Why does ABC News' Rick Klein ask What did Clinton/Edwards/Dodd/Bidden know or could’ve known before the IWR vote
There have has been much made of who read the 92 page classified the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) released after dark on 10/1/2002, and who read the 6 page classified summary, and who read the 25 page unclassified summary released on 10/4, and who read the 10/7 declassified 10/2 testimony by the CIA to the intel committee, and who depended on the constant briefing by the administration as to the status of the situation. The idea appears to be to give the impression that votes would have been changed if only folks had read the full 90 page classified report that one had to sign in for and read with the armed security guards watching that you did not take notes.
I went back to Bob Graham’s article in the Washington Post http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/18/AR2005111802397.html as I could not find the video of the interviews he has given on this topic. In the article “What I Knew Before the Invasion” (Sunday, November 20, 2005; Page B07) Graham says that President saying that Democrats knew what he knew in 2002 and therefore can’t complain after voting for the IWR was “outrageous”, pointing out that most acted on the “legitimate belief that the president and his administration were truthful in their statements that Saddam Hussein was a gathering menace -- that if Hussein was not disarmed, the smoking gun would become a mushroom cloud.” Graham does note that the full 92 page classified NIE did have dissents – the Air Force "does not agree that Iraq is developing UAVs primarily intended to be delivery platforms for chemical and biological warfare (CBW) agents”. State agreed on Chem and bio WMD but doubted nuclear((State Department chief of staff Lawrence Wilkerson on Oct. 19, 2005 said the nuke program was not up and running was the only dissent by State’s intelligence arm, the Bureau of Intelligence and Research, known as the INR), and DOE doubted the aluminum tubes that were offered as evidence Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear program, but did not doubt that there was a nuclear program. In a section on chemical weapons, the top-secret findings said the intelligence community had "little specific information on Iraq's CW (chemical weapons) stockpile", but then said Iraq "probably has stocked at least 100 metric tons (MT) and possibly as much as 500 MT of CW agents - much of it added last year." And the NIE said the use of WMD by Iraq was unlikely unless Iraq was first attacked.
In addition, the Tenet revelation on 10/2 that the NIE had not been independently verified by a U.S. operative inside Iraq, was declassified on 10/7 and made available to all in the Congress 3 days before the House passed the Iraq resolution on Oct. 10, 2002 by a vote of 296-133, and the Senate passed it in the wee hours of Oct. 11, by a vote of 77-23, with a total of 81 Democrats in the House and 29 Democrats in the Senate supporting the resolution. Most voting did not seek out the armed guards and the full 92 page NIE, but instead depended on the declassified summary (25 pages) prepared on Oct 4 that dropped the dissents, minor as they might be relative to the thrust of the whole report , dropped the conclusion Iraq was unlikely to use WMD against the U.S. unless invaded, and warned in its conclusion “If Baghdad acquired sufficient weapons-grade fissile material from abroad, it could make a nuclear weapon within a year." Of course, the White House claimed that Iraq was trying for a source of weapons-grade fissile material from abroad (Africa) and already had enough for a bomb in the country. Graham in a later interview recalled his meetings as minority head of the intel committee with intel folks during and since the first quarter of 2002- meetings that made him wary of the intent/ honesty of the White House and of the intel product he was being provided with by the White House. The fact tthe White House never ordered up an NIE before deciding to go to war –the Senate intel Committee – Feinstein – had to request the NIE be done ASAP meaning a normal 4 month process became a less than 3 weeks of cut and paste of ex-pats information with no review - may have been the straw that convince Graham to vote "NO". Other Senators did not have Grahams’ background conversations since the first of the year, and had to rely of the NIE and their gut – with 80 Senators getting it wrong and voting for the IWR.
Into this history we now have Edwards being slimed http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalradar/2007/05/edwards_reading.html in today’s “Edwards' Reading List Draws Scrutiny May 31, 2007 by ABC News' Rick Klein that wants us to think it was important if Edwards was not one of the 6 to March up to guards and ask permission to read the 92 page NIE. Indeed Hillary not claiming she read the 92 page NIE and saying she was briefed is Carl Bernstein’s big revelation in his new book. NBC http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2007/05/25/204032.aspx wants us to think the IWR was a war authorization vote, forgetting the Bush reason for wanting the resolution was to put pressure on Saddam, with war as a last resort.
Why is the focus of the media not that this is Bush’s war and that Bush lied and in his war. The NIE that was produced did not even have the CIA provide an assessment of a contrarian case that Saddam Hussein did not have an active WMD program underway and was bluffing. If the writers of the NIE had known the decision to go to war was in the process of being made, it is likely the NIE would have been quite different and not just cut and paste ex-pat stories – and indeed the NIC might have submitted the draft for peer review or to a panel of outside experts as is customary.
Rather than bashing the Democratic Party candidates for President, the media should be focused on the fact that this is Bush’s war, sold by him to us by his omitting any mention of doubts about Saddam's nuclear program, saying Saddam might give chemical, biological or even nuclear weapons to terrorists, despite the NIE saying that was unlikely. The administration used intelligence not to inform decision-making, but to justify a decision already made. It went to war without requesting -- and evidently without being influenced by -- any strategic-level intelligence assessments on any aspect of Iraq.
In 2002 the choice was seeing Bush as a con man and incompetent, or seeing him as loud and certain of himself with foreign affairs knowledge greater than the Congress by virtue of being President. Depending on how you read determined your vote. It turns out that those that gave deference to the office of the President when he said we were threaten did not read Bush correctly. And that was indeed a test of judgment so those that voted “NO” had the better judgment. But if the President was a truth teller and competent, the good "judgment" vote would have been to pass the IWR. There was nothing in the NIE - classified or unclassified version - to change your vote. Obama had it right in 2004 when he said he did not have enough information to judge how others voted.
Depending on how you read him determined how you voted. And indeed that is a test of judgment. the information in 2002 that the Congress had and therefore could not criticize those that voted yes. Indeed the "who has the information" thought was no doubt a reason in 2002 to vote yes, because you assume the truth telling President has more information than that summarized in an NIE. My take away is that the object of scorn should be Bush - and not those that trusted the office of the President 18 months into his first term
Indeed who can forget Bush selling the war by repeatedly claiming Iraq had trained al Qaeda terrorists in the use of poison gas, an untrue story obtained from an al Qaeda detainee, no doubt via enhanced interrogation techniques , that the Defense Intelligence Agency said in February 2002 was untrue. And Cheney on MTP, Sept. 8, 2002 said “But we do know, with absolute certainty, that he (Saddam) is using his procurement system to acquire the equipment he needs in order to enrich uranium to build a nuclear weapon. And Bush on Oct. 7, 2002 said “ We've learned that Iraq has trained al Qaeda members in bomb-making and poisons and deadly gases . And we know that after September the 11th, Saddam Hussein's regime gleefully celebrated the terrorist attacks on America. Iraq could decide on any given day to provide a biological or chemical weapon to a terrorist group or individual terrorists. Alliance with terrorists could allow the Iraqi regime to attack America without leaving any fingerprints.”
October 2002 CIA intelligence estimate is at wttp://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB129/index.htm
“After the congressional vote in October 2002, the Bush administration published a “white paper” unclassified version of the NIE. That “white paper” changed many of the official judgments of intelligence professionals by turning qualified conclusions into blunt assertions of fact http://www.ciaonet.org/wps/dod102/ . One of the primary authors of the “white paper,” former CIA staffer Paul Pillar, told Frontline the paper was “clearly requested and published for policy advocacy purposes,” rather than its intended function as a fact-intensive, comprehensive judgment of the intelligence community. He added, “I regret having a role in that.” http://images1.americanprogress.org/il80web20037/ThinkProgress/2006/pbs.320.240.mov”
“The title of the NIE, "Iraq's Continuing Programs for Weapons of Mass Destruction," is reflective of a predisposition that was not supported either by the facts available at the time, or by the passage of time. “