JOURNALIST ACCURACY
Hello American Sheeple,
Tell us a glaring mistake in this article.
If your IQ is TOO LOW, from eating McDeath burgers, the answer is
at the end.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4143312/
Intelligence panel will cast net beyond Iraq Commission to review CIA
on Iran, Libya, N. Korea
By Dana Priest and Dana Milbank
Updated: 11:31 p.m. ET Feb. 02, 2004The commission that President Bush
will appoint to investigate the failures of prewar intelligence on
Iraq will also review the CIA's misjudgments about weapons programs in
Iran, Libya and North Korea, administration officials said yesterday.
President Bush said the nine-member panel -- which White House
officials said would include current and former officials with
experience in intelligence matters -- will "look at our war against
proliferation and weapons of mass destruction, kind of in a broader
context."
Although the secret weapons programs of Iraq, Iran, Libya, North Korea
and Pakistan have long been a top concern of U.S. national security
officials, the intelligence agencies have missed critical weapons
developments in each country. Administration officials have found
themselves surprised at recent disclosures about nuclear weapons
programs in Iran, Libya and North Korea. And the intelligence
community was caught off guard when Pakistan tested a nuclear device
in 1998.
Stopping the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction has become a
priority for the administration since Sept. 11, 2001, because of the
fear that al Qaeda terrorists will try to acquire such weapons from
secretive and sometimes cash-starved states that produce them.
More politics news Bush conferred yesterday with former chief CIA
weapons hunter David Kay, who told Congress last week that the prewar
intelligence assessment on Iraq was wrong and that he does not expect
anyone to find weapons of mass destruction.
The White House said the president will release the names of the
commission members later this week when he signs an executive order
creating the panel. The group will include some former and current
members of Congress, one White House official said.
The administration has already contacted some people it hopes will
serve, and it is waiting for acceptances, officials said. They
declined to provide names but spoke admiringly of former senator Bob
Kerrey, a Nebraska Democrat who now is president of the New School
University, as the sort of nonpartisan statesman they are seeking. He
is a member of the commission investigating the Sept. 11
attacks. Other names floated by officials were William H. Webster and
James Woolsey, both former CIA directors. Woolsey said in an interview
that he had not been contacted.
Congressional Democrats, who had demanded an independent commission to
assess the prewar claims about Iraq, criticized Bush for deciding to
make all the appointments to the panel himself.
"A commission appointed and controlled by the White House will not
have the independence or credibility necessary to investigate these
issues," said a letter signed by Senate Democratic leader Thomas
A. Daschle (S.D.), Senate Intelligence Committee Vice Chairman John
D. Rockefeller IV (W.Va.), House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi
(Calif.) and other Democratic congressional leaders. "Even some of
your own statements and those of Vice President Cheney need
independent scrutiny. A commission appointed and controlled by the
White House will not have the independence or credibility necessary to
investigate these issues."
Assessing intelligence capabilities Critics of the war and many
congressional Democrats have said it is crucial to know whether White
House policymakers cherry-picked the CIA's intelligence on Iraq --
dropping the many caveats and using only the most inflammatory
assessments -- in making its case for war.
But Democrats on the House and Senate intelligence committees, which
have been looking at prewar intelligence for months, have failed to
persuade the Republicans who control the committees to ask the
administration for this material. Even if they did request it, White
Houses typically claim executive privilege, which safeguards
communications between the president and other executive offices from
outside scrutiny.
In an interview yesterday with Washington Post editors and reporters,
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said he expects the panel to look
"at the analysts at the bottom all the way up to the policymakers" who
rely on that intelligence.
Asked whether discussions between CIA Director George J. Tenet and
Bush would be an important element in the commission's work, Powell
said, "I would assume that the commission will look into this."
"My recommendation would be to give [the commission] as much access as
you can," he added, "but I have to hold a little hook here because
there may be some presidential privileges or executive privilege
issues that I'm not aware of that the White House may have."
He said he hopes the commission will "see whether or not there are
gaps in the kinds of things we're doing and are there things we have
overlooked in terms of how to cover these kinds of situations, whether
it's North Korea or Libya or Iran."
Bush, fielding a question on the commission after a meeting with his
Cabinet, carefully avoided an acknowledgment that the Iraq
intelligence was wrong. "First of all, I don't know all the facts," he
said. "What we don't know yet is what . . . the Iraqi Survey Group has
found, and we want to look at that."
White House press secretary Scott McClellan said the commission will
incorporate the findings of the Iraq Survey Group; the weapons hunting
team is not expected to finish its work for months. "The Iraq Survey
Group is doing its work, separately and apart from this commission,"
he said. "But it's important that their work -- that the commission
look at their work as part of this broad assessment of our
intelligence capabilities."
Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), the front-runner in the Democratic
primary race, called the investigation "long overdue" and said waiting
until after the elections to produce findings is "reflective of the
attitude of this administration" to drag its feet on investigations.
"We need a president of the United States who isn't slow to the table,
slow to the walk, who gets it right the first time," Kerry said. "I
hope this will not be an effort to sideline these issues which the
American people deserve answers on before the election. We deserve
this to be a true bipartisan effort and a rapid effort."
Sen. John W. Warner (R-Va.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services
Committee, said Bush "is showing strong leadership once again by
establishing a panel of experts to perform a 'no holds barred' review
of America's intelligence community to make it stronger and more
effective in a post-9/11 world."
© 2004 The Washington Post Company
And the intelligence community was caught off guard when Pakistan
tested a nuclear device >in 1998.
This is incorrect. The world was taken off guard when India tested
F-I-V-E bombs. There was a L-O-T of anticipation going on before
the Pakistani reply.
Really, this article itself answers the question of the article
about intelligence failure. Dana's are Jews. America's journalism and
intelligence eyes and ears are b-l-i-n-d f-r-o-m b-i-a-s and
b-i-g-o-t-r-y.
North Korea did not get help by pakistan transfer because it already
was capable of missile and Pu enrichment. But Pakistan did get help
from NK to shorten the time of missile development that cost India
decades of work.
