TomCADem
TomCADem's JournalWaPo (2003) - Some Iraq Analysts Felt Pressure From Cheney Visits
Trump has been trying to justify his attacks on intelligence agencies with the idea that Dubya and Cheney were mislead into launching a war on Iraq. Of course, for folks who remember, a lot of the controversy behind the war was related to how Cheney was heavily pressuring Intelligence agencies to support the idea that Iraq had access to WMD. Remember Valeria Plane and Scooter Libby?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/2003/06/05/some-iraq-analysts-felt-pressure-from-cheney-visits/4afb2009-20e7-4619-b40f-669c9d94dcf3/?utm_term=.b8957632813d
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.
Must Read - Stacy Abrams Destroys False Choice Between Social Justice and Working Class
Why is it that even in the era of Trump where he attacks Democrats for engaging in identity politics by speaking up for women and minorities even as he panders to white resentment do some “progressive” politicians repeat this theme and attack such efforts?
Stacy Abrams has written a brilliant essay explaining why this is a false choice.
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/2/1/18206769/stacey-abrams-state-of-the-union-response-essay-identity-politics
Stacey Abrams, the rising Democratic star and former Georgia gubernatorial candidate, is giving the Democratic response to plTrump’s State of the Union on Tuesday. On Friday morning, she published an essay with a spirited defense of one of the most controversial ideas in American public life: identity politics.
The piece, published by the journal Foreign Affairs, is a response to an essay by famed intellectual Francis Fukuyama. In a recent book, Fukuyama lambasted left-wing movements for dividing the country by focusing too much on appeals to race and gender; he called instead for Democrats to refocus on class to win back blue-collar Trump voters.
It’s a familiar argument, and one Abrams finds decidedly unpersuasive. She argues that identity politics is simply the assertion of historically marginalized groups’ interests and right to participate as equals in society, an inevitable and necessary feature of a society marked by social oppression. The piece marks Abrams as the rare politician willing to mount a full-throated defense of the idea of identity politics; the fact that she does so in a sharp and compelling way helps explain why the Democratic party sees her as a rising star.
The core of Abrams’s argument is that identity politics is not something that members of marginalized groups can ignore. If they want equality, they must address the issues and social structures that oppress them.
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