> -----Original Message----- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > Behalf Of John D. Giorgis
... > Which of course brings us back to a, b, c, or d - all of which would be > consistent with not using it in the State of the Union? Care to give it > one more shot Bob? How about you, Nick? I don't know what you are after, but I think I've been overly kind to the administration in saying that this statement should have been more carefully verified. After all, it is now clear that the White House revisited this "fact" after it had already been discredited by the CIA, and persuaded the NSC to come up with the new wording. Why didn't Bush say "but the CIA disagrees," when it is obvious that the White House knew that? That's an inexcusable withholding of information, unless we are to put greater stock in British intelligence than our own, in which case something is wrong indeed. So we have the most important political leader in the world, in his most important speech, arguing for the most important decision a nation can make -- and he leaves out the fact that our own intelligence assessment disagrees with what he is saying? That's outrageous. The administration's explanation that the CIA failed to catch the bogus information in review is ludicrous unless they'd have us believe that the White House came up with the intelligence on its own, completely independently of our own intelligence apparatus, and the reviews, done by people who are the world's leading experts on the issues, somehow didn't notice it. Phooey. Not only would that be dumb, it would require them to deliberately bypass or manipulate a rigorous system designed to prevent exactly that. I guess I'll say a bit more about why I know about the process. I used to be the product manager for the language analysis software that the NSC uses to decide which intelligence documents they need to read. Most of our customers used it to find documents that were relevant to their interests, but the NSC does just the opposite -- they use it to make sure they don't miss anything. As they review documents, they add key words about the subject of the document to their filter. Thus, the software filters out documents that tell them about things they already know about, so that they can read everything else -- this is a system for ensuring that they don't miss anything that relates to their focus area. Exactly who and how many people brief the president is classified, so I can't say that these are the very people who deliver intelligence to Bush. I can say that they are totally key to the process. (All I'm jeopardizing here, if anything, is my White House press clearance, which I haven't used in a long darn time.) There is someone on the NSC who is responsible for Iraq. There's someone who is responsible for Niger. There is someone who tracks nuclear issues. There is no way these people -- whose job it is to vette intelligence for the President -- could simply goof up like that, given their rigorous system for ensuring that they don't miss any subjects that appear in our intelligence. Are we to believe that Ambassador Joe Wilson's report from his trip to Niger did not make its way into the system, even though he says his reports went to the State Department and the CIA, but an unconfirmed British intelligence report did? It is strange, to say the least, that the DCI is taking the fall for this supposed mistake, since the NSC staff works for Condoleezza Rice. And now we have reports that the NSC's weapons guy, Bob Joseph, did know about it and said it was not credible. So did the State Department, in direct response to an administration claim that the Iraqis had a nuclear program. I've realized that there's a strong emotional component to this for me, which I suspect is shared by many others who grew up in the 60s. I had nightmares about nuclear war, lots of them, as a child. I can remember the Cuban missile crisis, vaguely, and certainly remember all of the fear in our country, the people building bomb shelters, etc. We practiced "civil defense drills" at school and our basement was a fallout shelter. As a result, Bush's mention of the possibility of Iraq with nuclear weapons touched a nerve. The idea of those nightmares arising again was one of the things that brought me to reluctantly support the war, and by no means a minor reason. Raising the specter of nuclear terrorism certainly was effective, which makes the omission of the rest of the story all that more egregious. When manipulation of intelligence can make its way into the State of the Union, it is very hard to imagine that it isn't being manipulated in many other areas, too. As I read the coverage of this issue, I see more and more evidence that that's exactly what's been going on. Nick _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
