Open Text: Exact Phrase:

While the left is howling "What did the President know, and when did he know it?", over the alleged inaccuracy of an intelligence report he cited in this year's State of the Union address, the British have already answered them, but they aren't listening.

Before you start composing that email calling me a 'blind defender' of George Bush, read on. This is an effort to defend common sense (although it has been correctly observed by the Wise Man that sense is anything but common).

The CIA had reportedly tried to get the British to drop the reference to Iraqi attempts to buy uranium from Niger from their intelligence dossier, but the British say the report is accurate and are standing by it.

What the president said in his speech that fired up the spin machine was; “The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.” The left is screaming that Bush lied to the American people.

Ok, maybe I am thick, but if the British continue to stand by the accuracy of the intelligence, even now, then I can't see how Bush citing a British intelligence report that the British still defend can be construed as Bush 'lying' to the American people in the State of the Union speech.

The CIA admits it was the one that dropped the ball, that it vetted and cleared the Bush statement, and that it did not tell the White House it had 'problems' with the report's accuracy.

And Tony Blair had first reported the same thing in his own 'White Paper' to the House of Commons three months earlier. And the Bush statement could hardly be called either 'specific' or particularly powerful evidence to support the war with Iraq. At least, not when you compare one sixteen-word sentence to the mountains of other evidence already available against Iraq.

Common sense dictates that, for the president to have lied, the British government would necessarily have NOT told him that Saddam was seeking to acquire uranium and that Bush made it all up. To make a case for a lie by omission, it would have been necessary for Bush to have; 1) known the material was false; and, 2) left it in his speech deliberately.

The CIA, according to Director George Tenet, (a Clinton appointee, by the way) did NOT tell the president the agency had concerns as to the accuracy of the report. CIA Director George J. Tenet told lawmakers that his agency made a "mistake" by allowing President Bush to cite the information provided by the British government even though analysts were concerned about its accuracy.

"These 16 words should never have been included in the text written for the president," Tenet said about the claim Iraq tried to get uranium from Niger.

"Let me be clear about several things right upfront," he said in a statement. "First, CIA approved the president's State of the Union address before it was delivered. Second, I am responsible for the approval process in my agency. And third, the president had every reason to believe that the text presented to him was sound."

British officials have insisted that the Bush administration has never been provided with the intelligence that was the basis for the charge included in the Blair government’s September intelligence dossier that Bush relied on. And since even the CIA doesn't have the same intelligence sources as the British, even the CIA can't be absolutely CERTAIN that Saddam didn't try to obtain uranium from Niger. They simply aren't certain that he DID.

Dissecting the Big Lie, we see the following: US intelligence expressed ‘doubts’ about the British report. Bush knew in advance. Those clearly unbiased news agencies, CBS, ABC and CNN say the CIA ‘questioned’ whether it was ‘too strong’ but Bush left it in.

This is a classic example of how to craft a factually accurate report to create a completely false picture, which is, of course, the essence of spin.

Now, as Paul Harvey used to say, the rest of the story.

Here are the ‘doubts’ expressed by the Central Intelligence Agency. The agency raised an objection to the sentence involving an allegation that Iraq was trying to obtain ‘yellow cake’ uranium.

The CIA had some doubts about the SPECIFIC KIND of uranium the British document alleged Saddam was trying to buy. National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice said Sunday that, as a consequence of that ONE objection by the CIA, “Some specifics about amount and place were taken out. . . With the changes in that sentence, the speech was cleared,” she said. “The agency did not say they wanted that sentence out.”

Secretary of State Colin Powell said essentially the same thing when questioned on the same topic from Africa where he was accompanying the president during his five country tour of the Dark Continent.

Now, let’s revisit the offending statement from the State of the Union once more – the one that gives the left the ‘smoking gun’ that the president lied to the nation.

(Although hearing the left take the high moral ground on an issue of presidential veracity is like listening to Larry Flynt moralizing about the evils inherent in the exploitation of women).

“The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.”

According to Rice, the CIA had mentioned such a claim — that Iraq was seeking to buy uranium from Africa — in a classified National Intelligence Assessment made periodically to the president.

“If the CIA — the director of central intelligence — had said ‘Take this out of the speech,’ it would have been gone,” Rice said. “We have a high standard for the president’s speeches.”

We’ve looked at the motive, (get George Bush), the charges, the evidence, and the defense. Now let’s apply some common sense.

The United States had reams of intelligence about Saddam’s WMD efforts in 1991. Saddam’s twelve year ‘cheat and retreat’ policy left nobody in doubt he had WMD’s. Even Hans Blix couldn’t account for 7500 liters of VX gas, 10,000 pounds of botulinim toxin, and a litany of other components. Not even the French claimed during its fight to stop the invasion of Iraq that it doubted Saddam had WMD’s. The mantra at the time wasn’t ‘Saddam is innocent’ but rather, ‘give inspectors more time.’

Add to that the fact that the State of the Union speech comprised 5,366 words and that almost entire speech was an indictment of Iraq, and the single, vague allegation that the British had intelligence that said Saddam was trying to get uranium from Africa falls into perspective.

Then ask yourself the question; how much did YOU rely on that one sentence in deciding whether or not YOU believed Saddam was a threat? Had that line not been included, would it have materially changed your view, one way or the other?

And it all falls into place.

I received an email recently from someone asking me how could I ‘defend’ President Bush in my recent column regarding Liberia. I went back and re-read the column and can only conclude that my ‘defense’ of George Bush consisted of not directly attacking him.

It is into this kind of fertile soil, this kind of prejudicial mindset, that the Big Lie can take root. If it is a case of Bush being wrong, and the only thing missing is the evidence or a common sense argument to prove it, then any argument will do.

No doubt there will be some who will see this column as another defense of George Bush, since I am not at present attacking him.

But this isn’t a column defending George Bush. Common sense says there is nothing to defend in this instance.

The column is about propaganda. Common sense says that when it comes to justifying the war with Iraq, whether or not Saddam was trying to get uranium from Niger is inconsequential.

The alleged 'evidence' that Bush knowingly misled the country in this instance fails the common sense test.

The world is being conditioned to accept the Big Lie, despite what the evidence of their own eyes and ears tell them. Black is white, down is up, whatever is necessary to advance whatever agenda is on the table.

Right here and right now, the agenda is ‘Get George Bush’. Under antichrist, the agenda will change. But the method won’t.

And the world is embracing it with open arms.

Related Story: Washington Times

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