CIA: Assessment of Syria's WMD exaggerated

[UpInArms]

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/6310763.htm

WASHINGTON - In a new dispute over interpreting intelligence data, the CIA and other agencies objected vigorously to a Bush administration assessment of the threat of Syria's weapons of mass destruction that was to be presented Tuesday on Capitol Hill.

After the objections, the planned testimony by Undersecretary of State John R. Bolton, a leading administration hawk, was delayed until September.

U.S. officials told Knight Ridder that Bolton was prepared to tell members of a House of Representatives International Relations subcommittee that Syria's development of biological, chemical and nuclear weapons had progressed to such a point that they posed a threat to stability in the region.

The CIA and other intelligence agencies said that assessment was exaggerated.

...more...

[Itascapark]

1. I ask you all a very straight-forward question...

Is it possible to trust ANYTHING this looney-gooney Administration says, past, present or future?

[dArKeR]

3. Was it Israel that led Bush down this path?

I'd like to see some good investigative reporting to answer this question!

[NNN0LHI]

13. Syria's WMDs Israel says Syria hiding Iraqi weapons

http://www.thecourier.com/opinion/editoral/ED040103.htm

So Syria has been sending military equipment across the border into Iraq.

Anyone who's surprised at that either missed or has forgotten the warnings that came from Israel in December. On Christmas Eve, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said in a TV interview that Israel had reports that Saddam Hussein was transferring weapons he wanted to hide -- the chemical and biological types -- to Syria. At that time, Sharon said the information was uncertain, but in January, Foreign Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said there was "no question" that the banned weapons transfers were taking place.

"There is obviously some very close cooperation going on between Saddam Hussein and the regime in Damascus," he said in a Jan. 19 France Press Agency story. When asked what weapons were being moved to Syria, he said, "Obviously material that is sufficiently important for Iraq to move into Syria, either because it does not want this to be found, or because it wants to have (them) in reserve."

Syria, of course, has hotly denied these allegations. "This accusation against Syria is ridiculous because Syria signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty, and called all Arab states to make the Middle East clear of weapons of mass destruction whether nuclear, chemical or biological," read a Syrian foreign ministry statement to the Associated Press in December.

more

[Pallas180]

19. Ahem. Netanhayu is a right winger, fits right in with the Neo-Cons.

gotta know your politicians.

He's so far right that in comparison to Sharon, he looks
like Genghis Khan.

[Pallas180]

22. Netanhayu is a real right winger, fits right in with the NeoCons, so far

right he makes Sharon look like a leftist.

Gotta know your politicians

[Wonder]

37. the guardian article here that I see

though I have yet to go through that thread in it's entirety and an other recent article in the nation begins to hint at an Israeli tie in here via this Office of Special Planning. So far it seems to me the mainstream has yet to go down that road as far as real investigative journalism is concerned, unless I missed it, I mean. In light of the two articles I mentioned, it seems the time to go down that road has most certainly arrived.

Yes syria did deny it and as I remember came back with a call for diplomacy and the signing of the NPtreaty...as you say.

Now it seems Iran of late in the mainstream again (or was) as a potential threat to Israel with those recent articles regarding the testing of was it a missle that can target Israel? I book marked them. I believe they hit on July 8th....

we really have to watch ever move so closely. I am not encouraged by any of the investigations since 9/11. As to the Israeli warnings... in december, I am not sure I still have them, but there were other articles I read that I have a vague recollection I encountered early than december wherein Israel early 2002 suggest Iraq was not a current thread... my memory is vague best I double check to see if I still have these articles before saying this for sure...so much has happened since with so much contradiction and propagandized double take... I am not sure I still have them. I will have to check.

[Pallas180]

18. Oh Please! stop with the bigotry. It was the fascists planted in the

Defense Dept., that Rumsfeld and Cheney brought in
25 years ago when they were Chief of Staff and Sec of
Defense under Nixon and Ford. Did you find Nixon the
jew-hater pro-Israel? Puhleez

[dansolo]

32. Israel is merely a pawn

These theories of Israel dictating U.S. policy are rediculous. There is no Jewish conspiracy. Israel has been used by the U.S. to maintain a strategic foothold in the middle east. While they are benefactors of the policy implemented by the U.S., the real benefactors are the oil barons. They would sell out Israel in a moment if it meant more riches for them.

[Wonder]

38. Yes this I always thought true

but I am interested to understand more about this office that Sharon set up in his effort to perhaps trump up intelligence which it seems according to two articles (which certainly is not conclusive) that he could not get the Mossad to do: ergo the separate OSP office.

[Eloriel]

7. It never has been

Why do you even need to ask?

:evilgrin:

After all, anyone who would conspire to steal a national election in the greatest democracy (currently) on earth, wouldn't stop at much if anything. Lying is part of the course. Bush is NOTHING without his lies. He IS a lie -- his whole administration is a lie.

Eloriel

[baffie]

35. I've come to trust one thing about them

Reliably, whenever they open their mouths, they lie. They haven't let me down yet.

[indictrichardperle]

2. thanks for saving our troops CIA

They are becoming heroic, in a time of cowardice.

Bolton, just "whose" interests are you acting in ? Certainly not the American peoples..... Another neo-con plot pre-empted.

[alfredo]

21. Bolton

Judging from his past writings, John Bolton's puts the welfare of Israel over the welfare of America.

[WhataBildeberger]

4. this is unreal!

I'll hope to see this story spread far and wide tomorrow. Here's the proof that it's not "just 16 words" in the SOTU. It's ongoing. That's pretty explosive news.

[indictrichardperle]

5. Indeed

Thats a fuc*ing outrage.

Here we have a neo-con caught red-handed lying to congress. Dems(real dems) should have him testify under oath, grill him then prosecute him for perjury.

Gee whiz, if Bolton isnt getting his "info" from the CIA, where is he getting it ? You think "allies" in the region might have a bias here ? Jesus, they are asking our kids to sacrifice ther lives based on this Bullshit?

[Wonder]

40. WhataBilderberger

Haha... no one generally want to talk about the bilderbergers... that takes us in to the NWO none dare call it a conspiracy category. Probably we are not talking about the same thing. Nevermind.

[Julien Sorel]

6. With a caveat:

After the objections, the planned testimony by Undersecretary of State John R. Bolton, a leading administration hawk, was delayed until September.

Another few months of arm twisting, another oh-so-carefully worded speech, like the SotU (this time it will be, 'The Israeli Government has learned...'), another few months for people to have forgotten that they've been lied to once in this exact same fashion, and the neo-cons are back in business.

[Eloriel]

8. I rather doubt it

I think this whole WMD-Iraq flap is the real deal. I don't think they'll be able to quash this or make people forget. Not while our troops are still dying by the day.

Eloriel

[indictrichardperle]

10. Congress to slap Syria with new sanctions

http://www.menewsline.com/stories/2003/july/07_16_1.html

238 bakckers in the house, 63 backers in the senate.

[Julien Sorel]

12. Ask a rare honest politician: the public has short memories.

Moreover, I'm no longer certain that the morality of the American public is what it used to be. People now know we have an essentially invincible military in these low-scale conflicts, and things like sanctions are easy to slap on countries, even though they don't do anything but make the populace of the sanctioned countries miserable.

To put it differently, I think a solid base of Americans are bullies at heart, or to put it kindly, drunk with military superiority, and there are enough of the apathetic, the empty-headed, and the mindless flag-wavers to make up the difference and get a majority. Bush has already demonstrated he has no scruples, and a war against Syria would be just the ace in the hole he needs if it looks like his election is flagging. But he doesn't even need the all-out war. All he needs is Syria as a spectre, Syria as Emmanuel Goldstein, and he maintains his image as a tough guy, as a protector. His entire presidency has been defined by fear; without it, there is literally nothing there. He needs another Iraq.

[DrBB]

14. I don't buy it

...cynicism aside, I'm looking at this thing and it is still building. The article that's the subject of the thread is de facto evidence of a credibility crisis for the *admin that stems directly from the Niger and WMD thing. Suddenly, right out in public, they aren't on the same page as their own intelligence service.

I don't buy this stuff about "Muricans ain't listening." Of course they aren't. So what? Watergate was the same. I lived through that time, and I remember reading the news that Nixon was resigning with shock--elated shock, but shock nonetheless. I never thought it would come to that.

This Niger thing may not ever lead to that dramatic an outcome, but it is deeply, deeply damaging stuff, and this story is the first evidence of just how damaging it is. It may only be insiders who see it, but insiders matter, and a president's credibility among insiders matters. All kinds of things start to slip and go flaky when your aura of leadership starts taking hits like this, even if the country at large isn't especially noticing. This is a major crack inthe facade, and it matters.

edit: typo

[Julien Sorel]

15. You are correct to a certain extent:

I'm assuming the Niger thing will blow over, which I think will happen; I actually hope you are right, and Niger becomes a big deal, but experience has taught me cynicism.

I, too, was around when Watergate happened, but I don't see any John Deans in the current administration. I haven't seen any Deep Throats, either. But Tenet has come forth and obligingly stuck his neck in the noose, which again, makes it unlikely that Bush will be the one who hangs.

Let's break this down briefly. There are four likely potential outcomes of the Niger situation:

1) It blows over, and Bush is there. The dynamics I outlined in my earlier post remain intact.

2) Bush is mildly damaged by it, but remains in office. The dynamics are still in place, but he has even greater incentive to huff and puff, because he will need to try to build himself up.

3) Niger damages him to the point where he is a political non-entity, and Congress ends up running the show. Historically, this situation is not stable at all; eventually initiative always ends up in the White House, simply because the presidency is inherently unified, whereas Congress is fragmented, and building up the spectre of an external threat is a good way to assume the initiative.


4) He's impeached/he resigns. Then it's anybody's guess. At this point, I think this is the least likely outcome, barring a John Dean-like moment.



No matter what, unless he is impeached, he still has incentive to build Syria, or some other unlucky target, into a threat. It simply makes too much sense, and falls too closely in line with what he's done so far, to discount the possibility.

[Pallas180]

24. Billy, didnt you see this on the news and in the papers-Deepthroats

abound:

this is a MUST READ:

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article4107.htm

snippets: (but the entire letter is too good to miss)

>>It is now dawning on our until-now somnolent press that your national security adviser,
Condoleezza Rice, shepherds the foreign affairs sections of your state-of-the-union address
and that she, not Tenet, is responsible for the forged information getting into the speech. <<

>>Secretary of State Colin Powell’s credibility, too, has taken serious hits as continued
non-discoveries of weapons in Iraq heap doubt on his confident assertions to the UN. <<

>>The Vice President’s Role-Attempts at cover up could easily be seen as comical, were the
issue not so serious.... Ari Fleisher’s remarks ...When asked about the forgery, he noted
tellingly—as if drawing on well memorized talking points—that the Vice President was not guilty
of anything. To those of us who experienced Watergate these comments had an eerie ring.<<

>>There is just too much evidence that Ambassador Wilson was sent to Niger at the behest of
Vice President Cheney’s office, and that Wilson’s findings were duly reported not only to that
office but to others as well. .. it was Cheney who launched (in a major speech on August 26,
2002) the concerted campaign to persuade Congress and the American people that Saddam
Hussein was about to get his hands on nuclear weapons—a campaign that mushroomed,
literally, in early October with you and your senior advisers raising the specter of a “mushroom
cloud” being the first “smoking gun” we might observe. <<

>>That this campaign was based largely on information known to be forged and that the
campaign was used successfully to frighten our elected representatives in Congress into voting
for war is clear from the bitter protestations of Rep. Henry Waxman and others. The politically
aware recognize that the same information was used, also successfully, in the campaign leading
up to the mid-term elections—a reality that breeds a cynicism highly corrosive to our political
process<<

[Julien Sorel]

29. Deep Throat was inside the investigation AFAIK, or

anyone knows for that matter. His information gave Woodward and Bernstein a link to the investigation as it went on, which made coverups far more difficult. Wilson is an outsider now; even though the information he provided is invaluable, it's just the beginning. To nail Bush, we need to prove a link between the information Wilson provided to Cheney, and Bush. In other words, we need to prove Bush knew he was lying in his SotU address.

Even though I think it's obvious he knew -- the ridiculously worded 'the British government has learned' is a dead giveaway as far as I'm concerned, it has to be proven almost ironclad. That's going to be difficult, and it's going to take someone inside the power structure stepping up to do it. I don't see that happening. Dean was a young man in 1973, still idealistic and with a future in front of him. He had incentives to turn on Nixon. Idealism for this current bunch is a foreign word, and most of these people are already committed to helping any coverup along. Think Powell is going to develop a conscience after his performance at the UN? That's assuming, by the way, he was part of the inner circle of knowledge. Rice? Cheney? Rumsfeld? Besides, they have the example of Watergate to educate them on the importance of keeping information restricted.

My own hope at this point is that any investigation takes the luster off Bush's Iraq adventure, laying it bare as the cynical adventure it was. I'd take an impeachment or a resignation, but I wouldn't bet on it happening.

[Wonder]

42. Thanks for that run down...

I don't believe it is in the cards either... it is like we are all hijacked. And on that note... I am going to bed. Good night.

[Wonder]

41. How much more obvious

must it be... they really have gotten away with hiding this virtuely right out in the open. What has to happen before they are stopped? Actually made to answer I mean. This seems so much more serious than any of the previous _gates of the past.

[Wonder]

39. the morality of the American public

is most certainly not what it use to be. That seems most certain.

[Dhalgren]

9. I don't think so (at least I hope not).

The CIA got burned on this one, so they may be saying - "O.k., you want to lay the blame on us, fine! But we will sure as hell make our objections public from now on, so every one knows who told who what!" This may be the best we can hope for over the next year and a half - for the CIA to keep a sharp eye on the LIAR and expose him every time he opens his mouth. What's he gonna do? Fire the CIA?

[DrBB]

11. Well, that's damn interesting. It means

...that the corrosive effects of the Niger thing and subsequent (mis)handling of same by the *admin have broken out into the open in a big way. Suddenly the CIA is digging in its heels and offering its most cautious assessments--After all, they're saying, we're not about to make the same "mistake" we made before and fail to fully caution and qualify and otherwise rein things in and not roll over for the neocon program.

Kind of a work-rules slow-down, if you follow that analogy. But making the point that there are ongoing consequences to this Bush fuck-up; it isn't something that they can just say, There, we've put that behind us let's move on. As long as things aren't cleared up, problems aren't aired, then there is going to be this huge tension between the CIA and the administration it's supposedly serving. Wonder if Tenet's behind this. It clearly keeps the whole thing simmering nicely.

[goforit]

16. Hey CIA, While your at it ....could you reveal Rummy's Nuke delivery

to N.K.?

I'm sure Pyong Pyang would testify on this one for you.

[drscm]

17. I'm near tears...

I dream of the day when our nation's strength will be measured

- by its ability to reach out to other's in peace,

- by its ability to respect the dignity of persons

- by its ability to help people develop their potential for good and to educate them for their own good as well as the good of others

- by its ability to provide reasonable health care for the sick

- by its ability to recognize that it has been blessed and a willingness to share those blessings with others.

However, today, its all about lying in order to prove our dominance, victimizing the least among us for our own selfish ends, endless war and fear, and a sick loyalty to an agenda that serves the few.

[juajen]

27. Too depressing

It's just too late tonight. Shall we cry together? Sounds like Utopia.

[EV1Ltimm]

20. they're being so honest lately.

maybe they'll confess to the jfk assassination and downing all of those cessnas over the years with unfortunate democratic politicos onboard?

[Rose Siding]

23. Krugman wrote that Pat Roberts levied the charge that

the leaks in the CIA were attempts to undermine the "credibility of the president". What might the Patriot Act have to say about such an offense? How big a step away from an attack on the presidency might this be twisted into? Things could get very weird.

[indictrichardperle]

25. Pat Roberts is a real weasel

The neo-cons own him completely.

Nearly every remark he makes his pure bullshit.

[ewagner]

26. Somebody just stopped the next war

I'm glad to see the intelligence community come forward on this. They may have prevented another "intervention".

But this troubles me: With all the s**t swirling around about Iraq, why would they be so stupid to start setting the table for attacking Syria? Are they:
a. dumb?
b. arrogant?
c. behind schedule?
d. all of the above?

[Nambe]

28. The CIA has always been rw dirty but papa bush too it to a new...

level. Many say he is still deeply involved. How sad.

[Noordam]

30. There is the Politicial CIA and the Career CIA

and they are not always talking on the same page.

Tenet has to fall on the sword for *, because he is Political. BUT be they right wing, Career CIA believe in protecting America first and that does not match up with * and all his Oil Wars that are going to bring more terrorist actions TO the US.

[underpants]

31. W there is a rake outside with your name on it.STOP DIGGING!

Jeez!

[RevolutionStartsNow]

33. Knock Knock

Who's there?

Syria!

Syria who?

Seriously, would someone please tackle Donald Rumsfeld and lock his ass up until our "Countries-Destroyed-to-Countries-Rebuilt" Ratio is closer to "1"?


http://www.mnftiu.cc/mnftiu.cc/war25.html

[NYC]

34. I can't believe they had a repeat performance scheduled.

"U.S. officials told Knight Ridder that Bolton was prepared to tell members of a House of Representatives International Relations subcommittee that Syria's development of biological, chemical and nuclear weapons had progressed to such a point that they posed a threat to stability in the region.

The CIA and other intelligence agencies said that assessment was exaggerated..."

The same performance with the names changed. They are truly unbelievable.

[the_sam]

36. Won't be so in the (possibly near) future

The Iraq war has doubtless convinced at least some nations that they needt to acquire more extensive NBC weapons capabilities to deter the U.S.