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'National Journal': More Evidence That Press and Public Misled on Iraq Editor & Publisher | March 3 2006 More records have emerged suggesting that President Bush knew he was not telling the truth when he made various statements to the press during the run-up to the Iraq war concerning the threat to America from the Saddam Hussein regime. Murray Waas, who has broken several key stories recently related to the Plame/CIA leak case for the nonpartisan National Journal, returned Thursday on the magazine's Web site with a detailed acount of two highly classified intelligence reports that were delivered directly to President Bush before the Iraq war. Waas writes that they "cast doubt on key public assertions made by the president, Vice President Cheney, and other administration officials as justifications for invading Iraq and toppling Saddam Hussein." The first report, delivered to Bush in early October 2002, was a one-page summary of a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) that discussed whether Saddam's procurement of high-strength aluminum tubes was for the purpose of developing a nuclear weapon. Among other things, Waas writes, "the report stated that the Energy Department and the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research believed that the tubes were 'intended for conventional weapons,' a view disagreeing with that of other intelligence agencies, including the CIA, which believed that the tubes were intended for a nuclear bomb. "The disclosure that Bush was informed of the DOE and State dissents is the first evidence that the president himself knew of the sharp debate within the government over the aluminum tubes during the time that he, Cheney, and other members of the Cabinet were citing the tubes as clear evidence of an Iraqi nuclear program. Neither the president nor the vice president told the public about the disagreement among the agencies." The second classified report, delivered to Bush in early January 2003, was also a summary of a National Intelligence Estimate, "this one focusing on whether Saddam would launch an unprovoked attack on the United States, either directly, or indirectly by working with terrorists," Waas relates. "The report stated that U.S. intelligence agencies unanimously agreed that it was unlikely that Saddam would try to attack the United States -- except if 'ongoing military operations risked the imminent demise of his regime' or if he intended to 'extract revenge' for such an assault, according to records and sources. "On at least four earlier occasions, beginning in the spring of 2002, according to the same records and sources, the president was informed during his morning intelligence briefing that U.S. intelligence agencies believed it was unlikely that Saddam was an imminent threat to the United States. " In much of the rest of the article, Waas details statements to the press and public by Bush, Cheney and cabinet members that contradicted what he was told in these NIEs about Saddam's nuclear program and his overall threat to the U.S. The entire article can be found: http://nationaljournal.com/ ---------------------------------------------------
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