By Allan P. Duncan
So, with David Kay coming out and stating over the weekend that he didn't believe that Iraqi WMD's existed before Bush went to war with Iraq , I wondered how President Bush would wiggle his way out of this scandal. It didn't take long for my questions to be answered.
It seems as though the blame will come down on the intelligence services that supplied the information to Bush. The Bush Administration will claim that they only acted on the intelligence that was supplied to them and that they were lead to believe that Iraq was an imminent threat to the security of the United States and that they had no choice but to protect Americans from attack.
This argument buffers President Bush from accountability and places the blame squarely on our intelligence services.
I am not naïve. I believe that this is all a ruse to protect Bush from his "Achilles Heel" in the coming election which is 9-11.
If the Bush Administration can establish that our intelligence services were inept in providing accurate information about WMD's in Iraq , then it will be easier for them to likewise pass the blame for the attacks on 9-11 to our intelligence services because they can then say that warnings could not be trusted because our entire intelligence system was dysfunctional.
I harken back to an essay that I wrote back in July. Unfortunately, nobody has been fired or held accountable for the many intelligence failures that the American public has endured since Bush took office.
Where is the outrage!
Allan P. Duncan
http://www.opednews.com/duncan_tenet_fell_on_his_sword_for_9.htm
Tenet
Fell on His Sword for 9-11 Too
By Allan P. Duncan
July 12, 2003
opednews.com
Last night before I went to bed I heard the news that CIA Director George
Tenet had taken the fall for the
Niger
uranium debacle. I
figured it was coming since Bush and Condoleeza Rice had proclaimed
earlier in the day that Tenet had cleared the State of the Union Address
which absolved Bush from all blame from making the case that
Iraq
had tried to buy
uranium in
Africa
.
At around
2:30 AM
this morning, I awoke
drenched in a cold sweat from one of my dreaded premonition fever dreams
and it all began to make sense. The
Niger
story was simply a dry
run by the White House that set the stage for Bush to wiggle his way out
of taking any responsibility for the tragedy that occurred on 9-11!
Hear me out here.
If Bush can get away from taking responsibility for the words he spoke in
his State of the Union Address because the CIA didn't tell him they were
bogus, just think how this precedent will play itself out down the line
when the public finds out about the intelligence briefings Bush received
prior to 9-11"especially the August 6, 2001 briefing that took place in
Crawford, Texas?
This strategy has been in the works for days now if you think about it.
Look at how Colin Powell, Condoleeza Rice and Donald Rumsfeld have danced
around the issue by proclaiming that intelligence is an inexact science in
every statement they've made to the press lately. They've pretty much said
that you can't rely on intelligence as fact or evidence, because it is
open to human interpretation and can be interpreted in so many different
ways.
From what I've read about how the State of the Union Address was crafted,
the writers already knew that the Niger claim was bogus, so they struck
Niger from the speech and simply named Africa as the place where Iraq
tried to buy uranium. They justified this by claiming that the Brits had
intelligence info independent of the
Niger
claim, so basically
they passed the buck onto the British.
As it turns out the British dossier that contained the info was also
bogus, but since the White House claims they didn't know this, it once
again gets them off the hook. Ignorance is bliss at convenient
times".isn't it?
The sticking point here though, and something the mainstream press seems
to forget, is that Cheney asked the CIA to look into the Niger story back
in February of 2002. The CIA then dispatched former Ambassador Joseph C.
Wilson to
Niger
to look into the
claims, and in early March he reported his findings to both the CIA and
the State Department.
Wilson
claims that the Iraq
Niger uranium deal was doubtful and assumed that the Vice President had
been briefed since he was the person who called for the investigation in
the first place.
Now the White House claims that nobody there was ever briefed on the
results of
Wilson
's investigation.
It was also reported that Cheney made multiple visits to the CIA to check
on intelligence regarding
Iraq
. It's hard for me to
believe, that if he had not been briefed on an investigation he himself
had asked the CIA to initiate, that he didn't once think of asking about
it on any of his many visits to the CIA. Something really stinks here.
Also, where has Cheney been during the past few weeks? I can only assume
that the White House has him tucked away safely in his undisclosed
underground bunker in hopes that the mainstream press and politicians will
forget that he was involved in this story in a big, big way! I'd like for
someone with a set, to confront him on this issue and see why he never
thought to follow-up on his own investigation into the Iraq Niger story.
Since the results were known a full ten months before the State of the
Union Address, he could have saved Bush a lot of embarrassment by simply
telling his boss it was all a lie.
So this is how I predict the White House will shield Bush from taking any
responsibility for 9-11.
When the Joint Inquiry Report is released next week and the public finds
out some of the ugly details about what Bush really knew prior to 9-11, it
will all be blamed on the CIA and the other intelligence services.
Intelligence briefings that Bush received will be blown off because the
intelligence used in the briefings will be found to be inexact and not
specific enough to merit action by the President.
The multitude of intelligence warnings from both domestic and foreign
sources will likewise be discounted because they will be deemed inexact
and not specific.
Since Tenet fell on his sword and took blame for the
Niger
scandal, his
credibility will already have been tarnished so that it will be easier to
blame him for the intelligence developed by the CIA prior to 9-11. Since
Tenet is also the main conduit between the intelligence services and Bush,
and since Tenet was directly responsible for the info Bush received in his
daily briefings prior to 9-11, it is a forgone conclusion that Tenet will
be the scapegoat when the dookie hits the fan after the Joint Inquiry
Report is released.
Here's something we need to focus on. When the report does come out, we
need to keep the spotlight on the specific information Bush received in
his intelligence briefings and also on the specific information that was
contained in the many intelligence warnings. We need to then make note of
the information that did turn out to be accurate and true so that it can't
taint all of our intelligence as being inexact because it was developed
via subjective human interpretation.
We can't allow the hard work of thousands of our intelligence
professionals to be discounted and deemed irrelevant simply because the
White House wants to shield the President from taking any responsibility
for what he knew prior to 9-11.
Nearly 3,000 innocent lives were lost on 9-11, and those lost souls, their
grieving families and all Americans deserve to know the full truth as to
what Bush knew, when he knew it and why he didn't act on what he knew.
Let the chips fall where they may and let Bush stand on his own for a
change. I'm getting sick and tried of hearing about people falling on
their swords to protect his sorry ass.
Allan Duncan is a Social Worker who lives in New Hope, PA. This article is copyright by Allan Duncan ADuncan282@aol.com originally published by opednews.com Permission is granted to forward this or to place it on a website as long as the article is included intact, including this statement
