Can't wash out this stain easily

http://www.dfw.com/mld/startelegram/...ns/7101986.htm

Can't wash out this stain easily
By Molly Ivins
Creators Syndicate

SEATTLE - What a gully-washer. What a frog-strangler. You ain't seen
rain until you've seen record rain in Seattle. My wetness awareness has
shot up, thanks to this town. But the next day, the sun came out -- and
you could hardly tell the deluge had occurred.

And so it is in our public life -- the finger of fate writes, and having
writ, moves on, leaving today's horrendous scandal back there with the
snows of yesteryear, while we all focus on The Latest.

But there is one deception that will not go away. What happened to the
weapons of mass destruction?

"The intolerable reality is that they blatantly twisted intelligence
information to fit preconceived policies," said Rep. Henry Waxman,
D-Calif. "They lied to promote public relations, from the Jessica Lynch
ordeal to the president's campaign landing on the USS Abraham Lincoln --
and about what war would cost our country."

"Before the war, week after week after week, we were told lie after lie
after lie," said Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass.

"The point is not that the president and his senior aides were
consciously lying. What was taking place was much more systematic -- and
potentially just as troublesome," writes Seymour Hersh in a recent
edition of The New Yorker, in a long, detailed account about our
intelligence failures and the politically motivated "stovepiping" --
shooting unconfirmed intelligence reports, without analysis, up to
decision-makers.

Among the horrific results, reports Hersh: "By March 2002, a former
White House official told me, it was understood by many in the White
House that the president had decided, in his own mind, to go to war. The
undeclared decision had a devastating impact on the continuing war
against terrorism. The Bush administration took many intelligence
operations that had been aimed at al Qaeda and other terrorist groups
around the world and redirected them to the Persian Gulf. Linguists and
special operatives were reassigned, and several ongoing anti-terrorism
intelligence programs were curtailed."

Although it is certainly not in the same category as the deceptions
described above, there was something so sad about the episode a few
weeks back in which it was discovered that hundreds of letters had been
sent to American newspapers in the names of serving soldiers without
their knowledge or permission. That's not so much horrific as it is low.

The faked letters said in identical language that everything was
hunky-dory over there in Iraq -- we are doing much good and are greatly
appreciated. According to a survey published in Stars and Stripes (not
an anti-war rag), about a third of Americans serving in Iraq have
already concluded that the war had little or no value.

If administration officials want to lie, they should at least lie under
their own names.

But with this administration, one cannot spend much time fretting about
past deceptions, because fresh horrors keep looming.

Last week, the foreign ministers of Britain, France and Germany
persuaded Iran to accept stricter international inspections of its
nuclear sites and to stop production of enriched uranium. This might
seem, to the simple-minded, to be good news indeed.

But according to The New York Times: "In Washington, the State
Department reacted skeptically to the agreement, with officials
privately voicing concerns that Teheran would not fully comply.
Officials there only grudgingly praised the work of their European
colleagues. … Bush administration officials dismissed the notion that a
less confrontational approach by the Europeans had yielded more tangible
results than the administration's policy of ultimatums."

Now, some might consider that petty, small-minded or just bad manners on
the part of the administration, but the more serious question is whether
it's the beginning of another intelligence gap.

The Senate Intelligence Committee has been working since midsummer to
figure out how the Bush administration's prewar assessment of Iraq's
weapons of mass destruction turned out to be so wildly at variance with
what has been found.

According to Hersh's report: "One finding … was that the intelligence
reports about Iraq provided by the United Nations inspection teams and
the International Atomic Energy Agency, which monitored Iraq's nuclear
programs, were far more accurate than the CIA estimates. … One official
said, 'If you look at them side-by-side, CIA versus United Nations, the
U.N. agencies come out ahead across the board.'"

Iran now agrees to U.N. inspections, and according to the Times, the
United States "reluctantly endorsed the European initiative, with
Secretary of State Colin Powell telling his European counterparts what
the U.S. wanted was an unambiguous document that left no room for
negotiation or second-guessing."

Iran has yet to ratify an additional agreement under the U.N. Nuclear
Nonproliferation Treaty of 1968 that would allow surprise inspections of
its nuclear installations. (Remember when right-wingers used to sneer at
the "liberal wusses" who favored nonproliferation?)

Those who consider this the beginning of the Same Song, Second Verse
would do well to ponder the track records of American vs. U.N.
intelligence. As you recall during the lead-up to Iraq War II, anyone
who cited U.N. findings on Iraq was stigmatized as "unpatriotic." Who
would believe the sorry old United Nations, as opposed to our very own
Bush administration?

It's not going to be easy to run that play again.

On Mon, 27 Oct 2003 1742 -0800 (PST), Anonymous
wrote:

>h
No Balls, No Courage, No Pride
Mr. Anonymous Poster, strikes again with another load of BS.


Ken