Bush Knew? « Lean Left

Bush Knew?

Sep 6

Salon reports that Tenet told Bush that there were no WMDs in Iraq — in October of 2002:

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.

This makes me extremely angry, so angry I actually hope it is not true. I knew they exaggerated and withheld contradictory data and hyped weak evidence — and all of that was bad enough. But I always assumed a kind of warped good faith - -that they were actually convinced and just fell into the all too human trap of confirmation bias. Bad enough in the leaders of the country, and something that they should have been hounded out of office for a long time ago.

But this, this would be a difference of kind, not just degree. This isn’t confirmation bias; this is rejecting reality and trying to substitute their own. If this is true, its hard to find words strong enough to condemn what Bush did, so perhpas I’ll just stick with the entirely accurate, if somewhat understated, war criminal.

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Comments (10)

#1 by Ted at September 6th, 2007

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I don’t understand this. At the time, Saddam claimed he did not have WMD, so the fact that one of his inner circle also claimed there were no WMD does not seem that earth-shattering to me. What am I missing?
#2 by Kevin at September 6th, 2007

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If you read the whole article, the CIA verified the information and considered it solid enough to have the head of the CIAS tell the President that it was correct.
#3 by Stormy Dragon at September 6th, 2007

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Not to defend Bush, but given Tenet has an obvious interest in getting people to believe this, I want outside confirmation before I accept this story.
#4 by digglahhh at September 6th, 2007

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You have people who advance themselves to very high levels within their specific fields, be it politics, business, etc. You have an economic system that nets results equally, if not better, when chaos and destruction is produced, as opposed to peace and progress. Given the known about these highly accomplished people, the history of industry and our culture, and the overall lay of the land. I find it absurd that the gullible buffoon model of understanding these people and events continually trounces the evil genius model like the Globetrotters versus the Generals (or Federer versus Roddick). Apply the evil genius model to all the failures and gaffes and you’ll see them as successes and rouses. Ask yourself which model fits better…

Even most progressives aren’t ready to believe just how heinous things really may be. Yet again, cognitive dissonance is the phrase that pays.
#5 by Ted at September 6th, 2007

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I have come to believe that Bush and his advisers were pretty sure there were no WMD, and used this non-threat to start a stupid war. However, I remain unmoved by the fact that Saddam’s people shared his claim that he had no WMD. This piece of the puzzle should have been shared with the Congress before the vote to authorize, for sure. But for me it is a stretch to say that because the Iraqi foreign minister said so, Bush knew there were no WMD. Even if the CIA verified he said so.
#6 by KTK at September 6th, 2007

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It wasn’t just that he said so - the informatin was based on documents from the Iraqi government that he was paid to turn over, and corroborated by wiretaps on his phone in which he made similar statements at times when he didn’t know they were listening and had nothing to gain. The administration’s “counterevidence” was completely ludicrous, and they deliberately falsified what they’d been told in order to support the story they’d fabricated, in spite of the evidence, not just because they were suspicious of the source.

From the same article Kevin quotes:

On the eve of Sabri’s appearance at the United Nations in September 2002 to present Saddam’s case, the officer in charge of this operation met in New York with a “cutout” who had debriefed Sabri for the CIA. Then the officer flew to Washington, where he met with CIA deputy director John McLaughlin, who was “excited” about the report. Nonetheless, McLaughlin expressed his reservations. He said that Sabri’s information was at odds with “our best source.” That source was code-named “Curveball,” later exposed as a fabricator, con man and former Iraqi taxi driver posing as a chemical engineer.

The next day, Sept. 18, Tenet briefed Bush on Sabri. “Tenet told me he briefed the president personally,” said one of the former CIA officers. According to Tenet, Bush’s response was to call the information “the same old thing.” Bush insisted it was simply what Saddam wanted him to think. “The president had no interest in the intelligence,” said the CIA officer. The other officer said, “Bush didn’t give a fuck about the intelligence. He had his mind made up.”

But the CIA officers working on the Sabri case kept collecting information. “We checked on everything he told us.” French intelligence eavesdropped on his telephone conversations and shared them with the CIA. These taps “validated” Sabri’s claims, according to one of the CIA officers. The officers brought this material to the attention of the newly formed Iraqi Operations Group within the CIA. But those in charge of the IOG were on a mission to prove that Saddam did have WMD and would not give credit to anything that came from the French. “They kept saying the French were trying to undermine the war,” said one of the CIA officers.

The officers continued to insist on the significance of Sabri’s information, but one of Tenet’s deputies told them, “You haven’t figured this out yet. This isn’t about intelligence. It’s about regime change.”
#7 by tgirsch at September 6th, 2007

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Of course, it doesn’t help that Tenet changed his tune in the now-infamous “slam dunk” meeting.
#8 by Ted at September 7th, 2007

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OK, that’s much more convincing. I screwed up and did not see the continuation at the bottom of the first page. It is amazing that this has not received much attention. I suppose a guy making hand signals in a toilet stall is much more compelling…
#9 by gattsuru at September 7th, 2007

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Hm…

Dunno. Strange that it either wasn’t in his memoirs, or if it was, I managed to miss it.

Can’t disprove it, of course, but it seems a bit suspicious. More so since he would have had to report this sorta stuff to the Select Committee on Intelligence, and they were suspicious enough about it that even the Democrats on that committee still seemed to think war with Iraq was worth it.
#10 by Pookey at September 8th, 2007

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We’re still not debating that Bush always intended this war and used whatever rationale he could muster to do so, are we? This conversation should be done - let’s talk about what we can do to put the tyrant and his minions in jail. Let’s talk about how we can fight to get the insidious contractors (such as Haliburton) to reimburse the taxpayers for their fraudulant practices (and put those in responsible in jail), let’s talk about what can be done for justice now and to secure justice for the future.