…As a bipartisan investigation into prewar intelligence heats up, some key Democratic lawmakers, including Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI), have unearthed unreported evidence that indicates Congress was misled. This evidence includes [former CIA Director George] Tenet’s testimony before Congress, dissenting views from the scientific community and statements made by members of the administration in early 2001.
Tenet told Congress in February 2001 that Iraq was “probably” pursuing chemical and biological weapons programs but that the CIA had no direct evidence that Iraq had actually obtained such weapons. However, such caveats as “may” and “probably” were removed from intelligence reports by key members of the Bush administration immediately after 9/11 when discussing Iraq…
In fact, more than two dozen pieces of testimony and interviews of top officials in the Bush administration, including those given by former Secretary of State Colin Powell, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz prior to 9-11, show that the U.S. never believed Saddam Hussein was an imminent threat to anyone other than his own people.
On “Face the Nation” in 2001, then Sec. of State Colin Powell said, “We have been able to keep weapons from going into Iraq … We have been able to keep the sanctions in place to the extent that items that might support weapons of mass destruction development have had some controls.”
Around that same time, Sec. of Defense Donald Rumsfeld agred with Powell in a Fox News interview: “Iraq is probably not a nuclear threat at the present time.”
Within a year, these guys were singing a different tune – but these earlier statements put the lie to the White House’s current claims that “everybody” believed Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.
I recently heard that Karl Rove considered himself a serious student of Macchiavelli. With the way the wheels have come off this administration, I don’t think he read past the back flap of the dust cover on ‘The Prince’. And if you were to ask Macchiavelli today about Karl Rove, his answer would most likely be ‘never heard of him.’
Rove (and by extension the administration) has failed to recognize that the most powerful and most persuasive arguments in politics (as in life)are based upon the truth. Once you tell a lie, or even a ‘half-truth’, you’ll need to tell five lies later on to keep the original lie convincing. And this is, and always has been, the quintissential ethical weakness in politics…lies are somehow seen as excusable for the sake of power. Never has it been so desirous to see an administration forced to publicly eat its own lies.