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Bush Knew

By Leslie on September 9, 2007 at 12:05 AM in Current Affairs

Salon’s Sidney Blumenthal:

On Sept. 18, 2002, CIA director George Tenet briefed President Bush in the Oval Office on top-secret intelligence that Saddam Hussein did not have weapons of mass destruction, according to two former senior CIA officers. Bush dismissed as worthless this information from the Iraqi foreign minister, a member of Saddam’s inner circle, although it turned out to be accurate in every detail. Tenet never brought it up again.

Nor was the intelligence included in the National Intelligence Estimate of October 2002, which stated categorically that Iraq possessed WMD. No one in Congress was aware of the secret intelligence that Saddam had no WMD as the House of Representatives and the Senate voted, a week after the submission of the NIE, on the Authorization for Use of Military Force in Iraq. The information, moreover, was not circulated within the CIA among those agents involved in operations to prove whether Saddam had WMD.

On April 23, 2006, CBS’s “60 Minutes” interviewed Tyler Drumheller, the former CIA chief of clandestine operations for Europe, who disclosed that the agency had received documentary intelligence from Naji Sabri, Saddam’s foreign minister, that Saddam did not have WMD. “We continued to validate him the whole way through,” said Drumheller. “The policy was set. The war in Iraq was coming, and they were looking for intelligence to fit into the policy, to justify the policy.”

Now two former senior CIA officers have confirmed Drumheller’s account to me and provided the background to the story of how the information that might have stopped the invasion of Iraq was twisted in order to justify it. They described what Tenet said to Bush about the lack of WMD, and how Bush responded, and noted that Tenet never shared Sabri’s intelligence with then Secretary of State Colin Powell. According to the former officers, the intelligence was also never shared with the senior military planning the invasion, which required U.S. soldiers to receive medical shots against the ill effects of WMD and to wear protective uniforms in the desert.

Instead, said the former officials, the information was distorted in a report written to fit the preconception that Saddam did have WMD programs. That false and restructured report was passed to Richard Dearlove, chief of the British Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), who briefed Prime Minister Tony Blair on it as validation of the cause for war…. 

Bush didn’t care what the facts were. His mind was made up. He would invade Iraq. To accomplish that, the Decider Guy would lie to Congress, the State Department, his war planners, our troops and the American people.

Blumenthal’s article shouldn’t surprise anyone. However, it’s still upsetting to read in detail how Bush pulled off this crime and hear the lies still being repeated today, while thousands of innocent people are being slaughtered. It’s also scary to think that Bush may use the same techniques of deception and manipulation to justify an attack on Iran.

  • mainsailset

    Interesting timing, especially if Cheney was in the room.

  • Jess Wonderin

    . . . so we add this to the following:

    “A previously undisclosed exchange of letters shows that President Bush was told in advance by his top Iraq envoy in May 2003 of a plan to “dissolve Saddam’s military and intelligence structures,” a plan that the envoy, L. Paul Bremer, said referred to dismantling the Iraqi Army.” NYT 6 Sep 07

    Nancy, put it back on the table . . . we are sick of spineless responses to this BS and lies. Bush will allow the American and Iraqi bodies to pile up, spending lives and treasury to buy time to clear out and have someone else clean up his mess like so many times in the past . . . he is eager to get out and “earn those huge speaking fee” – let him speak at the Hague for free to start . . .

  • PrchrLady

    It is not a surprise to those of us who have been listening to Larry and others who regularly post here. But it certainly is very disgusting. We can only hope and pray that Blumenthal’s article will wake up more and more people to bushco’s real purpose. Salon, I know is read by many, many people. So perhaps this will force MSM to start doing some real reporting, instead of the glut of shitty prison shows they seem to love to stuff down our throats. Perhaps they are getting us ready for the new reality that they expect to come to be when they impose martial law??? IMPEACH Bush & Cheney NOW, and they will have something else to occupy their minds and maybe they will not attack Iran… and PLEASE, Support the Troops… Bring Them Home. NOW

    • Blunt Force Trauma

      Don’t rely on the lamestream media presstitutes, PrchrLady. I’m sure they’ll bury this just like all the other stories that are damning. The “Masters” won’t allow very much truth to get out. It would cause civil unrest.

      But, hey, speaking of buried, check this out for fun and giggles….

      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=inyCkCvqRO0&v3

      ….and this….

      http://survivalacres.com/wordpress/?p=884

    • Detroit Sam

      The so-called journalist and takling heads in the main stream media will never investigate anything related to GWB. These people are nothing but first class apologist and lapdogs.

  • Delia

    Ya know, not that the Vietnam War had any real excuse, but it built up slowly, over decades, was handed off to us from the French, and we were already walking down the deadly path before our Best and Brightest had a chance to ask “Is this trip necessary?” and against all better judgment, said “Yes.” So, what I’m saying is that there was a certain momentum of historical events that explains, even if it doesn’t justify, the Vietnam debacle.

    There is NO such long network of events leading up to the Iraq War. It was based on a tissue of lies from the very beginning. The more we learn about the origins of the war, the more evident it becomes that Bush and Cheney decided on the war beforehand and manufactured the evidence to fit their agenda. Every aspect of the propaganda campaign has been designed to bully and silence war critics and hide any facts that militate against the purported success of the war. I don’t think we can even begin to plumb the depths of the harshness with which this era of history will be judged.

  • Waiting in Texas

    Surely, at this point, the only people that are left standing in the room are Bush, Cheney, Halliburton and FOX news. Everyone else has abandoned ship. So I guess between those four, they will be carrying out the attacks on Iran?

    What else can we and the good men and women of our intelligence services and armed forces do to stop an attack on Iran? Is there anything that can be done to circumvent Cheney’s agenda?

    • http://noquarterusa.net/blog/ Leslie

      One thing each of us could do is call our Representatives, switchboard at 202-225-3121, and ask them to rescind the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force, which Bush would probably use to justify broadening the war to Iran.

  • It’s Over

    We will attack Iran. The munitions have been prepared, the lead up is in progress, Congress has pre-approved it and voted no on the Webb amendment to rescind it. If you think the Iraq conflict is a mess – wait, it will get worse – America will receive substantial damage.

  • Michael Gass

    Larry,

    Ok… I’m a bit confused. I realize that the Blumenthal piece is important, however, we already knew he knew. Tyler Drumheller gave a 60 Minutes interview where he flat stated that Bush knew in the fall of 2002, BEFORE the attack on Iraq.

    I’m also a bit surprised that you cite Blumenthal’s piece and not Drumheller’s April 23, 2006, interview.

    Meanwhile, the CIA had made a major intelligence breakthrough on Iraq’s nuclear program. Naji Sabri, Iraq’s foreign minister, had made a deal to reveal Iraq’s military secrets to the CIA. Drumheller was in charge of the operation.

    “This was a very high inner circle of Saddam Hussein. Someone who would know what he was talking about,” Drumheller says.

    “You knew you could trust this guy?” Bradley asked.

    “We continued to validate him the whole way through,” Drumheller replied.

    According to Drumheller, CIA Director George Tenet delivered the news about the Iraqi foreign minister at a high-level meeting at the White House, including the president, the vice president and Secretary of State Rice.

    • http://noquarterusa.net/blog/ Leslie

      The article Michael is referring to is here. CBS’s Ed Bradley interviewed Tyler Drumheller, April 23, 2006, and Drumheller said:

      “”It just sticks in my craw every time I hear them say it’s an intelligence failure. It’s an intelligence failure. This was a policy failure,” Drumheller tells Bradley.

      “The idea of going after Iraq was U.S. policy. It was going to happen one way or the other.”

  • mudkitty

    Of course Bush knew – heck I knew, and I don’t get paid the big bucks to know. I’m just an ordinary citizen, and if I knew, Bush had to know.

    I’m a nobody, so how did I know, back during Florida 2000, and even during the first campaign, that Bush would find some reason, or some excuse, to invade Iraq. How come I knew that?

  • Pingback: claeskrantz.com | Bush visste att det inte fanns WMD

  • anon

    Basically this report is a smoking gun wrt “lied us in to war” etc.

    The only question is the question of why public and official response to the report is so muted or nonexistent. Presumably there should be a Congressional investigation, in any sane perspective. However, there will not be a murmur.

    Why not? I speculate it is because many Democrats also knew well enough or came to understand (such as John Kerry, Intelligence Committee member) that there was no strategic weapons threat from Iraq. This was probably an open secret in the Congress. I think also that the Democrats don’t really want to take on Bush, to hold him accountable.

    So the report from Blumenthal will go unaddressed; for the situation to be otherwise would actually require a government of officials who perceive themselves as having some form of actual accountability for serving the real public interest, and this government, we assuredly do not have.

  • http://noquarterusa.net/ SusanUnPC

    Watch for this tomorrow. Via Josh Marshall:

    After reporting to the White House and Congress last year, members of the Iraq Study Group, like all great super-groups, went their separate ways. After the president largely ignored its recommendations, the ISG pondered a reunion tour, but the White House reportedly intervened, imploring former Secretary of State James Baker not to reconvene the panel.

    So, the U.S. Institute of Peace did the next best thing — it convened the experts who advised the ISG, which led to a summer-long discussion among some two dozen former U.S. officials and ambassadors, former CIA analysts, and Iraq specialists from think tanks and universities. Their recommendations are poised to be released tomorrow.

    … READ ALL.

    • Shirin

      I have heard about these recommendations, according to which the U.S. would maintain a very high troop presence for another five years.

      It’s a non-starter as far as I am concerned. It’s ridiculous, in fact, and a completely waste of time.

  • Centrocitta

    Bush knew as early as October 30, 1996 — the day before Holloween when there was already snow on the ground in Minneapolis.

  • Centrocitta

    It was 1998 when A&E started showing documentaries over and over again of the first Gulf war. The content included films of jets taking off from and landing on our aircraft carriers. And this was during the time when the hijackers were learning to fly in Florida. Nothing like providing the immigrants with some interesting TV viewing when they wern’t at the airfield.

  • mudkitty

    Oh for goodness sakes! Bush knew all along and didn’t care. Bush knew while he was campaigning in ’99. He knew all along. His father told him.

    No more benefit of the doubt for that guy. No more excuses.

  • Teaeopy

    The British got played, and their country has experienced serious consequences. I’m hoping that someone in the know there will yet come forward with credible information about the pre-invasion manipulation of intelligence.

    The Congress are unlikely to seriously consider impeachment, or even to have hearings investigating pre-invasion executive branch conduct in presenting their case for war. Most members of Congress, I gather, would point out that the USA faces serious problems at home and abroad, especially military engagement in Iraq, and that nothing should distract attention from those problems. All but a few of those who would like to allege high crimes and misdemeanors apparently figure that waiting for the current presidential term to expire must suffice. No one should know better than the Congress that much harm can be done in a year and a third by an administration that feels unconstrained by the Constitution.

    There is much trepidation, that uneasy feeling, in the general public. I’d like to see evidence of some trepidation in the Congress. Only Congress has the constitutional instrument to strike trepidation in the President; they’d better use it, or weakened representative government will be a prominent item in their ugly legacy.

  • Truth Pundit

    Bush knew?

    So effing what?

    Remember 9/11. People leaping to their deaths from 109 storey windows. People having to chose between burning to death, asphyxiation from toxic fumes or leaping to their death, whilst breathing a few gulps of clean air during the last few seconds of their death.

    The part of 9/11 where the media decided what Americans could or could not see. Did not show footage of the HUNDREDS of people who jumped to their deaths.

    These people were like rain on the ground. Except they hit hard and make more of a mess. The ground below the World Trade Centre looked like a butchery.

    There were body parts and limbs EVERYWHERE.

    And you effing son’s of female dogs now argue about Iraq.

    You have no idea of the real war. You are still arguing over why Bush is there. And we are NOT at war with Iraq!!!

    If you don’t get over yourselves and start loving your nation and freedom, you will all be praying to Allah 5 times a day.

    Islam has one intention. That is to make the entire world an Islamic Nation.

    The war on Terror should be renamed for what it really is. The war on Islamic Jihad.

    10 out of 15 city councillers in Brussels are now Muslim. France is being torn apart by rioting Muslim immigrants. The indiginous French will be out numbered in approx 20 years. Sweden is almost ahead of France. Pockets of Sweden are so bad that Ambulances and emergency workers will not go there.
    England is lost already. Parts of England look like Islamabad. Indonesia and Malaysia are almost completely swallowed up. There is a huge wave sweeping across Africa. Millions and millions of non-muslims are being slaughtered by Muslims. Islamic charities fund these campaigns. Africa will be the new destination when the oil dries up.

    Islamists are heavily investing in world wide ports, aerospace, water plants, banks and tourism. Whilst they off set tax payments into non charitable organisations which are exclusively for the Islamics by the Islamics.

    As we approach 9/11, Muslims triumphantly march down the streets of New York. A Muslim awareness parade endorsed by the mayor. Can you imagine Pearl Harbour and the Japanese marching down the streets of Hawaii in CELEBRATION.

    Furthermore. Flight 93. The design has been approved for the memorial. The design is a CELEBRATION of Islam – in the shape of a red crescent.

    The Democrats LOVE THIS.

    This is what the DEMOCRATS WANT. A world Islamic State. That is the GLOBAL PEACE STRATEGY.

    One world where everyone is exactly the same, has exactly the same rights and NOTHING IS LEFT TO FIGHT FOR.

    What sort of world are you leaving to your children.
    WAKE UP.

  • taters

    It is an atrocity that this WH refused to go after the perpetrators of 9/11 and instead chose Iraq. Which despite the insane ramblings of the dumbass poster, TP upstream – had no connections to AQ or 9/11.

  • Centrocitta

    I want to know why the owner of the WTC at the time of the attack, Larry Silverstein, hasn’t been arrested yet or at least deported to Israel?

    And by the way, how long is the city of New York going to milk the tragedy? Personally, I think it’s time to move on from ground zero.

  • Centrocitta

    ….These people were like rain on the ground. Except they hit hard and make more of a mess. The ground below the World Trade Centre looked like a butchery….

    At the hands of the Israelis, parts of Palestine have looked like a butchery too during the last 50 years.

  • Centrocitta

    …..There is a huge wave sweeping across Africa. Millions and millions of non-muslims are being slaughtered by Muslims. Islamic charities fund these campaigns. Africa will be the new destination when the oil dries up…..

    A deliberate lie about Africa. Catholocism is growing on the African continent more than any other religion. The next Pope, in fact, maybe the African cardinal. Most of the African immigrants who come to Italy are Christians — not Muslims.