posted 01-29-2004 05:48 PM            

US Acknowledges Flaws in Iraq Intelligence

By Adam Entous

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Bush (news - web sites)'s national security adviser acknowledged on Thursday there may have been flaws in prewar intelligence about Iraq (news - web sites) but brushed aside calls for an independent investigation into the matter.

"I think that what we have is evidence that there are differences between what we knew going in and what we found on the ground," Condoleezza Rice (news - web sites) told CBS.

She added, "That's not surprising in a country that was as closed and secretive as Iraq, a country that was doing everything that it could to deceive the United Nations (news - web sites), to deceive the world."

Bush based his decision to invade Iraq last year on what he called a "grave and gathering danger" posed by Iraq's weapons. He acted without U.N. backing, cutting short efforts by U.N. inspectors to check out the weapons reports in Iraq.

In a series of television interviews, Rice defended Bush's decision and said the United States may never learn the whole truth about Iraq's arms capabilities because of looting, which U.S. forces failed to stop immediately after the invasion.

For months, administration officials had expressed confidence banned weapons would be found.

But after the top U.S. weapons hunter concluded Iraq had no stockpiles of biological or chemical weapons, the White House said on Monday it would review prewar intelligence. On Tuesday, Bush tempered his prewar insistence that Iraq had an arsenal of banned weapons.

HOT POLITICAL ISSUE

The weapons issue is a hot topic in campaigning for the November presidential election, with Democrats saying Bush misled the country over the level of the Iraqi threat.

Bush's main international ally over Iraq, British Prime Minister Tony Blair (news - web sites), has come under similar pressure from political opponents but Blair drew comfort on Wednesday from an independent report rejecting a BBC claim that Blair had hyped the threat from Baghdad.

The White House acknowledged last year that it had been a mistake to accuse Iraq of trying to buy African uranium. The allegation -- included in Bush's State of the Union address -- was found to have been based partly on forged documents.

"When you are dealing with secretive regimes that want to deceive, you're never going to be able to be positive" about intelligence, Rice told NBC on Thursday.

She said the U.S. team hunting for Iraq's weapons would "gather all of the facts that we possibly can," leaving open the possibility that its findings may be inconclusive.

She blamed gaps in data on looters who sacked government offices after the invasion and on ousted Iraqi President Saddam Hussein (news - web sites), who she said was so secretive that "he allowed the world to continue to wonder" what weapons he still had.

Critics say the administration did little to secure sensitive sites immediately after the invasion, undercutting efforts to find the evidence of weapons.

'UNRESOLVED AMBIGUITY'

David Kay, who had led the U.S. team hunting for Iraq's weapons, warned on Wednesday of an "unresolved ambiguity" about Saddam's weapons capabilities partly due to the looting of documents, laboratories and military bases.

He said he would support an independent investigation into the intelligence.

Rice said the Iraq Survey Group, which is continuing to search for weapons in Iraq, should complete its work and that the intelligence community had already launched its own investigation.

Gen. John Abizaid, head of the U.S. military's Central Command, stressed the importance of pressing on with the weapons search.

"If we did get the WMD wrong, OK, I understand that. But I can tell you that there are certain things that we got extremely right which allowed us to conduct a campaign that was pretty quick and, you know, pretty decisive in a very short period of time," he told reporters.

Rice said the administration would not change its position that Saddam had to go. "The judgment is going to be the same: This is a dangerous man in a dangerous part of the world and it was time to do something about this threat," she said.

posted 01-31-2004 07:01 AM            

Remember back when America was the beacon of Freedom to the world...

(and neo-cons thought investigating government complicity in crimes was the right thing to do)

>January 1994
Attorney General Janet Reno names New York lawyer and former U.S. attorney Robert B. Fiske Jr. as special counsel to investigate the Clintons' involvement in Whitewater. Fiske announces he will also explore a potential link between Foster's suicide and his intimate knowledge of the developing Whitewater scandal.

February 1994
Republican attorney Jay Stephens is appointed to head the Resolution Trust Corp.'s investigation of the failure of Madison Guaranty.
Summer 1994
The House and Senate Banking committees begin hearings on Whitewater. Twenty-nine Clinton administration officials are subpoenaed or testify at congressional hearings. All are cleared of any wrongdoing.

August 5, 1994
A U.S. Court of Appeals panel refuses to re-appoint Fiske as special counsel, citing a possible conflict of interest because he was appointed by Clinton's attorney general, Janet Reno. Kenneth W. Starr, a former federal appeals court judge and U.S. solicitor who worked in the Reagan and Bush administrations, succeeds Fiske as the independent counsel to investigate Whitewater-Madison matters. He reissues subpoenas for documents, such as the Rose billing records of Hillary Clinton.
< http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/special/whitewater/timeline.htm
>April 22, 1995
Starr interviews the Clintons privately.

July 18, 1995
The Senate Special Whitewater Committee, chaired by Republican Alfonse D'Amato, begins hearings on Whitewater and on Foster's suicide. D'Amato is also a chairman of Republican Bob Dole's presidential campaign. The hearings last 11 months.

Aug. 10, 1995
The House Banking Committee, chaired by Republican Jim Leach of Iowa, finishes its examination and finds no illegalities.
<
>Jan. 8, 1996
In a commentary titled "Blizzard of Lies," New York Times columnist William Safire describes Hillary Clinton as "a congenital liar." White House press secretary Michael McCurry said if Clinton were not president he "would have delivered a more forceful response to that [column] on the bridge of Mr. Safire's nose."

Jan. 15, 1996
Republicans suggest billing documents may have been withheld from their investigation to disguise how much work Hillary Clinton had done for Madison Guaranty. The White House issues a denial.

Jan. 22, 1996
Kenneth Starr subpoenas Hillary Clinton in a criminal probe to determine if records were intentionally withheld. This is the first time a wife of a sitting president has been subpoenaed.
<

>April 22, 1997
The U.S. District Court extends the Whitewater grand jury's term six more months, until Nov. 7, after Starr says he has "extensive evidence" of possible obstruction of justice.

April 25, 1997
8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, overruling a lower court, says the White House must turn over subpoenaed notes to Starr. The notes, for which the White House claimed attorney-client privilege, were taken by White House lawyers when investigators questioned the First Lady.

May 2, 1997
The White House announces that it will appeal the decision on the subpoenaed notes to the Supreme Court.

June 23, 1997
The Supreme Court refuses to hear the appeal, and the White House turns over the notes.
<
Yet this week our Rightwing dominated "extreme court" over ruled the U"S Constitution and denied access to attorneys to detainees held at Guantanamo Bay.

>July 15, 1997
Starr's office concludes that Vincent Foster's death in 1993 was a suicide.

July 30, 1997
Susan McDougal, being detained for contempt of court, is moved into a federal detention facility after seven months in two Los Angeles jails, much of which she spent locked in a windowless cell 23 hours a day. The move comes a week after the American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit alleging that McDougal was being held, at Starr's request, in "barbaric" conditions in an attempt to coerce her to testify.
<

Sue McDougal's treatment was a harbinger of what Starr's neo-cons would do to thousands of others once they took power.
>April 30, 1998
A federal judge ... criticizes Starr for going on "the quintessential fishing expedition."

Nov. 19, 1998
During the first day of impeachment hearings, Starr clears Clinton

in relation to the firing of White House travel office workers in 1993 and the improper collection of FBI files revealed in 1996.
He also says his office drafted an impeachment referral stemming from Whitewater in 1997, but decided not to send it because the evidence was insufficient.
< http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/special/whitewater/timeline2.htm

America needs an independent council that hates Bush as much as starr hates Clinton.

Such a thourough investigation by a dedicated partisan could benifit Bush by proving him innocent of any complicity.

Those who called for the spending of $60 million to investigate the Clintons should eagerly support spending monies to prove Bush is above suspicion!