1 Boring Old Man

Scottie and Condi and the Niger Intelligence

…In this post, I want to look at how he deals with the underlying issue–the Niger intelligence and the White House’s response to it. I find his treatment particularly curious. As many of you have pointed out, Scottie McC is fairly critical of Condi Rice.

Over time, I was struck by how deft she is at protecting her reputation. No matter what went wrong, she was somehow able to keep her hands clean, even when the problems related to matters under her direct purview, including the WMD rationale for war in Iraq, the decision to invade Iraq, the sixteen words in the State of the Union address, and postwar planning and implementation of the strategy of Iraq.

But his book, in some key ways, helps her protect her reputation. Now, most of this is–I think–ignorance on the part of Scottie McC, not any attempt to put Condi in a good light. Nevertheless, it is rather telling that he seems to be unaware of some of the key roles that Condi played in precisely these intelligence issues. Which is another way of saying he really misses some of the tensions between NSC and CIA the week of the leak–and therefore some of the underlying skirmishes that contributed to Plame’s outing. For this post, I’m going to do a timeline–both of the events he covers, and the events he misses…

The White House National Security Council (NSC) in the United States is the principal forum used by the President for considering national security and foreign policy matters with his senior national security advisors and Cabinet officials and is part of the President’s Executive Office. Since its inception under President Harry S. Truman, the function of the Council has been to advise and assist the President on national security and foreign policies. The Council also serves as the President’s principal arm for coordinating these policies among various government agencies. Wikipedia

… sets the scene for Scottie McC to tell the fiction of a remarkably transparent effort in the aftermath of the leak (which of course is precisely the time he waltzed onto the scene as the spokesperson). In addition to ridiculously claiming (cited above) that Condi didn’t find out that NSC was responsible for the 16 words until after the leak, he …

As I mentioned below, I think Hadley was the one who got things done, while Rice was off schmoozing with the big guys. As a true National Security Adviser, she was a total flop. She ignored reports of the threat to national security posed by al Qaeda before the war. She was a follower as the invasion of Iraq was getting warmed up. Stephen Hadley was in the thick of the prewar build-up, the speech-writing, the campaign to sell the war, and the Plame operation. When the WMD story collapsed, she was in full blaming mode, while Hadley was scrambling with Cheney/Libby/Rove to put fingers in the dyke. In fact, in Bush’s second term, Rice was shunted to Secretary of State – a post Bush and Cheney saw little use for, where she continued to do little of substance, but was available to be Bush’s "friend girl." That moved Hadley into the job he’d been doing all along. He was still not really an adviser, more a worker bee for Cheney who masterminded the Neoconservative agenda – which mostly involved power plays in Washington and the Middle East. If someone needs to be on the stand being questioned, Hadley’s the person to go after. He was the "doer."

But there’s something else to say. In July 2003, the bottom fell out of their grand scheme. They put forward a Herculean effort to keep their situation from tanking, and thus far, they’ve scraped by – at least from their point of view. They continued their war in Washington and Iraq, and been unswerving in their true agenda. With the exception of a minimal effort by Powell, the most striking thing is what’s missing. Where is the part where they confront how wrong they were and, instead of covering up and proceeding, where they adjust their course to fit the actual realities of the situation? There were no WMD’s. The Iraqis did not embrace us as liberators. The sympathy of the world rapidly dissipated and, in fact, reversed. Military success eludes us. Thousands of people will never wake up to see a new day. But they’re still at it, as we speak. Surging. Trying to negotiate an endless occupation in Iraq. Thumbing our noses at the world. Foiling with Iran. More people losing the only life they’ll ever have. The worse things get, the more they claim success.