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Malensek Rebutts Carl Levin's LA Times OpEd Dissing VP Chaney
The LA Times is running an Op-Ed piece by Senator Carl Levin:
If you're a regular reader here you know that Ray Robison, Mark Eichenlaub, Steve Schippert, and Scott Malensek have plenty of evidence to back what VP Cheney has said.
RBT
*****
Democratic Senator, Carl Levin, Misquotes His Own Report,
Or Does He Mislead from It?
By Scott Malensek
It’s a sad fact of modern American life that no one reads the results of the investigations that are so often demanded in Washington DC. Sen. Levin has been a member on the Senate Intelligence Committee for a long long time. Yet, he apparently isn’t even reading the reports that the Committee’s staffers work so hard to write. This is evidenced in the Michigan senator’s recent article in the Los Angeles Times, “Tell us another one, Mr. Vice President, Dick Cheney is still trying to link Iraq with Al Qaeda and 9/11” By Carl Levin, April 12, 2007. In this OpEd, Senator Carl Levin actually shows that he never even jumped to the conclusions sections in the report which he attempts to cite as a reference (as if it’s a genuine reference piece at all).
In this case, the Senator retreats from his guilt by association effort at commentary and tries to make a case that Zarqawi was never in Iraq before the US invasion. To do this he cites the ‘Senate Select Committee on Intelligence’ Phase II report.’ There are probably only a handful of people who have actually read that report. This is important because Mr. Levin is one who surely read it-perhaps even crafted it, and that’s why he refers to it, but there’s a problem.
The report freely states, repeatedly states that when it comes to the matter of Regime Ties to Al Queda, it is not at all based on the conclusions of a single report or even a conglomerate of reports from the 16 intelligence agencies. In all 16 cases, each and every agency flat out refused to conclusively say that there were regime ties to Al Queda. To this end, the report the report is not an assessment of any or all of the intelligence communities as Senator Levin would like us to believe. Instead, it is an intelligence assessment presented by the Senate Intelligence Agency.
Wait, apologies here….there is no intelligence agency in the Senate. The report that Senator Levin presents does not give a conclusion on Saddam’s Ties to Al Queda from an intelligence agency. It presents an intelligence assessment from a few staff members of Congress who wrote the unread report, and in it they admit that their conclusion was not a conclusion, but an assessment based on:
1) The word of Saddam Hussein
2) 18% or less of captured documents and tapes that sit idle in a warehouse after being snagged by US military forces upon taking control of Baghdad
3) Testimony from a single, interim representative from the Defense Intelligence Agency rather than the hundreds of thousands of people who work in the 16 different intelligence agencies
Are California readers supposed to believe that the Michigan Senator never read his own report? Are they to believe that the Senate Intelligence Agency-err, Committee is repeating conclusions found in ANY pre-war or post-war investigation by real intelligence agencies?
“TO PARAPHRASE President Reagan, there he goes again.
On Rush Limbaugh's radio program last week, Vice President Dick Cheney spoke about Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab Zarqawi and stated: "He went to Baghdad. He took up residence there before we ever launched into Iraq, organized the Al Qaeda operations inside Iraq…. This is Al Qaeda operating in Iraq and, as I say, they were present before we invaded Iraq."
It is incredible that more than four years after the invasion, the vice president is still trying to convince the public that Saddam Hussein's regime was connected to Al Qaeda and that Zarqawi's presence in Iraq was evidence of a connection.
While the vice president doesn't say directly that there was a tie between the two, his clear purpose is to blur the line between Al Qaeda — the perpetrator of the 9/11 attacks — and the Iraqi dictator in order to justify the war in Iraq.”
As we watch from the safety of our computer desks we can witness the amazing dance of a Senator who has been caught lying and must distort other’s comments to distract from his own lies. In this case, Senator Carl Levin states on his own accord that Vice President Cheney is talking about Abu Musab al Zarqawi, the former leader of Al Queda in Iraq, but then Mr. Levin decides to pretend that the Vice President is talking about Iraq ties to 911, or claims about Mohammed Atta meeting with Iraqi agents in Prague before the 911 attacks. One would wonder if the Michigan Senator realizes that in the article he paid so much money to run in California is a commentary about claims that he admits were never made? No sir, Vice President Cheney was talking about Zarqawi on the Rush Limbaugh show-not about 911, and to that end, it would seem that the only one who is perpetuating a myth by rapid association of disconnected comments is Senator Levin.
“The problem is, that's simply not supported by the facts or by our intelligence community — and everyone except the vice president acknowledges it. In September, for example, the Senate Intelligence Committee concluded in a bipartisan report that Hussein was "distrustful of Al Qaeda and viewed Islamic extremists as a threat to his regime, refusing all requests from Al Qaeda to provide material or operational support." And the CIA reported a year earlier, in October 2005, that the Iraqi regime "did not have a relationship, harbor or turn a blind eye toward Zarqawi and his associates." As the Intelligence Committee report noted, the Iraqi intelligence service was actually trying to capture Zarqawi, who was in Baghdad under an alias. Is the vice president willfully ignoring what the rest of the government has concluded? Or does he have access to information he hasn't shared with us? If so, he should produce it.”
Actually, Senator Levin need only read the report he cites rather than wait for Vice President Cheney to “produce it.”
“The Intelligence Community has discovered a number of forged documents captured in Iraq on a variety of topics. While the Committee has not conducted an exhaustive review of forged documents discovered in Iraq, in the context of terrorism, the forged documents of which the Committee is aware suggest links between Iraq and al-Zarqawi. For example, the Intelligence Community has discovered three sets of purported IIS documents depicting Zarqawi seeking a relationship with Baghdad before April 2003, obtaining medical treatment from the regime, and meeting with an IIS case officer.”
-Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Phase II report, Conclusion #9 re Regime Ties to Al Queda.
Guess Senator Carl Levin didn’t read his own report? Perhaps he’s choosing to cherry pick the parts he likes while ignoring others? Maybe the Senator would like to explain why there were three full sets of documents detailing Zarqawi’s known presence in Iraq (more evidence that he was there than there is evidence to the contrary)? One might also take special note that the Senator points to an “assessment” and not a conclusion (fyi, because the CIA refused to form a conclusion on the matter citing a lack of evidence gathered and the amount of contrary intelligence from both pre and post war reporting). It would seem that the conclusions the Senator from Michigan is marketing are the Senator’s and not those of the report he cites.
“The vice president has a clear, documented pattern of overstating and misstating information with regard to Iraq. He also, for instance, continued to claim that 9/11 terrorist Mohamed Atta may have met with an Iraqi agent in Prague — long after the intelligence community believed otherwise. Again, his obvious purpose is to link Hussein's regime with Sept. 11, even though the rest of the world has concluded that no such link exists.”
Ahhh Prague! Mr. Levin is referring here to a report that was first given to US intelligence from three foreign intelligence services as early as ten days after the 911 attacks. Two of those reports were unconfirmed, and the third-from Czech intelligence-reported that the source was unreliable. To this end, Special Agent Senator Levin has determined as have many others, that the meeting never took place. Two facts remain, however. First, the report was real enough for the Czechs to believe and kick out the Iraqi who allegedly had the meeting, and second, of all the various reports of direct, indirect, tacit, tactical, and strategic ties between the regime and al Queda….this is the only one that remains heavily classified. Is it real or not? We don’t know, and to that end Senator Levin is as guilty of saying that it did not as Vice President Cheney is of saying that it did. Intelligence agencies just don’t know for certain, but it was real enough for the Czechs to take action, and that seems to make it real enough for VP Cheney or anyone else to be concerned as well as for people to call for an investigation from an intelligence agency (to be clear, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence is not an intelligence agency).
“The vice president has made so many outlandish statements that the country barely raised an eyebrow at his false statement last week. The public has stopped believing the words of a man who promised, before we invaded Iraq, that we would be "greeted as liberators" and reassured us nearly two years ago that the insurgency was in its "last throes.""
People-like Senator Levin-who believe that United States forces were not initially greeted as liberators during the invasion of Iraq simply did not watch TV. They didn’t see crowds of Iraqis waving, or they have forgotten. The Kurds in the north have not. Even today various Kurdish groups run TV commercials in the US simply saying, “thank you!” If one doubts that Coalition troops were greeted as liberators as the Senator does, then one should talk to a Marine or soldier who was there, or turn on one of the dozen or so Discovery Channel documentaries that show it, or read one of the hundred or more personal account/tell-all books that have been put forth from those soldiers, Marines, and reporters who were there. People shouldn’t take the word of a Michigan Senator’s OpEd in a California paper-at least not over the words of generals, colonels, captains, sergeants, privates, and embedded reporters. Those are the people who were there, who were in fact greeted as liberators.
There was great joy when Saddam was deposed, but when Abu Musab al Zarqawi struck out on behalf of Al Queda (though Senator Levin and the Senate Intelligence Agency tell us he was never there as claimed) that’s when sectarian violence started. Other insurgency elements consisted of Saddam loyalists and Fedayeen who had escaped to Syria and operated freely from there-to this day (Democrats should know this given their recent fact-finding mission to Syria…the one where Speaker Pelosi went beyond the fact-finding effort of other visitors and tried to pursue her own foreign policy against the wishes and requests of the Bush Administration).
Yes, Americans were greeted as liberators, but no it did not last. Again, Mr. Levin tries to use disassociated facts together to create an illusion-ironically the exact same tactic he falsely accuses the Vice President trying.
“But his comments continue to erode our credibility with the international community, which has already been severely damaged by our rush to war with Iraq with little international support. If, in the months ahead, we face a crisis over Iran's weapons programs and need to rally the international community, we may find that the world has little interest in trusting an administration that misstates facts.”
Of course, Senator Levin is a member of one of Congress’ intelligence committees, and has been for many many years. As such, he is privy to all the assessments and conclusions of the 16 different intelligence agencies. Rather than distort intelligence and make false accusations based on false conclusions, it is his responsibility to confirm and support administration claims or to point out when they are wrong. In this case, readers might believe that he is attempting to do the latter, but in reality he is merely citing false conclusions from a report that admits its conclusions are not conclusions.
“By all accounts, Dick Cheney is one of the most powerful vice presidents in our history, if you define power as influence over policy. We need to ask ourselves: What does it mean for our country when the vice president's words lack credibility, but he still wields great power?”
Perhaps a better question would be why does Senator Levin ignore his own reports, directly lie to the American people in this article? Why does he deliberately point fingers at Vice President Cheney while he inappropriately misleads Americans into believing that the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence is an intelligence agency or that conclusions presented by it are the conclusions of the intelligence community? Why does the Senator cherry-pick words and lines to misrepresent the conclusions of all 16 intelligence agencies in their pre-war and post-war reports?
Combined, it’s ironic to the point of hypocrisy that Senator Levin chastised Doug Feith and his office for misrepresenting themselves as an intelligence agency, for allegedly cherry-picking information and presenting raw intelligence as though it were conclusions, and for saying that Doug Feith seemed to have acted illegally when his office allegedly did so. Were that the case, then without a shadow of a doubt, Senator Carl Levin is guilty as well, and since the DoD Inspector General reported that Feith and his office didn’t act illegally, but did act inappropriately, then so too has Senator Carl Levin acted inappropriately as well as the entire Senate Intelligence Agency-um, Committee.
For more on their “report”
http://www.scottmalensek.com/PhaseIIrebuttalrpt.pdf
*****
Steve Smith, Editor
Spokesman-Review
Dear Sir,
I thought I would call your attention to today's LA Times Op-Ed by Sen. Levin. Sen. Levin is entitled to his own opinion. And yes, the Bush Administration has made many serious mistakes in the war in Iraq. On the other hand there is a growing body of evidence that supports VP Cheney's statement of the linkage between the Saddam Regime and terror organizations in the greater Global War on Terror.
Why is it that many media outlets are giving Sen. Levin and others such a wide berth on these statements of "accepted truths," that he and others are touting without challenge?
DFO [runs S-R local blog HBO] can assure you I have issues with entrenched government bureaucracies that sometimes require innovative and creative thinking. IMHO the entrenched staid bureaucratic intel community dropped the ball multiple times and now are CYA'ing with selective leaks in open organizational warfare with the President of the United States.
Nancy Pelosi, Carl Levin and others use and repeat this disinformation in pursuit of their personal partisan agendas and placing them above that of Country. An argument can be made that they are in essence running a shadow government. Some have called them the Neo-Copperheads. Without an engage and inquiring media these half-truths mislead the American people who in turn can't hold those the place in positions of power accountable to defend this Country from a very cunning and determined enemy that seeks our total destruction.
RBT
www.rocketsbrain.com
Who's Spinning Intel?
Captured Iraqi documents tell a different story.
by Thomas Joscelyn
04/13/2007 12:00:00 AM
LAST WEEK, the Washington Post ("Hussein's Prewar Ties To Al-Qaeda Discounted") covered the latest round in Senator Levin's ongoing struggle to prove that the connection between Iraq and al Qaeda was nothing more than a fiction. Levin has been at this game for a while, and this time the Post's story centered on Levin's request for the declassification of a report written by the Pentagon's acting inspector general, Thomas F. Gimble. The report's conclusion: a Pentagon analysis shop, once headed by former Undersecretary of Defense Douglas J. Feith, "developed, produced, and then disseminated alternative intelligence assessments on the Iraq and al-Qaida relationship, which included some conclusions that were inconsistent with the consensus of the Intelligence Community, to senior decision-makers."
The inspector general determined that Feith's shop did nothing illegal, but still maintained that his office's analyses were "inappropriate." Why? According to the inspector general, Feith & Co. did not sufficiently explain that their conclusions were at odds with the CIA's (and the DIA's) judgments. That was enough for Levin to go on the attack once again.
But Levin's story, which was simply repeated without any real investigation by the Post or even the inspector general's office, relies on a false dichotomy. The senator now pretends that the CIA and other intelligence outfits had reached a rock-solid conclusion that there was no noteworthy relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda in 2002, but Feith's shop improperly pressed on. . .
[...]
Read More
TO PARAPHRASE President Reagan, there he goes again.
On Rush Limbaugh's radio program last week, Vice President Dick Cheney spoke about Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab Zarqawi and stated: "He went to Baghdad. He took up residence there before we ever launched into Iraq, organized the Al Qaeda operations inside Iraq…. This is Al Qaeda operating in Iraq and, as I say, they were present before we invaded Iraq."
It is incredible that more than four years after the invasion, the vice president is still trying to convince the public that Saddam Hussein's regime was connected to Al Qaeda and that Zarqawi's presence in Iraq was evidence of a connection.
[...]
Read More
If you're a regular reader here you know that Ray Robison, Mark Eichenlaub, Steve Schippert, and Scott Malensek have plenty of evidence to back what VP Cheney has said.
RBT
*****
Democratic Senator, Carl Levin, Misquotes His Own Report,
Or Does He Mislead from It?
By Scott Malensek
It’s a sad fact of modern American life that no one reads the results of the investigations that are so often demanded in Washington DC. Sen. Levin has been a member on the Senate Intelligence Committee for a long long time. Yet, he apparently isn’t even reading the reports that the Committee’s staffers work so hard to write. This is evidenced in the Michigan senator’s recent article in the Los Angeles Times, “Tell us another one, Mr. Vice President, Dick Cheney is still trying to link Iraq with Al Qaeda and 9/11” By Carl Levin, April 12, 2007. In this OpEd, Senator Carl Levin actually shows that he never even jumped to the conclusions sections in the report which he attempts to cite as a reference (as if it’s a genuine reference piece at all).
In this case, the Senator retreats from his guilt by association effort at commentary and tries to make a case that Zarqawi was never in Iraq before the US invasion. To do this he cites the ‘Senate Select Committee on Intelligence’ Phase II report.’ There are probably only a handful of people who have actually read that report. This is important because Mr. Levin is one who surely read it-perhaps even crafted it, and that’s why he refers to it, but there’s a problem.
The report freely states, repeatedly states that when it comes to the matter of Regime Ties to Al Queda, it is not at all based on the conclusions of a single report or even a conglomerate of reports from the 16 intelligence agencies. In all 16 cases, each and every agency flat out refused to conclusively say that there were regime ties to Al Queda. To this end, the report the report is not an assessment of any or all of the intelligence communities as Senator Levin would like us to believe. Instead, it is an intelligence assessment presented by the Senate Intelligence Agency.
Wait, apologies here….there is no intelligence agency in the Senate. The report that Senator Levin presents does not give a conclusion on Saddam’s Ties to Al Queda from an intelligence agency. It presents an intelligence assessment from a few staff members of Congress who wrote the unread report, and in it they admit that their conclusion was not a conclusion, but an assessment based on:
1) The word of Saddam Hussein
2) 18% or less of captured documents and tapes that sit idle in a warehouse after being snagged by US military forces upon taking control of Baghdad
3) Testimony from a single, interim representative from the Defense Intelligence Agency rather than the hundreds of thousands of people who work in the 16 different intelligence agencies
Are California readers supposed to believe that the Michigan Senator never read his own report? Are they to believe that the Senate Intelligence Agency-err, Committee is repeating conclusions found in ANY pre-war or post-war investigation by real intelligence agencies?
“TO PARAPHRASE President Reagan, there he goes again.
On Rush Limbaugh's radio program last week, Vice President Dick Cheney spoke about Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab Zarqawi and stated: "He went to Baghdad. He took up residence there before we ever launched into Iraq, organized the Al Qaeda operations inside Iraq…. This is Al Qaeda operating in Iraq and, as I say, they were present before we invaded Iraq."
It is incredible that more than four years after the invasion, the vice president is still trying to convince the public that Saddam Hussein's regime was connected to Al Qaeda and that Zarqawi's presence in Iraq was evidence of a connection.
While the vice president doesn't say directly that there was a tie between the two, his clear purpose is to blur the line between Al Qaeda — the perpetrator of the 9/11 attacks — and the Iraqi dictator in order to justify the war in Iraq.”
As we watch from the safety of our computer desks we can witness the amazing dance of a Senator who has been caught lying and must distort other’s comments to distract from his own lies. In this case, Senator Carl Levin states on his own accord that Vice President Cheney is talking about Abu Musab al Zarqawi, the former leader of Al Queda in Iraq, but then Mr. Levin decides to pretend that the Vice President is talking about Iraq ties to 911, or claims about Mohammed Atta meeting with Iraqi agents in Prague before the 911 attacks. One would wonder if the Michigan Senator realizes that in the article he paid so much money to run in California is a commentary about claims that he admits were never made? No sir, Vice President Cheney was talking about Zarqawi on the Rush Limbaugh show-not about 911, and to that end, it would seem that the only one who is perpetuating a myth by rapid association of disconnected comments is Senator Levin.
“The problem is, that's simply not supported by the facts or by our intelligence community — and everyone except the vice president acknowledges it. In September, for example, the Senate Intelligence Committee concluded in a bipartisan report that Hussein was "distrustful of Al Qaeda and viewed Islamic extremists as a threat to his regime, refusing all requests from Al Qaeda to provide material or operational support." And the CIA reported a year earlier, in October 2005, that the Iraqi regime "did not have a relationship, harbor or turn a blind eye toward Zarqawi and his associates." As the Intelligence Committee report noted, the Iraqi intelligence service was actually trying to capture Zarqawi, who was in Baghdad under an alias. Is the vice president willfully ignoring what the rest of the government has concluded? Or does he have access to information he hasn't shared with us? If so, he should produce it.”
Actually, Senator Levin need only read the report he cites rather than wait for Vice President Cheney to “produce it.”
“The Intelligence Community has discovered a number of forged documents captured in Iraq on a variety of topics. While the Committee has not conducted an exhaustive review of forged documents discovered in Iraq, in the context of terrorism, the forged documents of which the Committee is aware suggest links between Iraq and al-Zarqawi. For example, the Intelligence Community has discovered three sets of purported IIS documents depicting Zarqawi seeking a relationship with Baghdad before April 2003, obtaining medical treatment from the regime, and meeting with an IIS case officer.”
-Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Phase II report, Conclusion #9 re Regime Ties to Al Queda.
Guess Senator Carl Levin didn’t read his own report? Perhaps he’s choosing to cherry pick the parts he likes while ignoring others? Maybe the Senator would like to explain why there were three full sets of documents detailing Zarqawi’s known presence in Iraq (more evidence that he was there than there is evidence to the contrary)? One might also take special note that the Senator points to an “assessment” and not a conclusion (fyi, because the CIA refused to form a conclusion on the matter citing a lack of evidence gathered and the amount of contrary intelligence from both pre and post war reporting). It would seem that the conclusions the Senator from Michigan is marketing are the Senator’s and not those of the report he cites.
“The vice president has a clear, documented pattern of overstating and misstating information with regard to Iraq. He also, for instance, continued to claim that 9/11 terrorist Mohamed Atta may have met with an Iraqi agent in Prague — long after the intelligence community believed otherwise. Again, his obvious purpose is to link Hussein's regime with Sept. 11, even though the rest of the world has concluded that no such link exists.”
Ahhh Prague! Mr. Levin is referring here to a report that was first given to US intelligence from three foreign intelligence services as early as ten days after the 911 attacks. Two of those reports were unconfirmed, and the third-from Czech intelligence-reported that the source was unreliable. To this end, Special Agent Senator Levin has determined as have many others, that the meeting never took place. Two facts remain, however. First, the report was real enough for the Czechs to believe and kick out the Iraqi who allegedly had the meeting, and second, of all the various reports of direct, indirect, tacit, tactical, and strategic ties between the regime and al Queda….this is the only one that remains heavily classified. Is it real or not? We don’t know, and to that end Senator Levin is as guilty of saying that it did not as Vice President Cheney is of saying that it did. Intelligence agencies just don’t know for certain, but it was real enough for the Czechs to take action, and that seems to make it real enough for VP Cheney or anyone else to be concerned as well as for people to call for an investigation from an intelligence agency (to be clear, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence is not an intelligence agency).
“The vice president has made so many outlandish statements that the country barely raised an eyebrow at his false statement last week. The public has stopped believing the words of a man who promised, before we invaded Iraq, that we would be "greeted as liberators" and reassured us nearly two years ago that the insurgency was in its "last throes.""
People-like Senator Levin-who believe that United States forces were not initially greeted as liberators during the invasion of Iraq simply did not watch TV. They didn’t see crowds of Iraqis waving, or they have forgotten. The Kurds in the north have not. Even today various Kurdish groups run TV commercials in the US simply saying, “thank you!” If one doubts that Coalition troops were greeted as liberators as the Senator does, then one should talk to a Marine or soldier who was there, or turn on one of the dozen or so Discovery Channel documentaries that show it, or read one of the hundred or more personal account/tell-all books that have been put forth from those soldiers, Marines, and reporters who were there. People shouldn’t take the word of a Michigan Senator’s OpEd in a California paper-at least not over the words of generals, colonels, captains, sergeants, privates, and embedded reporters. Those are the people who were there, who were in fact greeted as liberators.
There was great joy when Saddam was deposed, but when Abu Musab al Zarqawi struck out on behalf of Al Queda (though Senator Levin and the Senate Intelligence Agency tell us he was never there as claimed) that’s when sectarian violence started. Other insurgency elements consisted of Saddam loyalists and Fedayeen who had escaped to Syria and operated freely from there-to this day (Democrats should know this given their recent fact-finding mission to Syria…the one where Speaker Pelosi went beyond the fact-finding effort of other visitors and tried to pursue her own foreign policy against the wishes and requests of the Bush Administration).
Yes, Americans were greeted as liberators, but no it did not last. Again, Mr. Levin tries to use disassociated facts together to create an illusion-ironically the exact same tactic he falsely accuses the Vice President trying.
“But his comments continue to erode our credibility with the international community, which has already been severely damaged by our rush to war with Iraq with little international support. If, in the months ahead, we face a crisis over Iran's weapons programs and need to rally the international community, we may find that the world has little interest in trusting an administration that misstates facts.”
Of course, Senator Levin is a member of one of Congress’ intelligence committees, and has been for many many years. As such, he is privy to all the assessments and conclusions of the 16 different intelligence agencies. Rather than distort intelligence and make false accusations based on false conclusions, it is his responsibility to confirm and support administration claims or to point out when they are wrong. In this case, readers might believe that he is attempting to do the latter, but in reality he is merely citing false conclusions from a report that admits its conclusions are not conclusions.
“By all accounts, Dick Cheney is one of the most powerful vice presidents in our history, if you define power as influence over policy. We need to ask ourselves: What does it mean for our country when the vice president's words lack credibility, but he still wields great power?”
Perhaps a better question would be why does Senator Levin ignore his own reports, directly lie to the American people in this article? Why does he deliberately point fingers at Vice President Cheney while he inappropriately misleads Americans into believing that the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence is an intelligence agency or that conclusions presented by it are the conclusions of the intelligence community? Why does the Senator cherry-pick words and lines to misrepresent the conclusions of all 16 intelligence agencies in their pre-war and post-war reports?
Combined, it’s ironic to the point of hypocrisy that Senator Levin chastised Doug Feith and his office for misrepresenting themselves as an intelligence agency, for allegedly cherry-picking information and presenting raw intelligence as though it were conclusions, and for saying that Doug Feith seemed to have acted illegally when his office allegedly did so. Were that the case, then without a shadow of a doubt, Senator Carl Levin is guilty as well, and since the DoD Inspector General reported that Feith and his office didn’t act illegally, but did act inappropriately, then so too has Senator Carl Levin acted inappropriately as well as the entire Senate Intelligence Agency-um, Committee.
For more on their “report”
http://www.scottmalensek.com/PhaseIIrebuttalrpt.pdf
Update:
*****
Steve Smith, Editor
Spokesman-Review
Dear Sir,
I thought I would call your attention to today's LA Times Op-Ed by Sen. Levin. Sen. Levin is entitled to his own opinion. And yes, the Bush Administration has made many serious mistakes in the war in Iraq. On the other hand there is a growing body of evidence that supports VP Cheney's statement of the linkage between the Saddam Regime and terror organizations in the greater Global War on Terror.
Why is it that many media outlets are giving Sen. Levin and others such a wide berth on these statements of "accepted truths," that he and others are touting without challenge?
DFO [runs S-R local blog HBO] can assure you I have issues with entrenched government bureaucracies that sometimes require innovative and creative thinking. IMHO the entrenched staid bureaucratic intel community dropped the ball multiple times and now are CYA'ing with selective leaks in open organizational warfare with the President of the United States.
Nancy Pelosi, Carl Levin and others use and repeat this disinformation in pursuit of their personal partisan agendas and placing them above that of Country. An argument can be made that they are in essence running a shadow government. Some have called them the Neo-Copperheads. Without an engage and inquiring media these half-truths mislead the American people who in turn can't hold those the place in positions of power accountable to defend this Country from a very cunning and determined enemy that seeks our total destruction.
RBT
www.rocketsbrain.com
Update II:
Who's Spinning Intel?
Captured Iraqi documents tell a different story.
by Thomas Joscelyn
04/13/2007 12:00:00 AM
LAST WEEK, the Washington Post ("Hussein's Prewar Ties To Al-Qaeda Discounted") covered the latest round in Senator Levin's ongoing struggle to prove that the connection between Iraq and al Qaeda was nothing more than a fiction. Levin has been at this game for a while, and this time the Post's story centered on Levin's request for the declassification of a report written by the Pentagon's acting inspector general, Thomas F. Gimble. The report's conclusion: a Pentagon analysis shop, once headed by former Undersecretary of Defense Douglas J. Feith, "developed, produced, and then disseminated alternative intelligence assessments on the Iraq and al-Qaida relationship, which included some conclusions that were inconsistent with the consensus of the Intelligence Community, to senior decision-makers."
The inspector general determined that Feith's shop did nothing illegal, but still maintained that his office's analyses were "inappropriate." Why? According to the inspector general, Feith & Co. did not sufficiently explain that their conclusions were at odds with the CIA's (and the DIA's) judgments. That was enough for Levin to go on the attack once again.
But Levin's story, which was simply repeated without any real investigation by the Post or even the inspector general's office, relies on a false dichotomy. The senator now pretends that the CIA and other intelligence outfits had reached a rock-solid conclusion that there was no noteworthy relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda in 2002, but Feith's shop improperly pressed on. . .
[...]
Read More