Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), formed in January 2003 "to speak out on the use of intelligence to justify the war,"
VIPS Steering Group
* Kathleen McGrath Christison, Santa Fe, NM
* William Christison, Santa Fe, NM
* David MacMichael, Linden, VA
* Raymond McGovern, Arlington, VA
* Richard Beske, San Diego, CA
* Patrick G. Eddington, Alexandria, VA
Other Alleged VIPS Members
* Eugene Betit[4]
* Ray Close[5]
* Larry Johnson[6]
# 19 May 2003: VIPS Letter sent via fax to Kofi Annan, Secretary General of the United Nations: "We Are Perplexed at the US Refusal to Permit the Return of UN Inspectors to Iraq" (published in Dissident Voice, May 21, 2003).
# 25 May 2003: VIPS: Opinion: "U.N. needs inspectors to return to Iraq", Birmingham News.
# 14 July 2003: "Cheney Must Go", an open letter to Pres. Bush published by Salon.com.
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March 10, 2004
We established our group, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, in January of last year. Before that several of us had been writing op-eds, and we had been giving each other sanity checks, because the conclusions we were coming up with were pretty far out -- that the President and the Secretary of State were lying through their teeth.
RM: Exactly, and from virtually all the agencies, not just CIA. We're hearing from some very distinguished operations officers, and from the FBI, Defense Intelligence, from the NSA, Army Intelligence, and from the State Department.
not getting their point, nor any of these hindsight critics.
Both the executive branch and Democrats in the senate request an NIE from Tenet, prior to the JR vote. despite claims of minimized dissent in unclassified versions, it key judgements were clear. It’s preposterous to expect lawmakers to discard 90 pages of a report, and its ultimate conclusions, and latch onto a minority dissent paragraph on a minor issue on page 58.
Due to the intelligence reform act of 1980 neither branch could have undue influence on the content of that NIE, as each pout in a request and they have by law independent conduits for intelligence finished products-and cannot view raw intel.
The use of this war to forward democrats agenda makes me want to puke. On a war critic. Sure it’s been ugly. People got hurt. Died. More so because some told Iraq’s insurgents the soldiers were there on lies.
Joe Wilson was the single bridge from bad intel to just plain lies, and it’s obvious he did it for a career change. From civil servant to politician. Young men and women died for his treachery, and Kerry’s.
Of course Bush was litle better, he allowed it and the “finding WMD is everything” whiners to cast aspersion on the whole mission.
He had to. Dems demanded a wholesale pullout in early summer ‘03. Remember “we’re not occupiers, give them back their soveriegnty!”
Uh-huh. With Saddam loose and France, China and Russia eager to reinstate drilling contracts, and us needing a shooting gallery for Al Qaeda?
Make us look feeble, hapless, “we’re only staying as long as they NEED us to!”
I remember them saying we were unable to keep the IED’s off of a 5 mile stretch of the Baghdad highway- most important blacktop in the country, green zone to Saddam int’l. I knew the whole thing was sandbagged from that day on. My ass, we had UAV’s in the air 7/24 overhead, if a gopher pops his head up we knew about it. Let alone some 15 yo boy buggering Iraqi dirtbag digging a hole and burying a bomb.
The world would never let us sit on top of all that oil after such an ass kicking on Saddam. However, look feeble, inept, like we were too hapless to do any better, and even America is the victim, lied to by Bush who goes home in 2009.
Masterful. I think it’s obvious Dems tried to tank the war for a platform in 2004. Question is, was Bush in full cooperation? We’ll never know, he told woodward. It goes from God, to George, to Bob, to us. Dick’s in there somewhere.
Everyone knows all this now, right?