His Nation Journal piece from today might be the end of the debate! Karl Rove had built W up as THE WAR PRESIDENT - COMMANDER IN CHIEF yet once the gaming of the intelligence was being revealed by Ambassador Richard Wilson (Mr. Valerie Plame) and others the Bu$hCo cabal had to crush him (and the TRUTH) before the 2004 election. CIA Director Tenet was willing to take one for the team up to a point but the reality is that Rove believes in dirt and delay more than deflect. Today's Wass article begins,
Karl Rove, President Bush's chief political adviser, cautioned other White House aides in the summer of 2003 that Bush's 2004 re-election prospects would be severely damaged if it was publicly disclosed that he had been personally warned that a key rationale for going to war had been challenged within the administration. Rove expressed his concerns shortly after an informal review of classified government records by then-Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen J. Hadley determined that Bush had been specifically advised that claims he later made in his 2003 State of the Union address -- that Iraq was procuring high-strength aluminum tubes to build a nuclear weapon -- might not be true, according to government records and interviews.
Wass further writes in part,
The President's Summary was only one of several high-level warnings given to Bush and other senior administration officials that serious doubts existed about the intended use of the tubes, according to government records and interviews with former and current officials. In mid-September 2002, two weeks before Bush received the October 2002 President's Summary, Tenet informed him that both State and Energy had doubts about the aluminum tubes and that even some within the CIA weren't certain that the tubes were meant for nuclear weapons, according to government records and interviews with two former senior officials. Official records and interviews with current and former officials also reveal that the president was told that even then-Secretary of State Colin Powell had doubts that the tubes might be used for nuclear weapons. ...
In the end, the White House's damage control was largely successful, because the public did not learn until after the 2004 elections the full extent of the president's knowledge that the assessment linking the aluminum tubes to a nuclear weapons program might not be true. The most crucial information was kept under wraps until long after Bush's re-election. ...
The pre-election damage-control effort in response to Wilson's allegations and the broader issue of whether the Bush administration might have misrepresented intelligence information to make the case for war had three major components, according to government records and interviews with current and former officials: blame the CIA for the use of the Niger information in the president's State of the Union address; discredit and undermine Wilson; and make sure that the public did not learn that the president had been personally warned that the intelligence assessments he was citing about the aluminum tubes might be wrong. ...
Of course we've also got the Rubber Stamp Congress, best exemplified by Kansas Senator Pat Roberts delaying Phase II of the intelligence hearings. Just on part of Congress going to the Democrats in 2006 will have the Bu$h cabal will make Nixon's White House look like a bunch of choir boys. They know it so look for Rove to roll out all his dirty tricks! Worst administration ever! Peace ... or War!
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