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Key Bush Intelligence Briefing Kept From Hill Panel

KidRocks

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Bush lied?




http://nationaljournal.com/about/njweekly/stories/2005/1122nj1.htm



The administration has refused to provide the Sept. 21 President's Daily Brief, even on a classified basis, and won't say anything more about it other than to acknowledge that it exists.

Ten days after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, President Bush was told in a highly classified briefing that the U.S. intelligence community had no evidence linking the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein to the attacks and that there was scant credible evidence that Iraq had any significant collaborative ties with Al Qaeda, according to government records and current and former officials with firsthand knowledge of the matter.

The information was provided to Bush on September 21, 2001 during the "President's Daily Brief," a 30- to 45-minute early-morning national security briefing. Information for PDBs has routinely been derived from electronic intercepts, human agents, and reports from foreign intelligence services, as well as more mundane sources such as news reports and public statements by foreign leaders.

One of the more intriguing things that Bush was told during the briefing was that the few credible reports of contacts between Iraq and Al Qaeda involved attempts by Saddam Hussein to monitor the terrorist group. Saddam viewed Al Qaeda as well as other theocratic radical Islamist organizations as a potential threat to his secular regime. At one point, analysts believed, Saddam considered infiltrating the ranks of Al Qaeda with Iraqi nationals or even Iraqi intelligence operatives to learn more about its inner workings, according to records and sources.

The September 21, 2001, briefing was prepared at the request of the president, who was eager in the days following the terrorist attacks to learn all that he could about any possible connection between Iraq and Al Qaeda.

Much of the contents of the September 21 PDB were later incorporated, albeit in a slightly different form, into a lengthier CIA analysis examining not only Al Qaeda's contacts with Iraq, but also Iraq's support for international terrorism. Although the CIA found scant evidence of collaboration between Iraq and Al Qaeda, the agency reported that it had long since established that Iraq had previously supported the notorious Abu Nidal terrorist organization, and had provided tens of millions of dollars and logistical support to Palestinian groups, including payments to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers.

The highly classified CIA assessment was distributed to President Bush, Vice President Cheney, the president's national security adviser and deputy national security adviser, the secretaries and undersecretaries of State and Defense, and various other senior Bush administration policy makers, according to government records.

The Senate Intelligence Committee has asked the White House for the CIA assessment, the PDB of September 21, 2001, and dozens of other PDBs as part of the committee's ongoing investigation into whether the Bush administration misrepresented intelligence information in the run-up to war with Iraq. The Bush administration has refused to turn over these documents.

Indeed, the existence of the September 21 PDB was not disclosed to the Intelligence Committee until the summer of 2004, according to congressional sources. Both Republicans and Democrats requested then that it be turned over. The administration has refused to provide it, even on a classified basis, and won't say anything more about it other than to acknowledge that it exists...
 
KidRocks said:
Bush lied?Ten days after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, President Bush was told in a highly classified briefing

Highly classified, yet you know this? Weak.

Hey Canuck, it's Kidrocks. What do you think of him?
 

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teacher said:
Bush lied?Ten days after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, President Bush was told in a highly classified briefing
Highly classified, yet you know this? Weak.
Way to not even get through the first paragraph.

Ten days after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, President Bush was told in a highly classified briefing that the U.S. intelligence community had no evidence linking the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein to the attacks and that there was scant credible evidence that Iraq had any significant collaborative ties with Al Qaeda, according to government records and current and former officials with firsthand knowledge of the matter.

Weak indeed. I'd say a better question is, who exactly are these current and former officials with firsthand knowledge?
 
Binary_Digit said:
Way to not even get through the first paragraph.

Ten days after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, President Bush was told in a highly classified briefing that the U.S. intelligence community had no evidence linking the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein to the attacks and that there was scant credible evidence that Iraq had any significant collaborative ties with Al Qaeda, according to government records and current and former officials with firsthand knowledge of the matter.

Weak indeed. I'd say a better question is, who exactly are these current and former officials with firsthand knowledge?

Oh I read it, and his little link too. Trouble with the logic here? Highly classified, yet everyone knows. Hello McFly. Oh well, if it's anti Bush it must be true right Binary?

Anything to add Canuck?
 

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teacher said:
Oh I read it, and his little link too. Trouble with the logic here? Highly classified, yet everyone knows. Hello McFly.
McFly? Lol ok, well maybe you should make your point more clear before you talk to people like they're stupid.

"Highly classified, yet you know this?"

"Highly classified, yet everyone knows."

Each of these implies a different point. Make up your mind?

Furthermore, the meeting four years ago was classified at the time. That is, according to government records and current and former officials with firsthand knowledge of the matter. That doesn't mean it's still classified today. If it is, then they need to appoint a prosecutor to find out who leaked.

teacher said:
Oh well, if it's anti Bush it must be true right Binary?
Please spare me that partisan bullshit, it's really insulting. Nothing is higher than truth for me, even if it happens to favor Bush once in a while. If you're trying to discredit this report, I already asked the most relavent question. Yet you go and accuse me of being a political hack anyway. I guess I learned my "lesson".
 
Binary_Digit said:
Please spare me that partisan bullshit


Why should you get off so easy? Everyone else has to wade through it around here.
 
Cuz I said please? :2razz:
 
Binary_Digit said:
McFly? Lol ok, well maybe you should make your point more clear before you talk to people like they're stupid.

"Highly classified, yet you know this?"

"Highly classified, yet everyone knows."

Each of these implies a different point. Make up your mind?

Furthermore, the meeting four years ago was classified at the time. That is, according to government records and current and former officials with firsthand knowledge of the matter. That doesn't mean it's still classified today. If it is, then they need to appoint a prosecutor to find out who leaked.


Please spare me that partisan bullshit, it's really insulting. Nothing is higher than truth for me, even if it happens to favor Bush once in a while. If you're trying to discredit this report, I already asked the most relavent question. Yet you go and accuse me of being a political hack anyway. I guess I learned my "lesson".


You're the one making it partisan Binary.

Highly classified. You, everyone, me, Billo, Tom, Dick, Harry, and their cousin. Semantics. Nice try. Highly classified yet it's known? Is the basic premise here not getting through to you? If it's so highly classified how does everyone know? You asked the most relevant question? Am I wrong or does your question assume this report is true. Your question is who leaked? Or who was it that knew this? You see, we get right back to the point of you automatically believing it's true. I think the relevant question is "is this report true"? If nothing is higher than the truth for you then I would like the first order of business for you would be to establish if this report is true. After all, it comes from a kidrocks link. A political hack if there ever was one. Let's go back to the beginning on this one binary. Is this report true? That's all I was asking. Don't play word games with me.

My one sentence was: Highly classified, yet you know this? Weak.

Maybe the point was a little subtle for you. Apparently it was.

You started the rest.

You're not very good at this are you?
 
teacher said:
You're the one making it partisan Binary.

Highly classified. You, everyone, me, Billo, Tom, Dick, Harry, and their cousin. Semantics. Nice try. Highly classified yet it's known? Is the basic premise here not getting through to you? If it's so highly classified how does everyone know?
I already told you, the supposed classified meeting happened over four years ago. That doesn't automatically mean it is still classified today. There are several ways where information that was classified over 4 years ago might not be classified today. It might fall under the Freedom of Information Act or something, we don't know. If you're trying to prove the whole report is bogus by saying that if it were true, we wouldn't know about a 4-year-old classified meeting, I think you could have just said so. Instead you just asked KidRocks how he knows about it, and then proceeded to assume: 1. that the meeting is still classified today, 2. that everyone else knows it's still classified today, and 3. that everyone else will infer the question "is this report true?" because who could imagine such a scenario as a journalist reporting classified information!:shock:

teacher said:
You asked the most relevant question? Am I wrong or does your question assume this report is true. Your question is who leaked? Or who was it that knew this? You see, we get right back to the point of you automatically believing it's true. I think the relevant question is "is this report true"? If nothing is higher than the truth for you then I would like the first order of business for you would be to establish if this report is true. After all, it comes from a kidrocks link. A political hack if there ever was one. Let's go back to the beginning on this one binary. Is this report true? That's all I was asking. Don't play word games with me.
Then why the sam hell didn't you just ask that? You come out with "highly classified, yet you know this?" and expect someone else to interpret that as "is this report true?", something completely different. I apologize for misunderstanding, but it's not really my fault when your words and your point are so inconsistent with each other. Communication is a 2-way street.

teacher said:
My one sentence was: Highly classified, yet you know this? Weak.

Maybe the point was a little subtle for you. Apparently it was.

You started the rest.

You're not very good at this are you?
There is nothing wrong with the point, it's not subtle at all. The problem is your subtle way of making it, as though others can read your mind or something.

Fine, whatever. In the end I guess we agree on the most important thing: is Bush really witholding that PDF?
 
Didn't we have this debate already? Wasn't there some kerfuffle over these PDB's about a year or so ago?

The source article is quite a piece of work. Long on assertion and hearsay, it starts out with the above allegation, then ranges far and wide, all the way to allegations of an intelligence unit in the DoD as likely being responsible for the inconsistencies between the intelligence being remarked upon by Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld and that produced by the CIA. It even includes a reference to the Plame kerfuffle. The article goes so far as to say,

"Intelligence analysis from the covert unit later served as the basis for many of the erroneous public statements made by Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and others regarding the alleged ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda, according to former and current government officials. Intense debates still rage among longtime intelligence and foreign policy professionals as to whether those who cited the information believed it, or used it as propaganda. The unit has since been disbanded.

Earlier this month, on November 14, the Pentagon's inspector general announced an investigation into whether Feith and others associated with the covert intelligence unit engaged in "unauthorized, unlawful, or inappropriate intelligence activities." In a statement, Feith said he is "confident" that investigators will conclude that his "office worked properly and in fact improved the intelligence product by asking good questions."


"The Pentagon unit also routinely second-guessed the CIA's highly classified assessments. Regarding one report titled "Iraq and al-Qaeda: Interpreting a Murky Relationship," one of the Naval Reserve officers wrote: "The report provides evidence from numerous intelligence sources over the course of a decade on interactions between Iraq and al-Qaida. In this regard, the report is excellent. Then in its interpretation of this information, CIA attempts to discredit, dismiss, or downgrade much of this reporting, resulting in inconsistent conclusions in many instances. Therefore, the CIA report should be read for content only-and CIA's interpretation ought to be ignored."

Finally, to make sure that all bases are covered, the author brings the Plame kerfuffle into the equation, and then circles back and concludes with this,

In barely legible handwriting, Cheney wrote in the margin of the report:

"This is very good indeed … Encouraging … Not like the crap we are all so used to getting out of CIA."


Cheney's attitude toward the CIA is not too surprising, given the scathing conclusions in the report on NIEs produced by the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Whew! Quite a tour, lots of assertions, mostly sourced with hearsay, not a lot of hard fact, but quite a few interesting bits.
 
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