national intell head Mike McConnel on Bush and Iraq intell

[Truthmatters]

http://thinkprogress.org/2007/07/22/mcconnell-pentagon/

He said they manipulated the intell folks!

 

[Truthmatters]

National Intel Director: Bush Admin. Manipulated Iraq Intel ‘Because They Didn’t Like The Answers’
In Stephen Hayes’s upcoming biography on Dick Cheney, he writes that the current Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell appears to side with “those who believe that the administration manipulated intelligence on Iraq for political purposes before the 2003 invasion.”

McConnell reportedly said he had “serious reservations” when asked by President Bush to become the DNI because of the Pentagon’s manipulation of intelligence in the lead up to the Iraq war. Today, Meet the Press host Tim Russert previewed the relevant portion of the book:

McConnell was honored to be asked [to be DNI], but he had serious reservations. He had been unimpressed with many aspects of the Bush administration and its conduct of the war on terror, particularly what he felt was a politicized use of intelligence in the lead-up to the Iraq war. […]

“My sense of it is their political faith and convictions influenced how they took information and interpreted [it], how they picked up and interpreted outside events. … I’ve read much more about the current set of players and they did set up a whole new interpretation because they didn’t like the answers. They’ve gotten results that in my view now have been disastrous,” [McConnell said].

Watch it:
http://thinkprogress.org/2007/07/22/mcconnell-pentagon/

 

[RetiredGySgt]

National Intel Director: Bush Admin. Manipulated Iraq Intel ‘Because They Didn’t Like The Answers’
In Stephen Hayes’s upcoming biography on Dick Cheney, he writes that the current Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell appears to side with “those who believe that the administration manipulated intelligence on Iraq for political purposes before the 2003 invasion.”

McConnell reportedly said he had “serious reservations” when asked by President Bush to become the DNI because of the Pentagon’s manipulation of intelligence in the lead up to the Iraq war. Today, Meet the Press host Tim Russert previewed the relevant portion of the book:

McConnell was honored to be asked [to be DNI], but he had serious reservations. He had been unimpressed with many aspects of the Bush administration and its conduct of the war on terror, particularly what he felt was a politicized use of intelligence in the lead-up to the Iraq war. […]

“My sense of it is their political faith and convictions influenced how they took information and interpreted [it], how they picked up and interpreted outside events. … I’ve read much more about the current set of players and they did set up a whole new interpretation because they didn’t like the answers. They’ve gotten results that in my view now have been disastrous,” [McConnell said].

Watch it:
http://thinkprogress.org/2007/07/22/mcconnell-pentagon/

n other words, it is his opinion, he has no facts to back it up. Or he would not use words like " My sense of it". Another person making money out of nothing.

 

[maineman]

So Mike McConnell, 29 years commissioned service...a career navy intelligence officer.. three stars... is just another yahoo with an opinion no more valuable than the retired gunny?

When you go visit the doctor, do you think your opinion about your state of health is just as valuable as his?

 

[DeadCanDance]

n other words, it is his opinion, he has no facts to back it up. Or he would not use words like " My sense of it". Another person making money out of nothing.

How is he "making money out of it"?

He doesn't have a book, an he is a current member of the bush adminstration.

 

[DeadCanDance]

Are all these current and former members of the Bush Administration just out to make a quick buck?

- PAUL PILLAR, national intelligence officer for the Near East and South Asia, who coordinated U.S. intelligence on the Middle East: accused the Bush administration of "cherry-picking" intelligence on Iraq to justify a decision it had already reached to go to war, and of ignoring warnings that the country could easily fall into violence and chaos after an invasion to overthrow Saddam Hussein.

-MIKE McConnell, Bush‘s Current Director of National Intellgence: “My sense of it is their political faith and convictions influenced how they took information and interpreted [it], how they picked up and interpreted outside events. … I’ve read much more about the current set of players and they did set up a whole new interpretation because they didn’t like the answers. They’ve gotten results that in my view now have been disastrous.

-TYLER DRUMHELLER, Bush’s top CIA officer in Europe: “charges the White House with ignoring intelligence that said there were no weapons of mass destruction or an active nuclear program in Iraq. “

-RICHARD DEARLOVE, British MI6 Intelligence Chief: Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy…the case was thin. Saddam was not threatening his neighbours, and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran"

-PAUL O’NEIL, Secretary of Treasury, member of National Security Council: "In the 23 months I was there, I never saw anything that I would characterise as evidence of weapons of mass destruction"…"For me, the notion of pre-emption, that the US has the unilateral right to do whatever we decide to do, is a really huge leap"

-GREG THEILMAN, Bush’s Director of Office of Strategic Proliferation and Military Affairs for the State Department: "I’m afraid i think the American public was seriously misled."

-GENERAL ANTHONY ZINNI: CentCom Commander, and Bush’s Middle East Envoy: "In my time at Centcom, I watched the intelligence, and never -- not once -- did it say, 'He has WMD.' "...I'd say to analysts, 'Where's the threat?' " Their response, he recalls, was, "Silence."

-RAND BEERS, Bush’s Senior Director for Combating Terrorism, National Security Council: "I was concerned that we had headed our foreign policy in the wrong direction when we shifted from fighting the war on terrorism to mobilizing for the invasion of Iraq…I thought the administration misrepresented the connection between terrorist groups and the Saddam Hussein government…I never saw that connection".

-FLYNT LEVERETT, Bush’s former senior director, National Security Council: “"Those Americans [in Iraq] are dying because this administration screwed up…The Bush administration heard what they wanted to hear. They were not willing to face reality and were not willing to pay the price for resources for their ambition”

-General BRENT SCOWCROFT, Poppy Bush’s National Security Advisor: “Saddam is a familiar dictatorial aggressor, with traditional goals for his aggression. There is little evidence to indicate that the United States itself is an object of his aggression…An attack on Iraq at this time would seriously jeopardize, if not destroy, the global counter terrorist campaign we have undertaken.”

-DAVID KAY, Bush’s own WMD inspector: Bush and Blair ''should have been able to tell before the war that the evidence did not exist for drawing the conclusion that Iraq presented a clear, present and imminent threat on the basis of existing weapons of mass destruction….'That was not something that required a war,'' he said.

-LT. COLONEL KAREN KWIATKOWSKI, senior analyst, Rummy's Pentagon Office of Special Projects: "the neoconservatives never bothered to sell the rest of the country on the real reasons for occupation of Iraq..."

 

[Truthmatters]

They will throw anyone under the Bus except Bush I guess.

 

[dilloduck]

This might be news if our politicians had a record of telling Americans the truth.