There’s only one difference between General Petraeus and former general Powell.
The former is evidently willingly going to lie to Congress, while the latter, along with
every other person who supported the war, including the Senators who voted for
it, never knew what Mr. Bush knew all along.
On Sept. 18, 2002, CIA director George Tenet briefed President Bush
in the Oval Office on top-secret intelligence that Saddam Hussein did not
have weapons of mass destruction, according to two former senior CIA officers.
Bush dismissed as worthless this information from the Iraqi foreign minister,
a member of Saddam’s inner circle, although it turned out to be accurate in
every detail. Tenet never brought it up again.Nor was the intelligence included in the National Intelligence Estimate of
October 2002, which stated categorically that Iraq possessed WMD. No one in
Congress was aware of the secret intelligence that Saddam had no WMD as the
House of Representatives and the Senate voted, a week after the submission
of the NIE, on the Authorization for Use of Military Force in Iraq. The information,
moreover, was not circulated within the CIA among those agents involved in
operations to prove whether Saddam had WMD.(snip)
Now two former senior CIA officers have confirmed Drumheller’s account to
me and provided the background to the story of how the information that might
have stopped the invasion of Iraq was twisted in order to justify it. They
described what Tenet said to Bush about the lack of WMD, and how Bush responded,
and noted that Tenet never shared Sabri’s intelligence with then Secretary
of State Colin Powell. According to the former officers, the intelligence
was also never shared with the senior military planning the invasion, which
required U.S. soldiers to receive medical shots against the ill effects of
WMD and to wear protective uniforms in the desert.(snip)
In the congressional debate over the Authorization for the Use of Military
Force, even those voting against it gave credence to the notion that Saddam
possessed WMD. Even a leading opponent such as Sen. Bob Graham, then the Democratic
chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, who had instigated the production
of the NIE, declared in his floor speech on Oct. 12, 2002, “Saddam Hussein’s
regime has chemical and biological weapons and is trying to get nuclear capacity.”
Not a single senator contested otherwise. None of them had an inkling of the
Sabri intelligence.The CIA officers assigned to Sabri still argued within the agency that his
information must be taken seriously, but instead the administration preferred
to rely on Curveball. … ..Bush
knew Saddam had no weapons of mass destruction, by Sydney Blumenthal
Next week it’s going to be 2002 all over again, with Petraeus playing the part of Powell.
What are the Democrats prepared to do about it? Because General Petraeus seems
willing to go along with Bush no matter the consequences. Only the Senate can
stop it. But will they?
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