Bush and Officials Lied leading up to Iraq war

[maineman]

Going IN to Iraq was not the mistake. That was one of the most brilliant military campaigns in all of of human history.

It was Rumsfeld's idocy AFTER that, that was the big mess. Sen Chuck Hagel warned them they had no adequate plan for AFTER the fall Sadaam and were relying on unrealistic expectations from the Iraqi's themselves....all which proved to be correct.

Basically, we failed to secure and disarm the country in the year after toppling the government. To do that we would have to be almost as brutal to the populace as Sadaam was, much as we were in Japan following WWII. But we weren't. ANd THAT was the screw up. Not the toppling of the regime.

that is your opinion. Please do not denigrate MY patriotism if I do not agree.

 

[Annie]

The DNI position wasn't established until after the war had started right?

at least after 9/11:

http://www.dni.gov/aboutODNI/history.htm

 

[jreeves]

I am sure that Congress isn't confirm anybody they don't agree with, do we have to even mention that, Judicial appointees.

General Michael V. Hayden, USAF, became the 18th Director of the Central Intelligence Agency on 30 May 2006.

Seems if it was so easy to replace them there would be more than 18 in 61 years...right?

 

[Teri B.]

I am sure that Congress isn't confirm anybody they don't agree with, do we have to even mention that, Judicial appointees.

It depends on the make up of the Congress. The Congress was Republican dominated till 2006, and they across the board gave Bush pretty much whatever he wanted. But we're specifically talking about Tenet, and he's written a book on the subject, and what the Bush administration wanted from him - they got.

 

[jreeves]

at least after 9/11:

http://www.dni.gov/aboutODNI/history.htm

I will admit when I'm wrong I was thinking of the NID..

 

[Teri B.]

The effectiveness of any political appointee over a Federal Agency is usually VERY minimal. They run themselves and only on rare occasion does an appointee posses the charisma and perseverance to change things in these massive bureaucracies. The agencies are run by career civil service who there long before the current administration and will be there long AFTER it leaves. They most ignore their politically appointed bosses because, in most cases, they never last more than two or three years.

Like they ignored Gonzales in the Justice Dept.?

Look, you don't have to take my word for any of it.

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[jreeves]

It depends on the make up of the Congress. The Congress was Republican dominated till 2006, and they across the board gave Bush pretty much whatever he wanted. But we're specifically talking about Tenet, and he's written a book on the subject, and what the Bush administration wanted from him - they got.

Tenet was looking to get out of the kitchen cause it was too hot. As I stated several times the CIA is an independent agency, I think I proved it with the CIA's website. Then you get people saying that the CIA is an executive indepedent agency that is an oxymoron.

 

[Zoomie1980]

Like they ignored Gonzales in the Justice Dept.?

Look, you don't have to take my word for any of it.

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Justice Department is a bit unique, at least at the attorney level. That's a fairly small community. The big departments like defense, state, education, commerce, interior, and especially intelligence, for the most part, pay lip service to their political appointee bosses. The day-in, day-out operations barely notice nor care who's at the top. Intel works much today as it did 20 years ago. Aircrews fly and ground crews maintain pretty much as they have for 85 years of military aviation. The FAA does it's thing much the same now as it did under Clinton. The IRS does what it does, regardless of who runs it at the tip. My local USDA field office functions today much like it did 50 years ago, just more automated now.....etc....

 

[Teri B.]

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[DeadCanDance]

Tenet was looking to get out of the kitchen cause it was too hot. As I stated several times the CIA is an independent agency, I think I proved it with the CIA's website. Then you get people saying that the CIA is an executive indepedent agency that is an oxymoron.

You're actually quite slow and dim witted, so let me explain this again. Try moving your lips while you read, for greater comprehenstion.

The Executive Branch of the Federal Government consists of 1) The Office of the Presidency. 2) The Executive Departments, like Department of Defense, Department of Treasury, etc., 3) And Independent Agencies. "Independent" does not mean their outside the Executive Branch of government. It means they are "independent", in that they are not within one of the Federal Executive Departments. They are not some fourth, "indepedent" branch of governement. They are still in the Executive branch of the federal government. Agencies and Departments are two separate government functions, but they are both in the Executive Branch.

Independent agencies of the United States government

Independent agencies of the United States government are those that exist outside of the departments (Treasury, Defense, Commerce) of the executive branch. Established through separate statutes passed by the U.S. Congress, each respective statutory grant of authority defines the goals the agency must work towards, as well as what substantive areas, if any, it may have the power of rulemaking over.

The executive departments are the major operating units of the U.S. federal government, but many other agencies have important responsibilities for serving the public interest and carrying out government operations. Executive branch independent agencies are not part of a fourth branch of government; they are part of the executive branch, but are not part of a specific executive department (e.g. Defense, Treasury, Commerce).

Examples of independent agencies

* The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) coordinates the intelligence activities of certain government departments and agencies; collects, correlates, and evaluates intelligence information relating to national security; and makes recommendations to the National Security Council within the Office of the President.

* The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) regulates commodity futures and option markets in the United States. The agency protects market participants against manipulation, abusive trade practices and fraud. Through effective oversight and regulation, the CFTC enables the markets to serve better their important functions in the nation's economy providing a mechanism for price discovery and a means of offsetting price risk.

* The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) works with state and local governments throughout the United States to control and abate pollution in the air and water and to deal with problems related to solid waste, pesticides, radiation, and toxic substances. EPA sets and enforces standards for air and water quality, evaluates the impact of pesticides and chemical substances, and manages the "Superfund" program for cleaning toxic waste sites.

* The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is charged with regulating interstate and international communications by radio, television, wire,
satellite, and cable. It licenses radio and television broadcast stations, assigns radio frequencies, and enforces regulations designed to ensure that cable rates are reasonable. The FCC regulates common carriers, such as telephone and telegraph companies, as well as wireless telecommunications service providers.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independent_agencies_of_the_United_States_government

Independent Agencies of the Federal Executive Branch

source usa.gov

http://www.usa.gov/Agencies/Federal/Executive.shtml
http://www.usa.gov/Agencies/Federal/Independent.shtml

 

[Teri B.]

Some Iraq Analysts Felt Pressure From Cheney Visits

By Walter Pincus and Dana Priest
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, June 5, 2003; Page A01

Vice President Cheney and his most senior aide made multiple trips to the CIA over the past year to question analysts studying Iraq's weapons programs and alleged links to al Qaeda, creating an environment in which some analysts felt they were being pressured to make their assessments fit with the Bush administration's policy objectives, according to senior intelligence officials.

With Cheney taking the lead in the administration last August in advocating military action against Iraq by claiming it had weapons of mass destruction, the visits by the vice president and his chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, "sent signals, intended or otherwise, that a certain output was desired from here," one senior agency official said yesterday.

Other agency officials said they were not influenced by the visits from the vice president's office, and some said they welcomed them. But the disclosure of Cheney's unusual hands-on role comes on the heels of mounting concern from intelligence officials and members of Congress that the administration may have exaggerated intelligence it received about Iraq to build a case for war.

While visits to CIA headquarters by a vice president are not unprecedented, they are unusual, according to intelligence officials. The exact number of trips by Cheney to the CIA could not be learned, but one agency official described them as "multiple." They were taken in addition to Cheney's regular attendance at President Bush's morning intelligence briefings and the special briefings the vice president receives when he is at an undisclosed location for security reasons.

A spokeswoman for Cheney would not discuss the matter yesterday. "The vice president values the hard work of the intelligence community, but his office has a practice of declining to comment on the specifics of his intelligence briefings," said Cathie Martin, the vice president's public affairs director.

Concern over the administration's prewar claims about Iraq has been growing in Congress and among intelligence officials as a result of the failure to uncover any weapons of mass destruction two months after the collapse of the Iraqi government. Similar ferment is building in Britain, where Prime Minister Tony Blair is under pressure from within the Labor Party to explain whether British intelligence may have overstated the case of Iraq's covert weapons programs. Blair pledged yesterday to cooperate with a parliamentary probe of the government's use of intelligence material.

In a signal of administration concern over the controversy, two senior Pentagon officials yesterday held a news conference to challenge allegations that they pressured the CIA or other agencies to slant intelligence for political reasons. "I know of no pressure," said Douglas J. Feith, undersecretary for policy. "I know of nobody who pressured anybody."

Feith said a special Pentagon office to analyze intelligence in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks did not necessarily focus on Iraq but came up with "some interesting observations about the linkages between Iraq and al Qaeda."

Officials in the intelligence community and on Capitol Hill, however, have described the office as an alternative source of intelligence analysis that helped the administration make its case that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein posed an imminent threat.

Government sources said CIA analysts were not the only ones who felt pressure from their superiors to support public statements by Bush, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and others about the threat posed by Hussein.

Former and current intelligence officials said they felt a continual drumbeat, not only from Cheney and Libby, but also from Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz, Feith, and less so from CIA Director George J. Tenet, to find information or write reports in a way that would help the administration make the case that going into Iraq was urgent.

"They were the browbeaters," said a former defense intelligence official who attended some of the meetings in which Wolfowitz and others pressed for a different approach to the assessments they were receiving. "In interagency meetings," he said, "Wolfowitz treated the analysts' work with contempt."

Others saw the intervention of senior officials as being more responsible. Libby, who helped prepare intelligence analysis for the vice president, made several trips to the CIA with National Security Council officials during preparations for Powell's Feb. 5 presentation to the U.N. Security Council, officials said. He was described by one senior analyst as "an avid consumer of intelligence and the asker of many questions."

Such visits permitted Cheney and Libby to have direct exchanges with analysts, rather than asking questions of their daily briefers, who direct others to prepare responses that result in additional papers, senior administration sources said. Their goal was to have a free flow of information and not to intimidate the analysts, although some may well have misinterpreted questions as directives, said some sources sympathetic to their approach.

A senior defense official also defended Wolfowitz's questioning: "Does he ask hard questions? Absolutely. I don't think he was trying to get people to come up with answers that weren't true. He's looking for data and answers and he gets frustrated with a lack of answers and diligence and with things that can't be defended."

A major focus for Wolfowitz and others in the Pentagon was finding intelligence to prove a connection between Hussein and Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda terrorist network.

On the day of the attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center,Wolfowitz told senior officials at the Pentagon that he believed Iraq might have been responsible. "I was scratching my head because everyone else thought of al Qaeda," said a former senior defense official who was in one such meeting. Over the following year, "we got taskers to review the link between al Qaeda and Iraq. There was a very aggressive search."

In the winter of 2001-02, officials who worked with Wolfowitz sent the Defense Intelligence Agency a message: Get hold of Laurie Mylroie's book, which claimed Hussein was behind the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, and see if you can prove it, one former defense official said.

The DIA's Middle East analysts were familiar with the book, "Study of Revenge: The First World Trade Center Attack and Saddam Hussein's War Against America." But they and others in the U.S. intelligence community were convinced that radical Islamic fundamentalists, not Iraq, were involved. "The message was, why can't we prove this is right?" said the official.

Retired Vice Adm. Thomas R. Wilson, then director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, directed his Middle East analysts to go through the book again, check all the allegations and see if they could be substantiated, said one current and one former intelligence official familiar with the request. The staff was unable to make the link.

This recounting of the book incident was disputed by a defense official who, like many others interviewed, requested anonymity.

Rep. Porter J. Goss (R-Fla.), chairman of the House intelligence committee, said there is no indication that analysts at the DIA or CIA changed their analysis to fit what they perceived as the desire of the administration officials. Goss and other members of the intelligence oversight panels said they have received no whistle-blower complaints from the CIA or other intelligence agencies on the issue.

Tenet has asked four retired senior CIA analysts to review all the major prewar intelligence analyses of Hussein's weapons of mass destruction distributed to top policymakers before March 20, when the fighting began. They plan to compare what was written with postwar intelligence data.

Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John W. Warner (R-Va.) reiterated his desire to hold hearings on the administration's handling of the intelligence on Iraq despite divisions among congressional Republicans over whether an investigation, including public hearings, is necessary. Cheney privately briefed GOP senators on the weapons intelligence Tuesday.

Warner is discussing a joint probe with intelligence committee Chairman Pat Roberts (R-Kan.).

 

[jreeves]

Sokay. Maybe I'll pay ya back later.

I realize that the CIA is listed as an "independent" agency. We agree on that, but the point I've been trying to pound in is that the President picks the director, yes with congressional approval - when that's actually a factor. The president is naturally going to pick someone who will do his bidding and run it the way he wants it run, correct? And no, he didn't pick Tenet, but he could have replaced Tenet any time he wanted, so Tenet, as he admits, was eager to please the president.

9/11, the first gulf war there was less soliders in Kuwait than we anticipated, North Korea come on there is a long list....does that mean Bush was responsible for all of these...LOL

 

[jreeves]

You're actually quite slow and dim witted, so let me explain this again. Try moving your lips while you read, for greater comprehenstion.

The Executive Branch of the Federal Government consists of 1) The Office of the Presidency. 2) The Executive Departments, like Department of Defense, Department of Treasury, etc., 3) And Independent Agencies. "Independent" does not mean their outside the Executive Branch of government. It means they are "independent", in that they are not within one of the Federal Executive Departments. They are not some fourth, "indepedent" branch of governement. They are still in the Executive branch of the federal government. Agencies and Departments are two separate government functions, but they are both in the Executive Branch.

It is independent...that influences major US policymakers

 

[jreeves]

It is independent...that influences major US policymakers

Tenet joined President-elect Bill Clinton's national security transition team. Clinton appointed Tenet Senior Director for Intelligence Programs at the National Security Council (1993-1995).[7][8]


Sounds as though he was a Bushie

 

[DeadCanDance]

It is independent...that influences major US policymakers

I guess this is as close as you'll ever get to admitting you were wrong.

The CIA IS in the Executive Branch of the Federal Government.

Of course, they are supposed to give non-partisan, indepedent analyses of intelligence. Just like the Environmental Protection Agency is supposed to give non-partisan, independent analysis of environmental issues.

But, they are in the Executive Branch, report to the President, and their performance is managed by, and accountable to, people that Bush appointed to manage those agencies.

 

[jreeves]

I guess this is as close as you'll ever get to admitting you were wrong.

The CIA IS in the Executive Branch of the Federal Government.

Of course, they are supposed to give non-partisan, indepedent analyses of intelligence. Just like the Environmental Protection Agency is supposed to give non-partisan, independent analysis of environmental issues.

But, they are in the Executive Branch, report to the President, and their performance is managed by, and accountable to, people that Bush appointed to manage those agencies.

It is an independent agency that collects information for the executive branch as well as Congress.

 

[jreeves]

I guess this is as close as you'll ever get to admitting you were wrong.

The CIA IS in the Executive Branch of the Federal Government.

Of course, they are supposed to give non-partisan, indepedent analyses of intelligence. Just like the Environmental Protection Agency is supposed to give non-partisan, independent analysis of environmental issues.

But, they are in the Executive Branch, report to the President, and their performance is managed by, and accountable to, people that Bush appointed to manage those agencies.

He wasn't appointed by Bush...he was appointed by Clinton

 

[jreeves]

He wasn't appointed by Bush...he was appointed by Clinton

http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/08/06/opinion/edrashid.php

 

[jreeves]

I guess this is as close as you'll ever get to admitting you were wrong.

The CIA IS in the Executive Branch of the Federal Government.

Of course, they are supposed to give non-partisan, indepedent analyses of intelligence. Just like the Environmental Protection Agency is supposed to give non-partisan, independent analysis of environmental issues.

But, they are in the Executive Branch, report to the President, and their performance is managed by, and accountable to, people that Bush appointed to manage those agencies.

CIA’s primary mission is to collect, analyze, evaluate, and disseminate foreign intelligence to assist the President and senior US government policymakers in making decisions relating to national security. This is a very complex process and involves a variety of steps.

First, we have to identify a problem or an issue of national security concern to the US government. In some cases, CIA is directed to study an intelligence issue—such as what activities terrorist organizations are planning, or how countries that have biological or chemical weapons plan to use these weapons—then we look for a way to collect information about the problem.

There are several ways to collect information. Translating foreign newspaper and magazine articles and radio and television broadcasts provides open-source intelligence. Imagery satellites take pictures from space, and imagery analysts write reports about what they see–for example, how many airplanes are at a foreign military base. Signals analysts work to decrypt coded messages sent by other countries. Operations officers recruit foreigners to give information about their countries.

After the information is collected, intelligence analysts pull together the relevant information from all available sources and assess what is happening, why it is happening, what might occur next, and what it means for US interests. The result of this analytic effort is timely and objective assessments, free of any political bias, provided to senior US policymakers in the form of finished intelligence products that include written reports and oral briefings. One of these reports is the President’s Daily Brief (PDB), an Intelligence Community product, which the US president and other senior officials receive each day.

It is important to know that CIA analysts only report the information and do not make policy recommendations—making policy is left to agencies such as the State Department and Department of Defense. These policymakers use the information that CIA provides to help them formulate US policy toward other countries. It is also important to know that CIA is not a law enforcement organization. That is the job of the FBI; however, the CIA and the FBI cooperate on a number of issues, such as counterintelligence and counterterrorism. Additionally, the CIA may also engage in covert action at the President’s direction and in accordance with applicable law.

The US Congress has had oversight responsibility of the CIA since the Agency was established in 1947. However, prior to the mid-1970’s, oversight was less formal. The 1980 Intelligence Oversight Act charged the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) with authorizing the programs of the intelligence agencies and overseeing their activities.

 

[jillian]

He wasn't appointed by Bush...he was appointed by Clinton

And retained by Bush who gave him the Presidential Medal of Freedom.