Posted on 03/11/2006 9:22:21 AM PST by kimosabe31
On February 16, President George W. Bush assembled a small group of congressional Republicans for a briefing on Iraq. Vice President Dick Cheney and National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley were there, and U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad participated via teleconference from Baghdad. As the meeting was beginning, Mike Pence spoke up. The Indiana Republican, a leader of conservatives in the House, was seated next to Bush."Yesterday, Mr. President, the war had its best night on the network news since the war ended," Pence said."Is this the tapes thing?" Bush asked, referring to two ABC News reports that included excerpts of recordings Saddam Hussein made of meetings with his war cabinet in the years before the U.S. invasion. Bush had not seen the newscasts but had been briefed on them.
Pence framed his response as a question, quoting Abraham Lincoln: "One of your Republican predecessors said, 'Give the people the facts and the Republic will be saved.' There are 3,000 hours of Saddam tapes and millions of pages of other documents that we captured after the war. When will the American public get to see this information?
"Bush replied that he wanted the documents released. He turned to Hadley and asked for an update. Hadley explained that John Negroponte, Bush's Director of National Intelligence, "owns the documents" and that DNI lawyers were deciding how they might be handled.
Bush extended his arms in exasperation and worried aloud that people who see the documents in 10 years will wonder why they weren't released sooner. "If I knew then what I know now," Bush said in the voice of a war skeptic, "I would have been more supportive of the war.
"Bush told Hadley to expedite the release of the Iraq documents. "This stuff ought to be out. Put this stuff out."
(Excerpt) Read more at weeklystandard.com ...
Negroponte apparently feels Ted Kennedy, Howard Dan, John Kerry, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi and every other loud mouth, duplicitous lib that has accused the POTUS of "lying" about WMD's are his allies. He and his DNI "viper" lawyers are protecting the lying libs from public exposure at the expense of the presidents credibility. The president needs to call Negroponte in and inform him that "although these docs/tapes may 'belong' to you as head of DNI, YOU work for me. NOW get these documents released immediately or you AND your lawyers are out on the street". See if that doesn't get arrogant Negroponte’s attention.
Didn't seem to have the nature of a "suggestion" did it?
Bet we'll be seeing stuff soon if Hadley places any value on his job.
The idea that the President of the United States cannot declassify this information is ridiculous. He should fire the DNI staffers who are obviously just clinton shills.
Thought you might be interested in this.
I agree!! A bigtime house-cleaning is WAY overdue!!
"Negroponte and his staff have repeatedly expressed concern that releasing this information might embarrass our allies."
Heck, just have Dick Cheney declassify it.
What, exactly, is Negroponte's reasoning behind not releasing this information? I don't get it.
I suspect this stuff will be declassified just before the 2006 elections. Max impact, you know.
"Hadley explained that John Negroponte, Bush's Director of National Intelligence, "owns the documents"...."
This is egotism gone wild. The American People own the captured documents of Saddam and Iraq, not Negroponte!
Our soldiers fought to defeat him, our taxes paid for the war and are paying for the continuation.
There is nothing there, good or harmful, that should impede full disclosure for a democratic republic.
Wonder what allies this refers to? Those wonderful allies that did everything they could to stall and block us in the UN over the Iraq war? He's worried about those wonderful 'allies'?
LOL!
Oil for food folks.
"Wonder what allies this refers to? Those wonderful allies that did everything they could to stall and block us in the UN over the Iraq war? He's worried about those wonderful 'allies'?"
That's the real question.
All of our flaws with regard to Iraq have been exposed - the intelligence issues, the political in fighting etc.
If people calling themselves our allies were secretly helping Sadaam should that stay secret? Talk about a double standard.
If I were the POTUS I would give him [Negroponte] a week at the most and then I would fire his ass if he didn't comply with MY ORDERS!!!
It's probably a very good thing to get these things out in public, as it stands to reason that there's only going to be backup for The President's policy in there.
I can see, though, that given the volume of data it would sill be a good idea to find out what all is in there before it is summarily declassified. Who knows... there might be some good intel that could be exploited before certain facts were then made public.
It doesn't strike me as a big deal. Find out what's there, act on anything thing that is useful, and declassify it as you go through.
I've been talking about it all day on different threads!
I'd like to see freepers start to call their congressmen about this article. The left is running the agenda and coming up with stupid stuff to cover up the more important things -- like Saddam's tapes.
Timing IS everything.
Executive Order?
"Negroponte and his staff have repeatedly expressed concern that releasing this information might embarrass our allies."
ping
Exactly...either he coughs up the documents...unaltered...or he's FIRED.
All Him or Cheney have to do is kick one or two people to the curb and the rest will say "Yes Sir!".
Slovenly comfortable bureaucrats need shaking up here, too. They are doing a good job with DOD and CIA and State. A lot of ass-sitters waiting for the next election have been discharged.
He can either let the documents out and let the truth speak for itself, or he can continue to let his Administration keep them sealed up in bureacratic Never-never Land indefinitely while Muslims, Democrats, Liberals, and America's enemies (but, I repeat myself) continue to lie and distort their way to strategically undermining public support for the war, which will lead directly to American defeat.
This is not the time to play the bureaucrat's favorite game of hide-the-information because the information-I-control-is-more-power-in-my-rice-bowl!
I heard El Rushbo discuss this the other day;
It's probably all about diplomacy.
They don't want to embarass some of our erstwhile allies in the WOT.
I guess we need these same allies to deal with Iran.
I really doubt if the problem is with Negroponte. The problem is much more likely to be the Intelligence Community as a whole. They instinctively resist letting out information that might have intelligence value. The problem here is that the review process for a scenario where the information is fully vetted before release would take years. I think in this case it will finally dawn on them that the war effort itself will be helped much more by the public review of the tapes than by exploiting their intelligence value.
It's time for Rove to intervene and talk some sense into the dodo birds at CIA.
This sort of thing is not new. We did the same thing during WWII when the Polish officer massacre was pinned on the Nazis when in fact the Soviets were the culprits. We didn't want to split the allies so it was covered up. The Polish Americans obviously wouldn't be too keen on assisting the Soviets, our erstwhile allies.
Yeah, this could be nothing but theater designed to create a buzz about the documents before they are released.
Fire Hadley and John Negroponte, Bush's Director of National Intelligence. Explain that I (President Bush) am the President. It's time to get real tough.
"Negroponte and his staff have repeatedly expressed concern that releasing this information might embarrass our allies."
HA!!! Which allies? Seems some in and out of Congress did a pretty good job of that this past week. Prayers for our military in and out of UAE ports!!!
I absolutely agree. The tapes should be released and if the libs choke on them, so much the better.
"Negroponte and his staff have repeatedly expressed concern that releasing this information might embarrass our allies."
I believe the tapes/documents will prove that the french, russians and germans were helping saddam all along. Our allies, what a joke.
Also discussed in the Weekend Preview Thread, since the author is on the Fox News show Journal Editorial Report tonight discussing this issue.
This is a biggie that the MSM is studiously ignoring as hard as they can. Some good comments on the other threads to go along with the stuff here and I'm looking forward to the show tonight.
You're right about that, as unlikely as it may be, if some of those documents contain materiel that could be used by the Military or the various alphabet soup agencies, then that should remain secret. Not the entire document, just the piece that's needed for whatever purpose.
Bingo! And the cover-up continues.
IMO, in a word. Russia.
Russia, France... just to name a few
They all reside under the same roof....United Nations. That is the hive.
What threads are you on???
I would like to join...
I think the tapes would make Russia look the worst. Thats just my opinion from what I have heard so far from the tapes.
I agree with you...this all points to the fact that Negroponte was the Ambassador to the UN for TOO long!!
Oh, a bunch of them.
Later today I'm going to try and start a vanity thread and put it in activism.
It's time we stop fighting among ourselves and become activists again. It's probably a losing proposition, but...
This has been posted at least 3 times today and I've joined each thread. Not much feedback though. LOL
Yes. Have you heard if Norm Coleman has said anything about these tapes? I searched my bookmarks and didn't find anything about this subject in particular. I'll look again, I usually bookmark things concerning the OFF program.
I believe it was DoD assets that found this stuff, they would be the ones to declassify it.
Normally there are only a few reasons why something is classified. One, it will reveal intelligence sources and methods, or will reveal what we know about the other side(s) that they might not know we know. The other main reason is that it would reveal capabilities or vulnerabilities of our side. Everybody knows we have the stuff and how we got it, so those reasons are out. Clearly it also would not reveal anything out the capabilities of our own equipment.
It should never have been classified in the first place, assuming it even is, rather than just not being released to the public. Now analysis of it is another issue, but the documents themselves should be posted somewhere for everyone to see and draw their own conclusions.(Of course translation would be required, since likely they are in the Arabic of Iraq)
The same Russia that's helping Iran with their nuclear plans, yet, Negroponte doesn't want to 'EMBARRASS' them.
What allies besides the Brits and Aussies do we really have?
Poland, and there are others.
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