E Pluribus Unum

by shep

Shankar Vedantam does a regular drive-by social science column for the WaPo, called “Department of Human Behavior.” In this week’s episode, as in many past columns, Mr. Vedantum shows us some interesting facet of human behavior and psychology that, in the end, manages to absolve the Bush Administration for its inhuman behavior and psychology.

Vedantum tells us that, “[t]he political scientist [Columbia University’s Richard Jervis], who counts himself as a critic of the Bush administration [bitchin' bona fides, eh?] said a focus on this historical analogy [Iraq’s successful concealment of its pre-Gulf war WMD program] – not political pressures from the White House (emphasis added) – played the central role in the intelligence failure.”

Gosh, I’m no “scholar” at Columbia but I’ve been awake for the last four years and I can google:

cheney pressured CIA intelligence iraq

Low and behold, the first two links are from Vedantum’s own WaPo:

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.

About a week later, the Post’s Walter Pincus (a profile in journalism whom his colleagues would do well to emulate), again documents Cheney administration treason:

Senior intelligence analysts say they feel caught between the demands from the White House, Pentagon and other government policymakers for intelligence that would make the administration's case and what they say is 'a lack of hard facts.'

And I believe that the Post and a few others did a little reporting on some sort of dust-up around something called “the sixteen words”:

Beginning in October, the CIA warned the administration not to use the Niger claim in public. CIA Director George J. Tenet personally persuaded deputy national security adviser Stephen Hadley to omit it from President Bush's Oct. 7 speech in Cincinnati about the threat posed by Saddam Hussein.

But on the eve of Bush's Jan. 28 State of the Union address, Robert Joseph, an assistant to the president in charge of nonproliferation at the National Security Council (NSC), initially asked the CIA if the allegation that Iraq sought to purchase 500 pounds of uranium from Niger could be included in the presidential speech.

Well, just as long as incessant White House pressure in the form of repeated visits and calls from the Vice President, the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of State, setting up a parallel, fake intelligence office to compete with the CIA, and White House push-back against CIA warnings about discredited “mushroom cloud” claims, didn’t play the central role in taking the country into a disastrous war, based on a pack of lies.