- stuns and saddens me.
Susanna kindly emailed me about this Stephen den Beste post on "fan service." Mr. Oni kindly emailed me to mention that he'd submitted my own definition from back in February to Untold Millions' post (scroll down to July 15) critical of SDB's description; I'm flattered that UM called mine "much more satisfactory."
By the way, the image is from the hilarious anime movie Project A-Ko (fan site), which positively drips with fan service. Indeed, it almost doesn't count, as its origins as a hentai anime are revealed in plenty of racy images (let's face it; panty shots don't count for much in a movie in which two of the princlipal characters are shown topless). Still, the numerous parodies, anime in-jokes and various mecha also count as fan service.
The Left Coaster has a good post tracking the, ah, evolving statements of the Bush Administration regarding pre-9/11 warnings, from "There were no warnings!" to "There were no specific warnings!" to "We didn't know they'd fly planes into buildings!" (as if that excuses an utter failure to take preventative steps against hijacking) to "We had warnings, but what were we supposed to do about it?!"
Perhaps in this new atmosphere, Bush may finally be held accountable for his own failure to do anything to prevent the terrorist attack that occurred on his watch.
P.L.A. has a must-read post about the erosion of Bush's credibility. It points out the encouraging development that while stories questiong Bush's feeble credibility -- and even outright whoppers -- were difficult to sell to editors stll drinking the "straight shooter" Kool-Aid, holding Bush accountable for his statments is now firmly in the public agenda. And, of course, that isn't good news for Bush.
Update: Talking Points Memo has more of the same: "The disquieting fact is that these whoppers aren't even getting reported any more because it's become a given among reporters and editors that most of what the president is saying on this subject has little connection to anything that's actually going on. And the two keep diverging more and more. It's almost as if the shakier the evidence gets the more certain he becomes about what the evidence was supposed to prove."
Busy, Busy, Busy and CalPundit point to this Wall Street Journal editorial saying that intelligence services should provide data that supports policy makers' predetermined decisions. Perish forbid policy makers should base their actions on what their intelligence services tell them. The dangerous idiocy of this position boggles the mind.
The Washington Post gives Bush both barrels this morning (that darn liberal media!).
In "President Defends Allegation On Iraq," Dana Priest and Dana Milbank note that Bush's latest position is at odds with the defense his aides have used. Bush returns to the already-debunked claim that the Administration didn't know the uranium story was bogus until after the State of the Union address.
President Bush yesterday defended the "darn good" intelligence he receives, continuing to stand behind a disputed allegation about Iraq's nuclear ambitions as new evidence surfaced indicating the administration had early warning that the charge could be false.
Bush said the CIA's doubts about the charge -- that Iraq sought to buy "yellowcake" uranium ore in Africa -- were "subsequent" to the Jan. 28 State of the Union speech in which Bush made the allegation. Defending the broader decision to go to war with Iraq, the president said the decision was made after he gave Saddam Hussein "a chance to allow the inspectors in, and he wouldn't let them in."
Bush's position was at odds with those of his own aides, who acknowledged over the weekend that the CIA raised doubts that Iraq sought to buy uranium from Niger more than four months before Bush's speech.
The president's assertion that the war began because Iraq did not admit inspectors appeared to contradict the events leading up to war this spring: Hussein had, in fact, admitted the inspectors and Bush had opposed extending their work because he did not believe them effective.
In the face of persistent questioning about the use of intelligence before the Iraq war, ad
