Well, Murray Waas at the National Journal has another scoop, and this ought to be a big one.
It seems Waas has confirmed that Bush was told about the State Department’s INR, the DOE and the IAEA’s insistance that those infamous aluminum tubes were for rockets back in October of 2002. Rice has lied repeatedly, claiming that Bush never heard of such a thing until after the war started. The only reason they were getting away with it was because the administration had only released portions of the National Intelligence Estimates, but never the president’s summeries.
Never mind the fact that there were major dissents from within the government on the pages of the major American newspapers throughout the later part of 2002, and the beginning of 2003.
We are supposed to let him off the hook for that oversight with the common assumption that the man can barely read and doesn’t bother with the news.
HUME: How do you get your news?
BUSH: I get briefed by Andy Card and Condi in the morning. They come in and tell me. In all due respect, you’ve got a beautiful face and everything.
I glance at the headlines just to kind of a flavor for what’s moving. I rarely read the stories, and get briefed by people who are probably read the news themselves. But like Condoleezza, in her case, the national security adviser is getting her news directly from the participants on the world stage.
HUME: Has that been your practice since day one, or is that a practice that you’ve…
BUSH: Practice since day one.
HUME: Really?
Now it is clear that Bush had been told that Iraq was not enriching uranium, and had no intention of causing harm to the United States unless attacked. The State Department even correctly predicted that even if the US did invade Iraq, Saddam still wouldn’t attack the US mainland.
So, this is just one more piece for the growing pile of evidence that the president knew good and well that he was completely full of it when he tried to pretend that Iraq was a threat to the United States. There’s Woodward, “F*** Saddam. We’re taking him out.” Paul O’Neil, “From the first cabinet meeting…” Richard Clark “Wolfowitz was pushing Myroie’s crack-pottery, but I told ’em!” The Downing Street Memos “Intelligence is being fixed around the policy.” and now a credible report about the NIE’s that Bush is known to have read “in Tenet’s presence.”
I still have one question that maybe some bloggers out there can answer, Who is “Joe the CIA agent” featured prominently in this New York Times piece from October 3, 2004 who was supposedly the major force in getting the CIA to back the Pentagon neocons’ lies about the tubes?
Considering the state of near total war that existed between the CIA and OSP, this seems like an interesting avenue to go down.
Any takers?
Update: Oops, it was CIA Joe, Joe T. (Turner?), not CIA Mike. Cooperative Research has a bit of information which makes him seem to be just some jerk, pushing his own crap on everyone, rather than a neocon plant, which is, of course, the easiest explanation. If Dick Cheney’s shopping for a bill of goods, why not sell him some and get a promotion? What’s a few hundred thousand dead people compared to a nice retirement?