Bush lied?

Did Bush lie when he said:

"There is unmistakable evidence that Saddam Hussein is working aggressively to develop nuclear weapons..."?

Actually, Bush never said that, the Vice Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Jay Rockefeller, Democrat and Senator for the past 18 years said it. A man who is supposed to know something about the quality and accuracy of intelligence, and in particular the quality and accuracy of intelligence about Iraq.

There is unmistakable evidence that Saddam Hussein is working aggressively to develop nuclear weapons and will likely have nuclear weapons within the next five years. And that may happen sooner if he can obtain access to enriched uranium from foreign sources--something that is not that difficult in the current world. We should also remember that we have always underestimated the progress Saddam has made in development of weapons of mass destruction . . . But this isn't just a future threat. Saddam's existing biological and chemical weapons capabilities pose a very real threat to America, now. Saddam has used chemical weapons before, both against Iraq's enemies and against his own people. He is working to develop delivery systems like missiles and unmanned aerial vehicles that could bring these deadly weapons against U.S. forces and U.S. facilities in the Middle East... weeklystandard

George Bush never said anything even remotely this apocolyptic. But it gets better! I remember what was being said in the run up to the war and I find it funny, yes funny, that the only people who actually used the words, "IMMINENT THREAT" were in fact democrats. Democrats who then turned around and accused Bush of lying by claiming he called Iraq an 'imminent threat'.

Senator Rockefeller, Vice Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee was on Fox News Sunday today and it was an enlightening interview. I am tempted to copy and past the entire transcript for context, but I won't.

WALLACE: OK. Senator Rockefeller, the president says that Democratic critics, like you, looked at pre-war intelligence and came to the same conclusion that he did.

 

In fact, looking back at the speech that you gave in October of 2002 in which you authorized the use of force, you went further than the president ever did. Let's watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ROCKEFELLER: I do believe that Iraq poses an imminent threat, but I also believe that after September 11th that question is increasingly outdated.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WALLACE: Now, the president never said that Saddam Hussein was an imminent threat. As you saw, you did say that. If anyone hyped the intelligence, isn't it Jay Rockefeller?

ROCKEFELLER: No. I mean, this question is asked a thousand times and I'll be happy to answer it a thousand times. I took a trip by myself in January of 2002 to Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Syria, and I told each of the heads of state that it was my view that George Bush had already made up his mind to go to war against Iraq, that that was a predetermined set course which had taken shape shortly after 9/11.

What is Rockefeller trying to say here? Isn't he trying to say that he was so completely incompetent that he believed the evidence that Iraq had WMD but at the same time was telling heads of state around the world that the evidence didn't matter? ie Bush has a reason to lie. Sounds fishy to me.

Now, the intelligence that they had and the intelligence that we had were probably different. We didn't get the presidential daily briefs. We got only a finished product, a finished product, a consensual view of the intelligence community, which does not allow for agencies -- like in the case of the aluminum tubes, the Department of Energy said these aren't thick enough to handle nuclear power.

 

They left that out and went ahead with, "They have aluminum tubes and they're going to develop nuclear power."

WALLACE: Senator, you're quite right. You didn't get the presidential daily brief or the senior executive intelligence brief. You got the national intelligence estimate.

But the Silberman commission, a presidential commission that looked into this, did get copies of those briefs, and they say that they were, if anything, even more alarmist, even less nuanced, than the intelligence you saw, and yet you, not the president, said that Saddam Hussein was an imminent threat.

ROCKEFELLER: The Silverman commission was absolutely prohibited by the president in his charge to them -- he appointed them -- from ever looking at the use of intelligence, whether it was misused, whether it was massaged to influence the American people to go along with a decision which he had long ago already decided to make.

WALLACE: But didn't they come to that conclusion which I just stated, that the presidential daily brief was, in fact, more alarmist and less nuanced than the intelligence you saw?

foxnews sunday transcript

Note: "More alarmist and less nuanced" than the intelligence the congress saw.

Democrats did indeed come to the same conclusion. The same conclusion they came to under the Clinton Presidency. I don't say this to say Clinton lied about WMD, but to point out a simple fact. That when looking at the intelligence from before the war, there was only one conclusion you could come to: Iraq had WMD, Iraq continued to work on producing WMD, and Iraq continued to evade sanctions and inspections for the previous reasons.

After 9/11 the imperative for dealing with this fact had increased from when Clinton was President.

Iraq is a long way from Ohio, but what happens there matters a great deal here. For the risks that the leaders of a rogue state will use nuclear, chemical or biological weapons against us or our allies is the greatest security threat we face. And it is a threat against which we must, and will, stand firm. In discussing Iraq, we begin by knowing that Saddam Hussein, unlike any other leader, has used weapons of mass destruction even against his own people. In fact, he is a repeat offender, having used them both in the battle and against his people. - Madeline Albright, Feb 18, 1998

Did Albright lie? or SecDef William Cohen, Sandy Berger, Bill Clinton, John F. Kerry, Al Gore, Ted Kennedy, Robert Byrd, Hillary Clinton, Carl Levin, Bob Graham, Nancy Pilosi...

WALLACE: Senator Rockefeller, I want to play another clip from your 2002 speech authorizing the use of force, this time specifically on the question of Saddam's nuclear program. Here it is.

 

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ROCKEFELLER: There is unmistakable evidence that Saddam Hussein is working aggressively to develop nuclear weapons and will likely have nuclear weapons within the next five years, and he could have it earlier.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WALLACE: Now, by that point, Senator, you had read the National Intelligence Estimate, correct?

ROCKEFELLER: In fact, there were only six people in the Senate who did, and I was one of them. I'm sure Pat was another.

WALLACE: OK. But you had read that, and now we've read a declassified...

ROCKEFELLER: But, Chris, let's...

WALLACE: Can I just ask my question, sir?

ROCKEFELLER: Yes.

WALLACE: And then you can answer as you choose. That report indicated there was a disagreement among analysts about the nuclear program. The State Department had a lot more doubts than the CIA did about whether he was pursuing the nuclear program. You never mentioned those doubts. You came to the same conclusion the president did.

ROCKEFELLER: Because that -- first of all, that National Intelligence Estimate was not called for by the administration. It was called for by former Senator Bob Graham, who was chairman of the Intelligence Committee, and Dick Durbin.

We didn't receive it until just a couple of days before we voted. Then we had to go read it and compare it to everything else that we thought we'd learned about intelligence, and I did make that statement. And I did make that vote.

But, Chris, the important thing is that when I started looking at the weapons of mass destruction intelligence along with Pat Roberts, I went down to the floor, and I said I made a mistake. I would have never voted yes if I knew what I know today.

WALLACE: Well, but a lot of people are not -- that's not the point of the investigation, Senator.

ROCKEFELLER: Chris, it is always the same conversation. You know, it was not the Congress that sent 135,000 or 150,000 troops to...

WALLACE: But you voted, sir, and aren't you responsible for your vote?

ROCKEFELLER: No. I'm...

WALLACE: You're not?

ROCKEFELLER: No. I'm responsible for my vote, but I'd appreciate it if you'd get serious about this subject, with all due respect. We authorized him to continue working with the United Nations, and then if that failed, authorized him to use force to enforce the sanctions.

Priceless.

The sad fact is that Democrats have only one issue here. Only one tactic to play, which is this charge that Bush lied to get us into war. What makes it sad is that they are parroting the far left's false charges in contradiction to their own public statements. All they have in their arsenal is the marxist anti-war chant, "Bush lied, people died." Desperate times begets desperate measures I guess.

What's the point?

[H]egemonic Word count: 1525