After NIE revelations, what did Bush know and when did he know it?

December 5, 2007

It’s not just that the president’s account on when he learned about the contents of the NIE on Iran don’t add up, it’s that his version of events is laughably ridiculous. It’s no wonder the White House doesn’t want to talk about it.

To briefly recap, on Monday, the Bush administration released the conclusions of the National Intelligence Estimate on Iran, which said Iran dropped its nuclear-weapons program more than four years ago, contradicting months of escalating White House rhetoric. Yesterday, the president said he was told about “new information” about Iran in August during a briefing by Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell. NSA Stephen Hadley said Bush was told, at that meeting, to “stand down” on Iranian threats, direction the president chose to ignore, making multiple overheated references to “World War III.”

So, what was Bush told about Iran in August? The president said yesterday that McConnell “didn’t tell me what the information was,” so he didn’t know to dial down the bluster. Joe Biden, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, spoke for many when he called that explanation “unbelievable.”

“Are you telling me a president that’s briefed every single morning, who’s fixated on Iran, is not told back in August that the tentative conclusion of 16 intelligence agencies in the U.S. government said they had abandoned their effort for a nuclear weapon in ’03?” Biden asked in a conference call with reporters.

“I refuse to believe that,” he added. “If that’s true, he has the most incompetent staff in modern American history, and he’s one of the most incompetent presidents in modern American history.”

On MSNBC this morning, Joe Scarborough was even more blunt: “We are left with only two options here. Either the President of the United States is lying to the American people about what happened during that meeting, or the President of the United States is stupid.” (I wouldn’t be too quick to characterize this as an either/or proposition.)

Given that Bush’s comments are embarrassingly incoherent, the White House is apparently reluctant to explain the unexplainable.

The principal question, obviously, is what the president learned when. Deputy Press Secretary Tony Fratto fielded questions on this earlier today.

Q: Just to clarify one point from the press conference yesterday, the President was — said that he was told by Mr. McConnell, just generally, that there had been some new intelligence and that people were taking another look at it. Did the President at that point ask any follow-up? Did Mr. McConnell offer any comments that, in fact, there might have to be a serious reevaluation of the whole intelligence?

FRATTO: What Director McConnell said is that we’re going to go back and do rigorous analysis of this intelligence, and when we can be certain of it, we’re going to come back and talk to you — and that’s what they did….

I’ve seen criticism that the President should have either changed his rhetoric or asked more. What he asked of his intelligence community was to tell him what was right when you know it’s right, and that’s what they did. In terms of rhetoric, there is no rhetoric to change when the facts on the ground still suggest to any reasonable observer that Iran poses a threat and is a destabilizing force, unless they change their activities.

Q: In that conversation did McConnell tell him that our previous intelligence could be all wrong? How — (inaudible) — was he about that?

FRATTO: I don’t have anything on that.

It’s absurd. The president was briefed by the DNI on Iranian nukes, and was told there was “new information.” Bush not only didn’t ask what that new information was, he also proceeded to make increasingly reckless claims and charges about going to war.

The White House is, of course, in a jam. If Bush knew the truth in August, he’s been lying blatantly to the world ever since. If Bush didn’t even ask for the truth in August, he’s a blithering and irresponsible fool. It’s really as simple as that.

It could be that Bush was out of the loop.

He does work there but he can’t know everything that goes on in DC.

Being President is hard. It is really hard work.

Give him a break, it is not like this is important or anything like say cutting taxes or ratting out spies.

  • Once again, this Administration’s personnel have been caught with their pants down, and by way of their excuses, they don’t know the first thing about the embarrassment or shame that comes with being naked in public. A discarded tobacco product has more credibility than this Administation – even, I dare say, in the realm of cancer prevention a discarded tobacco product has it over this administration in terms of relevant credibility! -Kevo

    P.S. I’d respect our current resident of the WH if he’d at least dress for the occasion. In his next news conference I’ll need to see him in a clown’s costume to even begin to entertain the issue of credibility.

  • This is also a wonderful window into the quality of analysis in the Bush White House – they clearly thought this would be the best explanation to put forth.

    Any bets that this gets W the coveted 20% approval award? I wouldn’t have bet anything a few days ago that he could go lower than 26, but this is simply too much. Unless all the the 26%ers only get their info from Faux, in which case he’s perfectly safe.

  • Joe Scarborough was even more blunt: “We are left with only two options here. Either the President of the United States is lying to the American people about what happened during that meeting, or the President of the United States is stupid.” (I wouldn’t be too quick to characterize this as an either/or proposition.)

    I love it; he is a liar and he is stupid. That has been the position of most of us for a long time.

  • If push ever comes to shove they’ll blame the staff, of course. And the Dems will let it drop after one week of saying things like “he’s one of the most incompetent presidents in modern American history”.

    Not sure which is worse, Bush or the Democrats who decided to let him and his criminal cronies continue to infest the whitehouse.

  • “Bush not only didn’t ask what that new information was, he also proceeded to make increasingly reckless claims and charges about going to war.” – Mr. CB

    This is called proactive head in the sandism. You know if you know too much you will have to change your behavior. But you are fond of your behavior and your BFF’s are fond of your behavior so it’s best to just turn away as quickly as possible and avoid anything that might cause a reevaluation of your behavior.

    Can’t you just see McConnell at the door with this report in his hand and the Shrublette hiding under the desk with his fingers in his ears while La-La-Laing loud enough to drown out whatever McConnell is trying to say.

  • It’s also possible, as you alluded to briefly yesterday, that pushing forward with the installation of ABM system components in Poland and the Czech Republic (which would coincidentally allow the U.S. to peer hundreds of miles into Russian airspace) absolutely depended on Iran being seen as a red-hot ballistic missile threat. Watch and see how fast that proposal folds up now, unless those countries’ governments have a lot more power to override the express will of their electorate than is readily apparent.

  • It’s kind of like Groundhog Day. Revelations about Bush’s mendacity and incompetence arrive with regularity, and each time the politicians, the media, the press and the pundits express their consternation and shock, and then promptly forget about it until the next time Bush demonstrates that he is both a fool and a liar.

  • In Bush’s defense, he didn’t really say it was Adm. McConnell

    BUSH: “In August, I think it was John – Mike McConnell came in and said, we have some new information”

    So it could have been Adm. McConnell with new information on Iran, or it could have been John McConnell, the janitor with new information on toilet use policy.

  • Here’s why the excuse from the WH doesn’t work:

    DNI goes to the President, and—on the topic of Iranian nukes—says to the President, “We have new information.”

    Are we supposed to believe that Bu$h didn’t ask about this? Is the WH trying to ignore the possibility that this “new information” may have been, “Iran has acquired a nuclear weapon?” Had that been the case, or even the remotest of remote possibilities, wouldn’t we have been bombing Tehran back into the stone age in August?

    No—Bu$h knew exactly what this “new information” was, BECAUSE he didn’t hit the Iranians four months ago.

    Bu$h—the new way to spell the word “LIE….”

  • Kevo (#2) wrote, “Once again, this Administration’s personnel have been caught with their pants down….”

    If we were talking about most Democrats (sorry Bill, gotta throw you under the bus on this one, unfortunately), I’d say Kevo was just using this phrase as a matter of rhetoric. As we ARE talking about Repubs, however, I’m not so sure….

    And, why can’t “Stupid” and “Liar” go together? It would fit with everything else we know about W.

  • did you ever thnk that they,the republikkkans, believe the american people are stupid and will believe everything bush says. humm,i wonder if they are right.

  • Why that’s a boldfaced Bu$h! Watching the press conference yesterday i felt that the whole Dick Gregory question was staged and W took that stern tone and face contortions, but i was shocked that his bold authoritative answer that he obviously thought would put everyone in their place was so absolutely pathetic and unbelievable.

    Of course, he still won’t stand down, he’s out their today calling on Iranians to “come clean”. He still insists that this is a serious crisis. He’s still throwing that same little temper dance he did to get to Iraq. People just see it differently now and he’s the naked emperor, totally unaware.

  • Shameless mendacity is the trademark of Bush and the Rethugs, but it is possible that Bush really didn’t want to know what the “new intelligence” was, and deliberately didn’t ask – which he could have any day of the week – to give himself plausible deniability. He could have intimidated his briefer into saying the intelligence wasn’t certain and that more analysis was needed. Evidently, he is quite a nasty piece of work when someone tells him, or tries to tell him, something he doesn’t want to hear.

    He is, once again, demonstrating his signature ‘never retreat’ syndrome that he has elevated to a virtue (in his own eyes), and by bulldogging his way through a major gaff like this one he usually comes out ahead because the Dim-Dems and the media let him get away with it. I wouldn’t be surprised to see some changes in the intelligence community. Heads must roll. The king is mad (as in angry and crazy).

  • The same situation occured with rethugs/dumbya’s failure to follow-up on National Intelligence Estimate regarding terrorists plans to hit US target’s on 9 11. Dumbya is the first retarded u.s. president and his failures has diminshed this country worldwide. i.e. instead of no debt by 2010 the U.S. is facing $10 trillion debt because of no brain dumbya.

  • Seems to me that when Clinton was caught in a lie he was impeached…
    Or does it only matter when you lie under oath?

  • NSA Stephen Hadley said Bush was told, at that meeting, to “stand down” on Iranian threats, direction the president chose to ignore, making multiple overheated references to “World War III.”

    Maybe Stephen Hadley or someone else should have also told Bush that it’s wrong to deceive the American people about something like this, but no one in the intelligence community has what it takes to tell him what he really needed to hear, and Bush though he could finesse the American people into another war based on false pretenses. But then, oops, the NIE came out.

    Or maybe Bush was just day-dreaming about football and chips while Stephen Hadley was talking to him about the nuclear threat from Iran.

  • howardjk said:

    Seems to me that when Clinton was caught in a lie he was impeached…
    Or does it only matter when you lie under oath?

    No the wingnut rule is this: The rule of law shall be only strictly applied against the other side. Against your own side – not so much.

  • God help me, but I am getting an image of Mike McConnell skipping into the Oval Office, and in a sing-song voice, saying, “I know somthing you don’t know…nyah,nyah,nayh, nyah. nyah” and Bush clapping his hands in delight and excitement and saying, “Ooh, I love games! Let me guess…Larry Craig IS gay! I knew it! What, that’s not it? Okay, um, – ooh, I know – Condi DOES love me, doesn’t she – you caught her calling me her husband again, didn’t you? No? Darn! I give up.” And McConnell says, “Nice try, but I’m not gonna tell you til I’m sure…well, maybe a hint…it’s about I-R-A-N…” And Bush claps his hands and hops up and down and says, “no fair, Mike – you’re such a tease! You “ran?” You ran where? And why?” McConnell (rolling his eyes and deciding not to play “who’s on first” with Bush): “That’s for me to know – and I’ll be back soon to tell you! Be a good boy…we’re watching you! Say, isn’t it time for your nap? Look, here’s cute little Dana with blankie now.”

    Argh.

  • He would not be pulling this crap if he knew he couldn’t get away with it.

    It’s been long enough, the Dems have to start taking some blame for this administration. They are letting the President blatantly lie about nukes and the pushing for war.

    Dems, get out of you cocoons and stop the madness that is why you were elected and that is your responsibility to the people. Fuck the god damn speeches, this country needs action, not another “He is this or that” speech. People are fricken dying and you are making empty speeches, hello, Dems you have the power, start exercising it or go down in history enablers to whatever you are calling him this week.

  • Bush is lying but if he protests he’s simply lazy, incurious, and incompetent (something he knows we already know) he thinks we’ll take him on his word…

  • 17. On December 5th, 2007 at 3:46 pm, howardjk said:
    Seems to me that when Clinton was caught in a lie he was impeached…
    Or does it only matter when you lie under oath?

    Seems to me that the President of the United States of America is ALWAYS under oath. Remember that ceremony they have after the election….remember the one where the people threw eggs and rotten tomatoes.

    Too bad nobody listened to those folks.

  • It’s also possible, as you alluded to briefly yesterday, that pushing forward with the installation of ABM system components in Poland and the Czech Republic (which would coincidentally allow the U.S. to peer hundreds of miles into Russian airspace) absolutely depended on Iran being seen as a red-hot ballistic missile threat.

    I don’t quite follow the logic here, Mark.

    The NIE says that Iran suspended their efforts to build a bomb. But their ballistic missile development program continues apace (as does their uranium enrichment program). It still makes sense to counter Iran’s ballistic missile threat for the future. Even without their own nuke they could tip their ballistic missiles with dirty bombs, chem or bio, or even with a nuke acquired from former Soviet sources.

    Frankly, if given a choice between the three, I’d much rather the Iranians had put either missile development and deployment or uranium enrichment on hold, especially the latter. Building the bomb (once you have the material) is relatively the easiest and quickest part of the threat triad.

    Notice in this light that the new NIE didn’t substantially modify the anticipated date for the production of sufficient material for an Iranian bomb. Both the 2005 NIE and the new one put that estimate around 2015.

    Indeed the Iranians might have suspended (not abandoned) their bomb development simply because they’re already close enough, and can complete a suitable implosion device with relative ease when they have sufficient weapons grade uranium.

  • And BTW, just for the record…

    Do ya’ll progressive types now agree that Iran DOES have a nuclear weapons program — even if presently suspended?

    Or do ya’ll still accept Iran’s continuing denials and are therefore just leaping on the new NIE for “gotcha” potential without regard to consistency?

  • Bush’s brain-damage showing up again?

    Stultis, when US intelligence agencies tell America that Iran has a nuclear weapons program, that’s when a reasonable person comes to that conclusion. It is not rational to conclude that they DO have one when the NIE was so clear that Iran suspended it years ago.

    What would you say to the UN requiring Israel to dispose of all its nuclear weapons and delivery systems developed on the sly so that no country in the midEast has them? That would ease the tensions.

  • Come on, Stultis; you don’t really believe that. Are you now suggesting Iran wants to nuke Europe, or the United States? None of my maps show either of those lying between Iran and Israel. Iran’s regional enemy is Israel, and an ABM system in Poland is going to do diddly toward getting an intercept vehicle on target to destroy an inbound ballistic vehicle from Iran if the interceptor is flying from the flippin’ Czech Republic.

    By your logic, any country with a medium-range missile in its inventory could easily start up a nuclear program, and become a global threat overnight. Watch out for the Dutch; I’ve never trusted them, they’re too blonde.

    Stubborn is not a virtue, it’s a limitation.

  • anney avers:

    It is not rational to conclude that they DO have one when the NIE was so clear that Iran suspended it years ago.

    Huh? How do you suspend something that doesn’t exist?

    But anyway, semantics aside, you seem to concede that it at least DID exist.

    So, since Iran continues to lie about the existence — past or present, active or suspended — of a nuclear weapons program, and since they continue to develop and deploy missiles with ever increasing range and accuracy, and since they continue to enrich uranium, they’re still a threat, right?

    What would you say to the UN requiring Israel to dispose of all its nuclear weapons and delivery systems developed on the sly so that no country in the midEast has them? That would ease the tensions.

    I don’t agree that this would “ease the tensions”. I think it would do the opposite. Based on the depressingly abundant evidence of history, and the horrifying depravity of current Arab/Islamic rhetoric regarding Israel, I consider it both obvious and inevitable that elimination of Israel’s nuclear deterrent would sooner or later lead to yet another conventional war aimed at the destruction of Israel.

    In any case there’s no legal basis for the U.N. to act as you suggest. Israel, along with India and Pakistan, never signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. (North Korea is the only other non-signatory, however in their case having signed it, violated it and then withdrew from it.)

  • I’m afraid I don’t follow you. I don’t see how you got from “something that doesn’t exist” to “at least DID exist” to “Iran continues to lie about the existence”. I can’t imagine what standard of proof you would require. Are you a nuclear scientist yourself? Perhaps you should apply to be included among the inspectors, so you could go and see. I’m not being sarcastic: I don’t know anything about your background.

    If not a nuclear scientist, perhaps you are a teacher or student of Middle Eastern languages. However, judging from the suggested “horrifying depravity of current Arab/Islamic rhetoric regarding Israel”, I’d guess not. The allegation that Ahmedinijad said Israel “must be wiped off the map” has been repeatedly and solidly disproved, and in fact the phrase does not exist in Farsi (sometimes called “Persian”). It has been agreed by experienced translators and native speakers that what Ahmedinijad actually said, as close as it approximates English, was, “this regime must vanish from the page of time”.

    How does this compare, in a framework of horrifying depravity, with, “Fuck Saddam; we’re taking him out”, as Bush is alleged to have said – a claim which was never denied?

    On another point I beg to differ; there most certainly does exist a legal basis for the UN to act as Anney suggests. United Nations Security Council Resolution 487 “strongly condemns the military attack by Israel (on the Iraqi reactor at Osirak) in clear violation of the Charter of the United Nations and the norms of international conduct” and “Calls upon Israel urgently to place its nuclear facilities under IAEA safeguards”. This is only one of many UN Resolutions that are critical of Israel. Like most of them, this one was vetoed by….you guessed it, the United States of America.

    Without causing confusion between Iraq and Iran, I would point out here that Iraq has been a signatory to the non-proliferation treaty since its inception in 1970. Israel’s refusal to sign DOES NOT permit it to attack the resources, property or assets of another sovereign state with impunity.

    Uranium enriched to power a nuclear reactor is enriched to less than 10%. Uranium enriched to form the payload of a nuclear weapon is enriched to more than 80%. There is, therefore, a measurable and significant difference. Suggesting that there is no way to verify if a civilian program has been turned to military uses is nonsense. If the U.S. could keep track of where any of dozens of Soviet submarines were on any given day for years, I’m sure keeping an eye on Iran’s nuclear program would not prove too trying.

    Of course, if you were determined to attack and no amount of reason will prevail, then you must do as you think best, and accept the judgment of history.

  • any country with a medium-range missile in its inventory could easily start up a nuclear program, and become a global threat overnight

    No, Mark. Not overnight. It takes years to enrich the uranium.

    But once you have the uranium — and of course Iran has UNsuspended their uranium enrichment program — then actually building the bomb takes a few months to a year.

  • I’m afraid we disagree again, although it does depend on the number of centrifuges at your disposal. Iran uses gas centrifuges, which generally permit faster separation. If you have enough of them for a cascade – several hundred – the enrichment process is a matter of weeks, if that. Certainly it is not the work of years, and was not even when slower separation processes were the order of the day, such as the Manhattan Project.

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