Douglas Feith made my day with Tough Questions We Were Right to Ask in the Washington Post. It’s like opening a time capsule on those days back in 2002 and 2003 when they were planning the invasion of Iraq. Even the title sounds like an early Bush sound-byte – "Tough Questions." Then, it was, "answering the hard questions." In this article, Feith says this amazing thing:
In evaluating our policy toward Iraq after Sept. 11, 2001, my office realized that CIA analysts were suppressing some of their information. They excluded reports conflicting with their favored theory: that the secular Iraqi Baathist regime would not cooperate with al-Qaeda jihadists. (We now face a strategic alliance of jihadists and former Baathists in Iraq.) Pentagon officials did not buy that theory, and in 2002 they gave a briefing that reflected their skepticism. Their aim was not to enthrone a different theory, but to urge the CIA not to exclude any relevant information from what it provided to policymakers. Only four top-level government officials received the briefing: Donald Rumsfeld, George Tenet, and (together) Stephen Hadley and I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby.
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Dear Doug,
I guess you don’t read the papers. You don’t know that we’ve all seen your boss’s notes transcribed by Stephen Cambone from September 11th, 2001:
In these notes, Rumsfeld is planning to "Hit Saddam Hussein at [the] same time, not only Osama Bin Laden." And he further assigns Paul Wolfowitz to find the connections between them. Paul Wolfowitz was your boss. So don’t tell us that, "In evaluating our policy toward Iraq after Sept. 11, 2001, my office realized that CIA analysts were…" anything. You didn’t realize anything! You were tasked with finding an Al Qaeda Saddam Hussein connection! End of story. And, by the way, using new words doesn’t change Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden one bit ["They excluded reports conflicting with their favored theory: that the secular Iraqi Baathist regime would not cooperate with al-Qaeda jihadists"]. And your sarcasm isn’t worth anything any more. It used to work – no more. And using they and their instead of me and my doesn’t work either, ["Pentagon officials did not buy that theory, and in 2002 they gave a briefing that reflected their skepticism. Their aim was not to enthrone a different theory, but to urge the CIA not to exclude any relevant information from what it provided to policymakers"]. This was your show. You know how we know? Because you leaked it all to The Weekly Standard and it’s published under your name as Case Closed [read here]. Ask Karen Kwiatkowski. And as to the scope of your presentations ["Their aim was not to enthrone a different theory, but to urge the CIA not to exclude any relevant information from what it provided to policymakers."] and ["Only four top-level government officials received the briefing: Donald Rumsfeld, George Tenet, and (together) Stephen Hadley and I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby."]. If the scope was so limited, why have Bush and Cheney referenced it in every speech possible as intelligence for years, and why did you leak it to The Weekly Standard? Doug, you’ve been in a time-warp. Those kind of Talking Points don’t work any more. Back to the drawing board… Sincerely,
1boringoldman P.S.: As of today 3128 American soldiers and tens of thousands of innocent Iraqi citizens have died in Iraq. |
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