Kevin Drum discussed Jonathan Schwartz's take on Peter Eiser's tome, The Italian Letter in this blog post yesterday. I understand the reason folks want to run with his highlighted quote but it all struck me as somewhat Downing Street Memo-ish.
The funny part was, apparently more than a few commenters were less-than-convinced as I was. Highly unusual for Drum's crew.
K-Lo posted this earlier today over at the Corner. It comes courtesy of an unnamed Republican on the Hill and it exposes Dick Durbin as a hypocrite of the highest order:
SAY WHAT? DID SEN. DURBIN RUN THIS PAST HIS COLLEAGUES?
DURBIN SAYS INTEL COMMITTEE MEMBERS WERE AWARE THAT IRAQ INTEL DID NOT SUPPORT THE RHETORIC IN RUN-UP TO IRAQ WAR
“I was a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee and I would read the headlines in the paper in the morning and I'd watch the television newscast and I'd shake my head. …[T]he information we had in the Intelligence Committee was not the same information being given to the American people. I couldn't believe it.” (Sen. Dick Durbin, Floor Speech, 04/25/07)
“You see, in the Intelligence Committee, we're sworn to secrecy. We can't walk outside the door and say, ‘The statement made yesterday by the White House is in direct contradiction to classified information that's being given to this Congress.’” (Sen. Dick Durbin, Floor Speech, 04/25/07)
“And so in my frustration, I sat here on the floor of the Senate and listened to this heated debate about invading Iraq thinking the American people are being misled. They are not being told the truth.” (Sen. Dick Durbin, Floor Speech, 04/25/07)
IS SENATOR DURBIN SAYING THAT DEMOCRAT INTEL COMMITTEE MEMBERS WILLFULLY MISLED THE PUBLIC?
SEN. CARL LEVIN (D-MI): “[Saddam] has ignored the mandates of the United Nations, is building weapons of mass destruction and the means of delivering them.” (Committee On Armed Services, U.S. Senate, Hearing, 09/19/02)
SEN. JOHN ROCKFELLER (D-WV): “There is unmistakable evidence that Saddam Hussein is working aggressively to develop nuclear weapons. And will likely have nuclear weapons within the next five years.” (Sen. John Rockefeller, Congressional Record, 10/10/02, p.S10306)
SEN. EVAN BAYH (D-IN): “Bill, I support the president's efforts to disarm Saddam Hussein. I think he was right on in his speech tonight. The lessons we learned following September 11 were that we can't wait to be attacked again, particularly when it involves weapons of mass destruction. So regrettably, Saddam has not done the right thing, which is to disarm, and we're left with no alternative but to take action.” (Fox News' "The O'Reilly Factor," 03/17/03)
AND THE CURRENT SENATE MAJORITY LEADER HARRY REID?
SEN. HARRY REID (D-NV): “Saddam Hussein, in effect, has thumbed his nose at the world community. And I think that the President's approaching this in the right fashion.” (CNN's "Inside Politics," 09/18/02)
All posturing, all the time. The Dems have tried to wash their hands of Iraq for years now, and it doesn't work. These statement are too readily available and they can not run far or fast enough away.
As I and others smarter than me or my dogs have said, this is not flattering stuff. Either the Dems, contrary to all the rhetoric, went along with the "lies" and voted for the war. Or, they disagreed but went along to get along out of political expedience.
Either way they don't look at all smart or honorable and given the posturing and rhetoric of the last few year, not at all principled.
Somewhat later in the day, colleague Stephen Spruiell posted a follow-up. The key quote here gives away the game:
Actually, Sen. Durbin’s been saying stuff like this for a few years now. When pressed to name what specifically Durbin saw in classified intel briefings that differed from what the administration was telling the country, a spokesman for Durbin cites one of the key judgments from the Oct. 2002 NIE (declassified on July 18, 2003):
Most agencies believe that Saddam's personal interest in and Iraq's aggressive attempts to obtain high-strength aluminum tubes for centrifuge rotors—as well as Iraq's attempts to acquire magnets, high-speed balancing machines, and machine tools—provide compelling evidence that Saddam is reconstituting a uranium enrichment effort for Baghdad's nuclear weapons program. ([The Department of Energy] agrees that reconstitution of the nuclear program is underway but assesses that the tubes probably are not part of the program.)
Durbin's spokesman argues that the administration, while "factually correct" when it told the press that most agencies believed the tubes were part of a reconstituted nuclear program, was not being totally honest because it omitted the "greater expertise" of the Department of Energy.
Blame, blame and blame again.
I've now listened to this interview of Former Under-secretary of Defense Douglas Feith twice. That second time around, I couldn't get past this one response:
DF: Yeah, what happened was, and this story is at least partly recounted in Woodward’s latest book, and I’m going to be discussing it at some length in the book that I’m writing. Secretary Rumsfeld put together a memo, and he worked on it over several months, that listed everything that he could think of that could go wrong in the event of war. And he gathered his top Pentagon leadership, military and civilian, and we sat down and worked through a list of all the things that we could think of that would be arguments against going to war, and things that could go wrong in the event that we go to war, and put that together, and then Secretary Rumsfeld took it, and took it to the President and the National Security Council, and walked everybody through it. And he did that because he wanted to make sure before the decision was actually taken to go to war, that the government at its highest levels had given truly serious consideration to the best thinking that we could bring to the subject. And it was actually quite an impressive memo. And interestingly enough, while there were other agencies of the government that also did some pieces speculating about the problems that could occur in the event of war, I think Secretary Rumsfeld’s list was probably more serious, more comprehensive, graver, grimmer than anything produced by anybody else around the government.
HH: Has that memo been made public yet?
DF: No.
HH: Has it been widely reported as being in existence?
DF: There have been…yes, there’ve been quite a few stories that have referred to it.
HH: And did the Secretary of Defense’s memo underestimate what has actually transpired in Iraq, Mr. Feith?
DF: Well, some of the problems it hit on…I mean, he didn’t have a perfect crystal ball, but he definitely hit some of the problems, and then of course there were other problems that have arisen that he didn’t hit. But the point is not whether…to my mind, the point is not whether he had perfect seer capabilities. The point is that the notion that people in the Pentagon were pushing for war, and were trying to cherry pick information to persuade the President to go to war, and suppress any thought that might make the President reluctant to go to war, is complete nonsense, and is refuted by the written record, because in fact, we wanted the President and the whole National Security Council to take very seriously the full range of considerations, what would be the problems if we go to war, and what would be the problems if we don’t go to war.
Not that that quote or the existence of a 'written record' documenting the process will ever satisfy the cooked-books crowd, but I'm amazed that such revelations haven't earlier gotten the scrutiny they deserve. In the meantime, Hugh did a fine and masterful job of collecting at least some of said 'written record' here.
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