Bush claims to have learned NIE info on Iran ‘last week’

December 4, 2007

At a White House press conference this morning, a reporters asked the president to explain the enormous discrepancy between his comments about Iran’s nuclear program and the National Intelligence Estimate. It didn’t go well.

For those of you who can’t watch clips online, Bush said, “…I was made aware of the NIE last week. In August, I think it was John — Mike McConnell came in and said, ‘We have some new information.’ He didn’t tell me what the information was.”

Now, I can appreciate the fact that the president has developed a reputation for lacking intellectual curiosity, but I’m trying to imagine how a scenario like this played out. There was an NIE, it was circulated for months, and Bush was escalating his rhetoric about Iran’s non-existent nuclear program. In August, the Director of National Intelligence told the president, “We have some new information.” At that time, according to NSA Stephen Hadley, the president was told specifically to “stand down.”

In response, Bush not only didn’t ask what this “new information” was, he explicitly ignored the “stand down” recommendation and started talking about “World War III.”

Wait, it gets worse.

Less than 24 hours ago, Hadley specifically said, “[W]hen the President was told that we had some additional information, he was basically told: ‘Stand down; needs to be evaluated; we’ll come to you and tell you what we think it means.'”

Then, this morning, we saw this exchange:

Q: Are you saying at no point while the rhetoric was escalating, as World War III was making it into conversation — at no point, nobody from your intelligence team or your administration was saying, Maybe you want to back it down a little bit?

BUSH: No — I’ve never — nobody ever told me that.

The gang that can’t shoot straight looks even more ridiculous than usual here.

As for the president learning about the NIE’s assessment on Iran just last week, that is almost certainly false. The WaPo reported today that intelligence officials began briefing senior members of the Bush administration “in July.” Hadley was even more specific about Bush.

Hadley said Bush first learned in August or September about intelligence indicating Iran had halted its weapons program and was advised it would take time to evaluate.

So, let’s review what we’ve learned from the White House over the last 24 hours. The DNI told Bush there was important new information on Iran, but the president didn’t ask what it was. The president was, and was not, told to “stand down” when it came to Iran, advice he both ignored and did not receive. All the while, the White House was publicly making assessments of the Iranian threat, all of which contradicted the evidence they did, and did not, see.

Just when it seemed as if the Bush gang couldn’t get any more embarrassing, these guys manage to kick things up a notch. It’s almost impressive.

Bottom line: Cheney still wants to nuke Iran. But at least we might not have to listen to Billy Kristal and Joe-Job Lieberman foam about it so much, for a while anyway.

If we’re lucky, that is.

  • At some point, isn’t this sort of activity considered High Crimes and Misdemeanours, or is society today so innulled to his activities that, unlike, say, someone getting a blowjob and lying about it, his crimes aren’t worthy of removal from office and prosecution for his disgusting crimes against the country?

    And, in this, I blame the Democrats as much as the Republifucks. Shit, when is anyone going to stop worrying about the ‘next election, and what it might do to my poll numbers’, and actually make a principled stand?

  • I also watched the news conference this morning (I always watch them for their sheer comedic possibilities) and Bush seemed particularly aphasic. Kept repeating the phrase “The new way forward” about Iran (wasn’t that phrase last used to describe some phase of the Iraq disaster?)

    Sometimes I think he really doesn’t know WHAT he’s saying. The press corps seemed somewhat more willing than usual to go-for-the-throat in their questions and follow-ups.

    Except for the clown from Fox, of course.

  • Flip-flop alert: Hadley actually did a COLOSSAL flip-flop: In the second half of the briefing he completely reversed the ‘stand down’ comment…

    MR. HADLEY: Two things. One, when the President was told that we had some additional information, he was basically told: stand down; needs to be evaluated; we’ll come to you and tell you what we think it means.
    [….]
    Q The President — you said the President was told to stand down on that —
    MR. HADLEY: No, I said just the opposite. [You did not, you pathetic liar] I said the President was told, we have some information, we have some new information not to stand down — said, we have some new information; give us some time to analyze it, and we will come to you and tell you what we think it means.
    [….]
    Q: When did the Vice President get briefed on this? Because he was warning of serious consequences just last month, too.
    MR. HADLEY: I’ve just got a note from him — I did it once, I’ll do it again. In terms of stand down, they did not tell the President to stand down and stop talking about Iran’s nuclear program; they told him just the opposite: Mr. President, we have new information. Or let me put it this way, not just the opposite, let me be precise. He was not told to stop talking about Iran’s nuclear weapons program. He was not told to change what he says about it. What he was told was, we have new information; it is interesting; it is going to take us some time to understand it, to assess it, to know what it means, and to know how credible it is, and we will come back to you when that process is done. And they did. And they came back to him Wednesday, and the results of their work is included in this estimate. Is that okay? (Laughter.) I’m sorry, you asked a question and I didn’t answer. Could you restate it, please?

  • Looks to me like the wheels have finally started to come off the bus. Even the press corpse can smell the dead tuna.

    The Bushies can’t decide if Bush was told to “stand down”, or whether he was told to keep on saying shit that they knew wasn’t true?

    WTF?

    This is getting good.

  • http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/IK10Ak01.html

    Considering that the report in Asia Times is dated early November, it is chronologically impossible for Bu$h to have learned of the NIE just last week. However, the report identifies that the NIE we’re talking about here has been in a holding pattern for more than a year—and that was as of a month agogoing back time and again for “rewrites and revisions.”

    There can only be one factual determination from the events now coming into the light of day, and the determination is that the Bu$h administration sought, with premeditated malice, to wage a war of aggression against another sovereign nation.

    That constitutes the definition of a war crime, and the individuals involved—clearly terrorists and enemies of the Constitution, one and all—should be brought before the Hague without delay, to answer for their actions, and to receive the justice they so assuredly deserve.

    Impeach, then extradite!

  • This is the administration’s continuing “Fuck You” to everybody, catapulting the propaganda, as he so fondly calls it.

    And yes, what will the Democrats do? Won’t somebody besides Dennis Kucinich call for the impeachment of Cheney and Bush since he isn’t considered to to be cool enough to listen to? At least get the illegal offenses on the Congressional record to be used in a war crimes trial after this stinking rotten crew is driven out?

    If Bush and Cheney WERE prosecuted for war crimes, would American taxpayers have to pay for their defense?

  • Does this finally and conclusively prove that Bush is a shameless warmonger who completely disregards the truth when it gets in the way of his war-making desires? Because it sounds like it should.

    Can we PLEASE impeach these assholes now?

  • It really doesn’t matter what this gang says or does. They will never be held accountable for anything by anyone, except for the loony left, that nobody listens to. We have all the influence of a ping-pong ball being tossed at an ocean liner to knock it off course.

    How could it happen that Clinton was persecuted for eight years for having done nothing, while this mad man, this pathetic excuse for a human being, has been left to do the dirtiest deeds ever by a sitting president without so much as a yawn from the establishment?

  • Craven and despicable are the two words that accurately describe this WH and its personnel from the president on down to Ms. Dana P. We deserve better, and come next election cycle we will have our pound of flesh! Woe to the Republican party with its blight of the Bush dogging it! -Kevo

  • Okay – this is just too much. Is it actually possible that we have a president who, when told there was new information, didn’t say, “Well, what is it?” And the people who informed him that there was new info didn’t give him even a hint, or ask if the president wanted to know what they knew, or prepare a memo? Oh – well, maybe there was a memo, but Barney ate it. Yeah, that will probably be the next thing we hear.

    Newsflash to Mike McConnell, the man who no doubt personally delivers briefings to the possibly human life form currently masquerading as the president of the United States: “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” is a military policy about gays serving in the armed forces, and does not mean that if he doesn’t ask, you don’t have to tell him!

    I still haven’t figured out why – at a minimum – the Democratic members of Congress are not marching up Pennsylvania Avenue with pitchforks and flaming torches; it would seem the time has come.

  • Reminds me of the August 6, 2001 PDB, “Bin Laden determined to strike in the United States” and “no one could have guessed” the attacks on the Twin Towers and the U.S. Military Command Center.

    Bush gets played like Nintendo Wii by his NeoCon Globalist masters everyday.

    Like I said before, his only role is to read the script on cue. This is all the more apparent when he speaks extemporaneously and proves that he is a few sandwiches short of a picnic.

    As far as “stand-down” orders, I thought those were handled exclusively by Fuehrer Cheney.

  • If you watch the clip over at TPM, there is no way you cannot come to the conclusion that the man is stone crazy. He twitches and sways and bites his lips while David “it’s all the fault of the blogs” Gregory asks the long question. Then, he tells the big lie about being told in August that there was new information, not being told what it was, and that it needed to be analyzed. He then explains why we would want the intelligence to be analyzed – are you ready? – so we can make sure it’s good information – you know, it’s important to get it right. And he explains it in that way he has where he talks as if he’s explaining it to 4-year olds, which just makes me want to throw something.

  • So knowing that we wouldn’t put anything past these guys why is this guy allowed to continue to have his finger on the trigger? Oh yeah, Pelosi and others are too busy “policy making” to prevent this dysfunctional administration from destroying our democracy one day at a time.

    Arguing for military action against another country while stating you don’t know what the NIE says about that country? Dangerously dysfunctional.

  • Anne, that’s also how four-year-olds talk when they’re lying. They like to emphasize every word because they know that’s what adults do when they’re being talked to.

    He’s looking lamer and lamer every with sylable he utters. Preaching to us that we should be interested in good intelligence? Blaming “intelligence failure” for the Iraq mess after giving George “Slam Dunk” Tenet the Medal of Freedom?

    He looks nervous. And he should be. The only thing he’s got going for him is that Nancy “Clean Table” Pelosi has been filmed having sex with a goat. Or that’s my best guess, anyway.

  • good frame by bjbotts!

    Arguing for military action against another country while stating you don’t know what the NIE says about that country?

    I think even a wingnut might call that crazy. Slightly reworded, if someone comes and tells you that there’s new information about a “global threat” like Iran, if you don’t even ask what it is, can you be considered sane?

  • It’s the Bush administration’s tried-but-true “We’re fools – not knaves” defense. It’s unbelievable that, with Bush attempting to get the rest of the world to go along with sanctioning Iran for nuclear weapons work, no one in any of the intelligence agencies responsible for the NIE told his president about it. Bush was likely told months ago and his response was the same as it was to the NIE titled “Bin Laden Determined to Strike US”:
    “All right. You’ve covered your ass, now.”

    As if America’s credibility wasn’t already at a low ebb. Add one more thing to the list of Bush’s follies, blunders and lies that others will have to undo.

  • Do you think we could convince a UN Special Forces detail to kidnap Putsch and GoCheneyYourself and try them in the international courts? After all, these criminals already said that they think they’re entitled to do that sort of thing to others…

  • Everybody knows that when a senior staff member reports to the president, “We have some new information”, the president must immediately Indian Leg-Wrestle the staff member until he tells him the information. It’s a custom that developed in preparation for the never-ending Republican majority, kind of like the way Bush and Cheney give each other head-noogies before all Rose-Garden speeches. Maybe he just didn’t feel like Indian Leg-Wrestling that day.

  • Do you suppose these people ever actually discuss what they are going to say? Or in Hadley’s case, do they know what they’ve said already? I am also just about convinced that W has developed some brain disease or something. His meager abilities at verbal communication have degenerated even since the 04 election. He also seems unable to control his facial expressions. Is it the Lyme disease or side effects from treatment? We might just find out in about 50 years.

  • Bush’s ‘best’ quality will be the one that brings him down, stubbornness.

    He is exactly like a kid with chocolate on his face swearing up and down he did eat the candy.

    If they ever get a pair and start impeachment proceedings, he will be the clown that never waivers from his lies. I believe he calls it resolute.

  • As for the president learning about the NIE’s assessment on Iran just last week,

    As always, watch for the parse. He only learned about the NIE that came out this week last week. Until then it was just a draft. So he couldn’t “know” anything since it wasn’t in final form and everything could have been changed.

    Kindergarten logic. Watch out for it

  • Anne said,
    “If you watch the clip over at TPM, there is no way you cannot come to the conclusion that the man is stone crazy. He twitches and sways and bites his lips…”

    He probably needs a drink. DT’s and all.

  • Froomkin snaps Bush’s neck. Beautiful:

    By concluding that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program four years ago, the national intelligence estimate released yesterday undermined a key element of President Bush’s foreign policy. It raised questions about whether the president and vice president knowingly misled the public about the danger posed by Iran. And it added to Bush’s profound credibility problems with the American people and the international community.

    But to hear Bush talk about it at the White House press conference this morning, the new NIE vindicated his beliefs and makes his warnings about Iran more potent.

    It was neck-snapping spin even by Bush standards. He intentionally misread the report’s central point, failed to acknowledge a huge change in his argument for why Iran is dangerous and exhibited pure bullheaded stubbornness.

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/blog/2007/12/04/BL2007120401026.html?hpid=topnews

  • One reason why children are such bad liars is because they don’t have a good enough grasp of reality to know which lies are plausible and which aren’t. So they often invent lies that are laughably bad or even make themselves look worse than if they had just said the truth. I suspect that Bush suffers from that same problem.

  • Maybe no one talks to Bush except to say what he wants to hear. In that case, he may not have heard about this until the press got it. It’s an insulated bubble he lives in…..

  • Yeah, well, the first time I heard it I took “stand down” the same way Hadley subsequently elaborated it: I.e. to mean something like, “don’t base anything on this yet because it’s preliminary, but…”

    However that interpretation, however plausible, doesn’t fit the BushChimpyHitlerburton Is A Liar paradigm so it’ll have to be summarily dismissed as even a possible reading.

    But, Gee, does anyone here think that prospective impeachment should be based on something other than how a colloquial phrase is interpreted???

  • I just cannot believe that it’s true. There is just no way, even for a famously incurious president, to have only been informed of something so critical about a war he’s preparing for, a week before it’s declassified to the general public.

    He has to be lying about this.

  • What’s the point of asking (about new info), if one cannot process and assimilate it? Much better to stick to the lines one already knows by heart.

  • OK, Stultis; I’ll give him that one, even though I think your compassion (doesn’t fit the liar paradigm, so of course nobody will want to give poor Bush the benefit of the doubt) is wasted. Still, I’d like to know why Hadley felt the need to completely reverse what he said, if the initial phrase was what he meant to say. And while we’re having a heart-to-heart, impeachment is not going to happen – because it’s way past too late for it to do any good. By the time it was done snailwalking its way through the process, he’d be out of office anyway.

    I don’t feel the least bit bad about hitting the big red “Liar” button every time Bush opens his piehole, because I stand a better than even chance of being right. The man’s a pathological liar, from the phony letters the troops supposedly wrote about how pleased the Iraqis were to be freed by their American friends to the smoking-gun-mushroom cloud to the “who could have guessed bin Laden would dare strike in the United States” to “I want to get to the bottom of who leaked information to the press, and anybody in my White House who did will not be working for the White House”. He just automatically, habitually lies – even when the truth would serve just as well, and would probably be harmless. He lies just to keep in practice. If you doubt it, just go over his track record again.

  • Pingback: All Spin Zone » Opening The Files: 12/05/07

  • CB says: “Just when it seemed as if the Bush gang couldn’t get any more embarrassing, these guys manage to kick things up a notch.”

    I’d change the word “embarrassing” to “criminal”.

    How much longer do we have to suffer these clowns?

  • To those thirsting for impeachment, I have two words to say:

    President. Cheney.

    12 months of Bu-shit seems a small price to avoid that.

  • Seems like the only hope for this nation, and possibly the worlk, to survive in form that resembles what it was in the late 20th C or even in 2000, is for some foreign power to kidnap the Commander-in-Cheep the next time he leaves this country and put him on trial for his crimes.
    Maybe an international court could lock him up in a cave with bin Laden. They deserve one another so much!

  • orange is not the answer reminds us:

    President. Cheney.

    [Token conservative, Stultis, cracks Eeeeevile Republican grin.]

    • Comments are closed.