Recently, I decided to go back through my website and reread some
of the statements I have written and links to articles I have posted.
2003 has been such a tumultuous year already … Now we have the publicized
revelations that the Bush administration exaggerated evidence of Iraq’s
weapons of mass destruction and falsely implied that there were strong
connections between al Qaeda and Iraq. Looking back, however, it is
clear that these facts were known even before the war… but the media
did not emphasize the story until it was already too late.

For example, on March 26th
we quoted from a New York Times article of March 23rd that stated
that analysts at the Central Intelligence Agency have “felt
pressured to make their intelligence reports on Iraq confirm to Bush
Administration policies,” including pressure to “emphasize
links between Saddam Hussein’s government and al Qaeda.”

In
that same statement, it said, “This revelation comes on the
heels of a recent disclosure that President Bush’s public assertion
that Iraq was trying to purchase uranium was based in part on forged
documents – documents about which C.I.A. officials were always
suspicious. Bush has yet to retract his public statement, nor does
he seem to feel the need to defend his use of faulty information.”
What nobody seems to be mentioning right now is that we knew that
Bush’s 16-word statement in the State of the Union address was
false before the war even started … but Bush was allowed to get
away with it as the momentum towards war grew.

Now that Saddam’s regime has been toppled and we have yet to
find any evidence of weapons of mass destruction, the Democrats and
the media have finally begun to fully investigate and publicize these
false claims and to ask the tough questions. Now that we have destroyed
Iraq, now that we are stuck rebuilding a country and spending tens
of billions of taxpayer money and now that we must break it to soldiers
who were told “the road home goes through Baghdad” that
they cannot go home, that they must stay in Iraq and continue fighting
a guerilla war … now we are questioning what brought us there in
the first place.

That questioning should lead us directly to National Security Advisor
Condoleezza Rice, one of the closest people to the president. She
has changed her story about the forged uranium documents so many times
it ought to be a joke … except it’s not funny. On July 8th,
Rice said, “no one in our circles knew there were doubts and
suspicions that this might be a forgery” and on July 11th, Rice
said the CIA “cleared the speech in its entirety” and
that if “Tenet, the CIA director, had any misgivings, he never
shared them with the White House.” Just several days later,
on July 23rd, Rice’s top aide, Stephen Hadley, said he received
two memos from the CIA and a phone call from Tenet warning him that
evidence that Iraq was trying to obtain uranium in Africa was not
reliable. One memo was also directed to Rice, who claimed not to have
fully read these important intelligence documents.

And now, with the September 11th report finally declassified, we are
beginning to get a clearer picture about the Bush administration’s
failure to heed the warnings of the impending terrorist attack. According
to the 9/11 commission report, “intelligence reports from December
1998 until the attacks said followers of bin Laden were planning to
strike U.S. targets and hijack U.S. planes” (Reuters, 7/24/03).
ABC News recently reported, “White House officials acknowledged
that U.S. intelligence officials informed President Bush weeks before
the Sept. 11 attacks that bin Laden’s terrorist network might
try to hijack American planes.” Specifically, on August 6th
President Bush received an 11 ½ page report on al Qaeda that
cited the possibility of plane hijackings.

The 9/11 report concludes that although the intelligence community
did not have the “time, place and specific nature” of
the 9/11 attacks, it had “amassed a great deal of valuable intelligence
regarding Osama bin Laden and his terrorist activities” and
that this information could have been used to “discern the bigger
picture successfully” and potentially prevent the attacks. For
more, please read the following statement I wrote in the Fall of 2002
about the Bush administration’s homeland security failures:

November, 2002 Homeland Security Failures

While we are all rooting for President Bush to win the War on
Terrorism, it is important that we know the facts about the homeland
and national security debate. The assertion that Democrats are not
committed to homeland and national security is ludicrous and is a
perfect example of the ability of the Republican spin machine to distort
the issues. In fact, a little history is in order: 

• Before September 11th, Bush and his advisors did not pay
  enough attention to the possibility of a large-scale terrorist
  attack. Bush’s National Security Advisor Condoleezza
  Rice has said she could have never predicted such an attack, despite
  warnings of the French, Israeli and American intelligence communities.
  On August 6th, 2001, the CIA sent Bush a memo warning of possible
  al Qaeda plane hijackings. So why was there no increase in airport
  security, including reinforced bullet-proofed cockpits? At the
  time of the presidential transition, Clinton’s National
  Security Advisor, Sandy Berger, made it very clear to Ms. Rice
  that her greatest concern should be Osama bin Laden and the al
  Qaeda terrorism network. If that terrorism threat had remained
  a high level of priority in all levels of government, could these
  attacks have been prevented? We may never be able to answer that
  question. The purpose is not to assign blame but simply to point
  out that Republican leaders have not proved themselves to be more
  effective protectors of Homeland Security, as they would have
  the American people believe.
• Seven months before the terrorist attacks, the Bush administration
  ignored a
  detailed report co-authored by former Senators Gary Hart and Warren
  Rudman, co-chairing the United States Commission on National Security,
  that warned of possible terrorist attacks, including “a
  weapon of mass destruction in a high-rise building.” The
  report outlined a detailed blueprint for how to make America safer
  that included, among other suggestions, a plan for the creation
  of a National Homeland Security Agency. The Bush administration
  disregarded the report, despite momentum from Congress to implement
  the plan. On May 5, 2001, the White House announced it would instead
  form its own committee, headed by Dick Cheney, to look into security
  concerns and produce a report in October of that year.
• On September 10th, 2001, Attorney General John Ashcroft
  rejected the FBI’s request for a $58 million increase for
  their counterterrorism budget to pay for 149 new counterterrorism
  field agents, 200 intelligence analysts and 54 additional translators.
  He did that despite the fact, discovered later by a Congressional
  investigation, that the FBI had only one analyst monitoring al
  Qaeda! In that same budget, Ashcroft proposed cutting $65 million
  for state and local counterterrorism grants. In lists of priorities
  issued from the Justice Department between May 10th and August
  9th, 2001, and analyzed by The New York Times, counterterrorism
  was never once mentioned as a priority. Like the other intelligence
  agencies, the FBI had a severe shortage of Arabic translators
  before September 11th – a clear indication that the Justice
  Department did not take the terrorist threat seriously.
• When President Bush first proposed the idea of a homeland
  security coordinator, the Democrats countered at that time with
  a proposal calling for a full Department of Homeland Security.
  In fact, Democratic Senator Joseph Lieberman proposed a bill back
  in October, 2001 to create a Department of Homeland Security that
  would have given homeland security advisor Tom Ridge cabinet-level
  status. At that time, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer, in
  a statement summarized in The New York Times, explained what a
  “disruptive, politically impossible government reorganization
  would be required if Congress gave Mr. Ridge cabinet status and
  tried to create a new homeland security agency that would subsume
  current departments.” Now the Republicans have the gall
  to accuse the Democrats of delaying implementation of the very
  idea that the Democrats proposed over a year ago and the Republicans
  opposed at that time.
• Just a few months ago, Bush cancelled $5.1 billion approved
  by the Congress for emergency homeland security spending. This
  money would have gone to nuclear security improvements, port protection,
  airport security, the Secret Service to combat electronic crimes,
  law enforcement resources for state and local governments, FBI
  counterterrorism efforts and information technology enhancement,
  urban reserve and rescue teams, cybersecurity improvements to
  protect our economy, food and water security, border security,
  dam and reservoir security and the Customs Service to increase
  inspections, among other areas of homeland security spending.

• The Republicans initially tried to block an investigation into
  events leading up to September 11th and the preparation of government
  agencies for that large- scale attack. This major event in American
  history deserves clear and independent research so that we can
  understand what happened in order to prevent such a disaster from
  occurring again. This bill was passed only after enormous pressure
  from the victims’ families.

What
this brief timeline shows us is how important it is right now, with
the Republicans controlling the White House, the Senate and the House
of Representatives, to have a strong, independent press to ask the
serious questions and do sophisticated analysis of the issues. We
know the Republicans will try to spin everything to their advantage
– but the American people deserve the truth.