ROXANA HEGEMAN
Raw Story
Sunday May 06, 2007
"George Tenet is just the latest to join this blame game," writes
Frank Rich in his Sunday New York Times op-ed piece.
Three years ago it was General Tommy Franks laying the blame
for the bungled Iraq war at the feet of Douglas Feith. Last
year it was "neocon cheerleader" Kenneth Adelman
pointing the finger at Tenet, Franks and L. Paul Bremer. Richard
Perle called out Bush, Ahmad Chalabi placed the burden on Paul
Wolfowitz.
"And of course nearly everyone blames Rumsfeld," says
Rich. "This would be a Three Stooges routine were there
only three stooges."
But the highest level Bush confidant who was around when the
war was being conceived, and is still on the payroll, is Secretary
of State Condoleezza Rice.
Last week Rice made the rounds on the morning talk show circuit,
just days after rebuffing a subpoena from House Oversight and
Government Reform Committee about the intelligence that was
used to make a case for war with Iraq.
"Rice was dispatched to three Sunday shows last weekend
to bat away Tenet's book before '60 Minutes' broadcast its
interview with him that night. But in each appearance her statements
raised more questions than they answered," writes Rich. "She
was persistently at odds with the record, not just the record
as spun by Tenet but also the public record. She must be held
to a higher standard -- aka the truth -- before she too jumps
ship."
For video of Rice's appearance on ABC's This Week, see RAW
STORY's coverage here.
But dodging questions on morning talk shows is not where Rich
things Rice should be talking.
"As long as U.S. troops are dying in Iraq, the secretary
of state has an obligation to answer questions about how they
got there and why they stay. If accountability is ever to begin,
it would be best if those questions are answered not on '60
Minutes' but under oath," he concludes.
Excerpts follow:
On CBS' "Face the Nation," she claimed that intelligence
errors before the war were "worldwide" even though
the International Atomic Energy Agency's Mohamed ElBaradei
publicly stated there was "no evidence" of an Iraqi
nuclear program and even though Germany's intelligence service
sent strenuous prewar warnings that the CIA's principal informant
on Saddam's supposed biological weapons was a fraud.
Of the Sunday interviewers, it was George Stephanopoulos who
went for the jugular by returning to that nonexistent uranium
from Africa. He forced Rice to watch a clip of her appearance
on his show in June 2003, when she claimed she did not know
of any serious questions about the uranium evidence before
the war. Then he came as close as any Sunday host ever has
to calling a guest a liar. "But that statement wasn't
true," Stephanopoulos said. Rice pleaded memory loss,
but the facts remain. She received a memo raising serious questions
about the uranium in October 2002, three months before the
president included the infamous 16 words on the subject in
his State of the Union address. Her deputy, Stephen Hadley,
received two memos as well as a phone call of warning from
Tenet.
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