We are puzzling over the Woodward book excerpt from Monday, "With CIA Push, Movement to War Accelerated", and wondering whether we should file a "Missing Persons" report.
Where did the embittered CIA intelligence analysyts, frustrated by the roughshod manner in which Dick Cheney politicized their intelligence, go? They were falling out of trees and into reporter's laps a year ago, and Bob Woodward couldn't find any now? In his account, it is Tenet doing the big sales push for dubious intelligence ("a slam-dunk!") while Bush looks on skeptically. What happened to the VIPS, known by some as the VIPers?
IN TODAY'S CNN STORY:
Powell also disputed Woodward's contention that he and Cheney were so estranged by their differences over the war that they barely speak, insisting that his relationship with the vice president is "excellent."
"When the vice president and I are alone, it's Colin and Dick," he said.
ERR...I HAVE NOTHING TO AD TO THAT.
Posted by: bushgirlsgonewild | April 20, 2004 at 10:45 AM
He couldn't even get Bill Casey to comment?
Posted by: Crank | April 20, 2004 at 11:17 AM
And as usual BBGW makes a point without a clue. I guess that you want to change the subject again.
Come on, you lefties were whining and frothing, frothing and whining about how much the president FORCED the CIA into agreeing. Turns out they were the ones trying to convince a skeptical president of WMD.
As nelson would say HA-ha.
Posted by: capt joe | April 20, 2004 at 12:54 PM
SKEPTICAL PRESIDENT????? Oh, please. Yes, he had to have his arm twisted to go to war. There were PLENTY of people in the CIA, Pentagon, and elsewhere who reported there were no WMD in Iraq and advised against going to war with Iraq. The 'president' chose to believe that data which supported his goal.
Not to change the subject (just present a more valid one): Bob Woodward, who interviewed the President for his new book, says he asked him whether, in pondering a war with Iraq, he'd ever asked his father's advice.
"And President Bush said, 'Well, no,' and then he got defensive about it," Woodward says.
"Then he said something that really struck me. He said of his father, 'He is the wrong father to appeal to for advice. The wrong father to go to, to appeal to in terms of strength.' And then he said, 'There's a higher Father that I appeal to.'"
So let's get this straight: There's only one other living person in the whole entire world who's ever seriously faced the question before our president -- whether to send American ground forces into a land war in the Middle East. This person did so, successfully, leaning upon the exact same men: Dick Cheney and Colin Powell. And miracle of fortunate miracles -- what are the odds? -- this person is the President's own father. Hey, get him on the phone! He's your dad; he'll give you his best and most honest and well-intentioned read, and as an adult you then thank him and make up your own mind.
Instead, the President refuses to even seek his own father's advice (which, if heeded, might have saved us a helluva lot of trouble); gets us bogged down in a miniature Vietnam that makes no sense whatsoever; tells a press conference he can't think of a single mistake he's made since 9/11; and then, no doubt feeling defensive about things, he lashes out at ... his father.
In the most public of forums -- a journalist's interview -- the President of the United States runs his father down as a weakling -- "the wrong father to ... appeal to in terms of strength."
How old is this President again? Eleven years old? Twelve? Remind me again how our Republic ended up in the hands of this petulant child?
Posted by: bushgirlsgonewild | April 20, 2004 at 02:04 PM