Bush Second Term Scandal Watch

The probe into whether or not administration officials gave classified documents to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and thereby to the Israeli government is still going on--see this latest roundup of information on this matter in this Christian Science Monitor report.

There was a second FBI raid on AIPAC earlier this month, and the whole information-passing might go beyond just Israel, and tie back into another potential second-term scandal: possible further revelations on how and why intelligence on what was really going on with Iraq re: WMDs was so screwy.

The Washington Post reported that the FBI said the [Pentagon official Larry] Franklin [the official accused of passing on the info to AIPAC, who had been cooperating with the FBI but is no longer] investigation was part of a broader probe into whether officials in the Defense Department had given sensitive documents to AIPAC and Ahmed Chalabi, the Iraqi who many in the Pentagon had reportedly favored before the invasion of Iraq to run the country after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.

Pending, as they say, and unfortunately so for the Bush administration's second-term peace.

Comments

[Gary Gunnels]

Presidential second terms (so goes the common wisdom) have been notoriously bad for modern American presidents.

[Pavel]

The neo-cons now dominating the defense department and their Likud allies had the Iraq War planned out for a long time. This is no secret.

The fact that Chalabi conveniently popped up and supported the hawk argument with magically documents he pulled out of his ass should have been suspect from the beginning.

First step in discrediting paranoid Arab fears of an American-Israeli plot to invade their lands for surreptitious reasons: Don't actually make it be true.

[Mo]

Pavel,
Correction. Chalabi got those documents from Iran, not his ass. Either way it was shitty info.

Thank you, thank you, tip your waitresses. I'm here all week.

[dlc]

"Presidential second terms (so goes the common wisdom) have been notoriously bad for modern American presidents."

True, but second term presidents seem to have a good track record of not letting the scandals stick. Clinton was impeached, but not found guilty - and I believe his approval ratings shot up after the trial. Not much stuck to Reagan during Iran-Contra. Even Nixon (when evidence of conspiracy was overwhelming), packed his bags and left before he was thrown out.

My guess is that the current scandal du jour, like Iran-Contra, is much too complicated for the majority of Americans to really care about.

[SR]

[neocon]The Bush Justice Department is obviously riddled with anti-semites.[/neocon]

[Ken Shultz]

There's a fundamental problem with the relationship between the CIA and the White House. Because the CIA is directly responsible to the President, when it has to work with a President who only sees what it wants to see, it only produces intelligence that will support the President. That means that in times like these, when the CIA is supposed to be protecting the American people from its enemies, the CIA is actually protecting the President from the American people.

How could they not have known that there wasn't any WMD? Why did they feed all that bogus information to Colin Powell?

They're not just telling the White House what it wants to hear, they're tellin' the American people what the White House wants us to hear.

...and I don't think there's any reform that can protect us from that; it all depends on the competence and charachter of the White House.

P.S. Mo,

Ha!

[Gary Gunnels]

dlc,

You could equally argue that "surviving" has deflected from their ability to do what they would like to do though (which admittedly might not be a bad thing in all cases). 🙂

[thoreau]

I concur with Ken Shultz.

[DanInAlabama]

I concur with Ken as well. And don?t forget the slanted info coming from the Pentagon?s Office of Special Plans, also at the White House?s beck and call, that Karen Kwiatkowski spoke of.

[GOD!]

How could they not have known that there wasn't any WMD?

Because the CIA is staffed with mere mortals?

[Ken Shultz]

It's one thing to be mortal; quite another to watch the President trash our relationship with our traditional allies, occupy a foreign country and squander the lives of more than a thousand Americans all on the basis of false intelligence.

Here's another question: How could they not know that there would be a long, drawn-out insurgency in the wake of the invasion?

...We're not the first country in history to occupy another nation and find itself facing an insurgency. Wasn't this supposed to be like when Free French forces marched into Paris?

...Oh, wait that was when they kicked the agressors out...Oh God!...we're the agressors here!

This administration only tolerates the intellgence it likes; they're finishing off the last of the dissenters in the intelligence community even now. I consider everything they say about Iran to be highly suspect. Fool me once, shame on you...

P.S. Have another slice of yellowcake.

[joe]

John Kerry would have been much worse.

He would have had the documents translated into French first.