Bush gang fans out with inane defense for leaking nuclear secrets

November 3, 2006

I certainly don’t envy the vaunted White House communications operation today. I mean, really — how does one explain carelessly publishing classified nuclear secrets online, over the advice of intelligence experts, to make some right-wing congressmen and blogs happy? Indeed, this is, surprisingly enough, becoming a fairly big story today. Not Kerry-misses-a-word-in-a-joke big, but thanks to some coordinated Dem criticism, some reporters are finding it hard to ignore.

For that matter, it’s not exactly convenient timing. With just days remaining before the election, the GOP wants to suggest Dems are weak on defense while also explaining why Republicans undermined our national security for a vanity political project. What to do?

Apparently, lie.

This morning on MSNBC, White House Counselor Dan Bartlett used a New York Times report to falsely claim Saddam Hussein “had the capability and he had the know-how to” develop nuclear weapons.

The Times report documents Iraq’s efforts to conduct nuclear research before the 1991 Persian Gulf war and prior to sanctions. Contrary to Bartlett’s claim, Iraq had no nuclear capability at the time of the U.S. invasion in March 2003.

When far-right blogs parrot this nonsense, it’s kind of embarrassing. When a senior aide to the president goes on national television with such an obviously bogus argument, you know the Bush gang simply has no defense.

What’s more, Bartlett isn’t the only one getting lost in the spin cycle.

Andy Card rolled out a bizarre defense of his own.

This morning on NBC, former White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card excused the Bush administration’s role in posting nuclear weapons secrets on a public web site, and instead blamed the New York Times for having “advertised” the secrets “to the world.”

Card said “it’s important that we recognize the government is doing the right thing” and claimed the government “acted very quickly” to remove the nuclear secrets.

Sometimes you really have to wonder about the mental health of these guys. Conservatives pressured the administration to put secret documents online, the administration agrees, and it’s the Times’ fault for “advertising” secrets “to the world”? By getting the Bush gang to undo their mistake, the Times did the polar opposite. And the Bush gang didn’t “act very quickly,” they didn’t do a thing for a week, even after the IAEA raised the issue.

And in addition to Bartlett and Card, apparently Condi Rice got in on the fun.

Andrea Mitchell just reported that the Secretary of State went on Laura Ingraham’s wingnut propaganda show and said the “Army of Davids” documents proved that Saddam was working on a nuclear program. Lucky for us that Mitchell pointed out that the documents were from before the first Gulf War.

I understand that hacks like Limbaugh and Instapundit would try to pass this nonsense off to the neanderthal base, but for the Secretary of State to lower herself and her office to say such a thing is shocking. Even for these people.

Indeed, it is. It’s so bad that NBC’s Andrea Mitchell, who’s hardly a liberal, said the Bush gang is left, once again, looking like “the gang that couldn’t shoot straight.”

Truer words were never spoken.

Remember the “most tightly controlled adminstration” meme about no one leaking? I guess in a sense “they started it” works here because the top guys themselves started the leaking with Plame and continued on at their convenience leaking whatever they wanted even it was important and declaring inconvenient truths to be top secret even if they were unimportant.

  • You idiots. Idiots!

    Amazing. They wanted to unleash it so that someone other than the “exclusive elites” could look at it. Dumbasses.

  • South Park fanatics might remember an old episode with an evil record company exec who shouted “I am above the law!” whenever anyone questioned his behaviour.

    If only we’d know Parker and Stone were warning us about ShrubCo a few years before the nightmare became reality.

  • If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck — it’s a Republican. The Democrats ought to be on this like stink on shit.

  • Whoever is responsible for this should go to jail. The word “treason’ comes to mind as a possible charge. That probably won’t happen; it’s more likely that whoever is responsible will get the medal of freedom and a great bonus from Halliburton.

  • I understand that hacks like Limbaugh and Instapundit would try to pass this nonsense off to the neanderthal base, but for the Secretary of State to lower herself and her office to say such a thing is shocking. Even for these people.

    Oh please. Condi Rice has been caught saying all kinds of silly shit in an effort to cover the administration’s butt, so it’s not like this is without precedent.

    This is the same person who said: “I don’t think anybody could have predicted that these people…would try to use an airplane as a missile, a hijacked airplane as a missile.” History has since proven her wrong.

    She’s not above blatant lying, so we might as well quit giving her the benefit of the doubt.

  • the answer is orange: South Park fanatics might remember an old episode with an evil record company exec who shouted “I am above the law!” whenever anyone questioned his behaviour.

    If only we’d know Parker and Stone were warning us about ShrubCo a few years before the nightmare became reality.

    Keith Richards did it first when he went ‘your laws don’t apply to me’ lo these many years ago. just sayin’, lol.

  • So let’s take a moment to see what we’ve learned:

    1. We’ve lost our habeas corpus rights.

    2. There are literally thousands of Blackwater military contractors perfecting their torture techniques in Iraqi prisons, etc., as we speak.

    3. We’ve started and been engaged in a war with the ostensible purpose of fighting terrrorism but with the actual result of creating and fomenting more terrorist fervor than ever.

    4. We have an administration policy of establishing a website where any “evildoer” can learn how to build a nuclear bomb.

    So my question is, how long before a nuke goes off in America that we (and I use the word “we” liberally – is that a botched joke?) helped/allowed to be built, set off by terrorists whom we helped to antagonize? Then, since we won’t be able to figure out who did it, the Blackwater brownshirts will need to come over and start interrogating people (read: anyone) that the President (in his infinite wisdom) believes might be a terrorist or terrorist supporter.

    Of course, the people being interrogated (you’ll call it torture, they’ll call it aggressive interrogation) won’t have any habeas corpus rights so we’ll never hear from them again, except for the occasional press release that they had confessed, or that the information had been useful in stopping some other terrorist attack.

    Am I being too “conspiracy theorist” here? I just feel like we look back on Nazi Germany and say why didn’t they do anything to stop him and we might be in the middle of that now.

  • This absolutely appalling story and the administration’s half-witted excuses reminded me of a trick the Bushies have used again and again to hide information. “We can’t tell you that because it would reveal our methods to the terrorists.” Right.

    Apparently among our ‘methods’ is the innovative technique of protecting classified information by hiding it on a public website.

  • Homer: I just feel like we look back on Nazi Germany and say why didn’t they do anything to stop him and we might be in the middle of that now.

    might be? for the last few years, i’ve been thinking we’re well down that road already. it’s not a conspiracy theory if it proves out to be truth.

  • Rimone – agreed. I know there’s the 14 points of fascism http://www.oldamericancentury.org/14pts.htm that keeps getting updated.

    Maybe we need to create one of those spectrums like the NYT just printed about Iraq’s apparent descent into chaos but have it show where we are on the political spectrum of communism to fascism. Sorry, I’m just an ideas guy though….

  • Just wanted to say I watched CNN’s take on this on Lou Dobbs, and they pretty much played it straight down the middle.

    They started the report by saying it went up on this site against some objections in an effort to justify this war, they discovered there were materials relating to building a bomb, they quoted Condi Rice from her appearance on Laura Ingraham not saying “This shows Saddam had WMD” but the part where she says “We certainly have to be careful about letting such information out yada yada.” They then had a talking head saying “this is really bad you dummies,” showed some old interviews/quotes from Hoekstra, and then a statement from him today where he basically threw Negroponte and the Intel people under a bus, and kind of ended it there. No time was given over to the right-wing “YOU SEE???” view or anything like that, but the reason for putting the site up was also said to be so “scholars” could look at it, which seems dubious.

    Either way, they played it pretty straight. Just FYI to all.

  • Homer, i know those 14 points well; been linking to them at that site for awhile.

    Maybe we need to create one of those spectrums like the NYT just printed about Iraq’s apparent descent into chaos but have it show where we are on the political spectrum of communism to fascism. Sorry, I’m just an ideas guy though….

    i think it’s an effective idea, but what do i know? but i would totally love to see something like that.

  • Conservatives pressured the administration to put secret documents online, the administration agrees, and it’s the Times’ fault for “advertising” secrets “to the world”? — CB

    But of course… If Times had kept its trap shut, the badasses would have never found the website; they don’t like going on them tubes; the only tubes they have any use for are the aluminium ones, for packing WMD into. It’s just like that time when the Times told them that their banking transactions were being monitored and their phone conversations being tapped. See, terrarists are really stupid folk, they’d have never thought of such for themselves. Being blown up by an IED is too good a fate for that librul terrarist NYTimes…

  • “showed some old interviews/quotes from Hoekstra, and then a statement from him today where he basically threw Negroponte and the Intel people under a bus, and kind of ended it there.” – Dave G

    Really, can they do anything more to ruin the morale of our Intelligence Community? They demand the release of this unreviewed documentation then they complain about it?

  • The GOP isn’t the security party. It is the Gilligan Party, so stupid they get the rest of us killed.

  • Lance, that’s pretty much what they did. “I thought it would be released with greater care,” Hoekstra said — that’s a paraphrase, but the general idea.

  • When they say “scholars”, they mean “blowhards who rant on and on about kerning and 1960’s typewriter technology”

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