Ten days after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, President Bush was told in a highly classified briefing that the U.S. intelligence community had no evidence linking the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein to the attacks and that there was scant credible evidence that Iraq had any significant collaborative ties with Al Qaeda, according to government records and current and former officials with firsthand knowledge of the matter.

The information was provided to Bush on September 21, 2001 during the "President's Daily Brief," a 30- to 45-minute early-morning national security briefing.

The administration has refused to provide the Sept. 21 President's Daily Brief, even on a classified basis, and won't say anything more about it other than to acknowledge that it exists. This puts the lie to the idea that politicians who voted to allow Bush to use force bear equal responsibility because they had access to the same data as did Pres. Bush and thus "were free to reach their own judgments."

key sentence in mark's excellent posting: 

It's an attack line, and the fact that it contradicts Cheney's most basic philosophy is irrelevant to them.

I would call that a perfect description of the way the modern right-winger behaves.

I actually agree with Cheney on this. Members of Congress WERE able to reach their own conclusions based on the evidence that was presented to them, most of which was circumstantial at best or flimsy at worst. The fact that they didn't have access to the raw intelligence is not that important because what the intelligence may have said had very little to do with how members of Congress voted on the war resolution.




A majority of Congress chose to go along with the Administration because they were either true believers (some Republicans and a handful of Democrats) or made cynical political calculations (most Democrats and some Republicans) about how a vote would look to their constituents or for their future political ambitions. Everyone remembered how a number of politicians' careers were significantly affected by their vote on the Gulf War in 1991. Al Gore, among others, instantly became viable as a presidential candidate because of his vote. Sam Nunn became unviable. You know that John Kerry had this in the back of his mind.




These political worries, at least on the part of Democrats, were of course well-founded. Republicans seized the political opportunities presented by the war to the fullest. Indeed, there's a good case to be made that the entire Iraq war was a cynical exercise in extending the aura and political benefits of being a wartime commander to Bush for the 2002 midterm elections.




The bottom line is that seeing the raw intelligence or seeing what the Administration saw would probably have changed very little.




In their defense, I think many in Congress thought that they weren't actually voting for war but rather were voting to put some teeth into the weapons inspection process. IIRC, there were some who wanted a second vote to authorize war but that didn't happen. But maybe I have that wrong.




But all this misses the point. It is not the case that the Administration put before Congress that is so egregious. Congress, after all has its own staff and members are paid to pay attention to this stuff closely. Rather, it was the case that they put before the public that was so outrageous. The mushroom cloud imagery, the subtle and not-so-subtle ways they tied the 9/11 tragedy to Saddam. The way they conflated the necessary war on al-Qaeda with the optional war in Iraq into an all-encompasing "war on terror". That was the real disgrace.

In my view Mark's argument is all too finely spun.

Bush went to the Congress for a resolution/authorization which would forestall his future critics.  The Democrats, who controlled the Senate, could have held lengthy hearings and could have drafted a Resolution which would have "required" the President to return to Congress before launching offensive military action.

True, Bush (and Mark suggests Clinton had he been in office) would have argued that the Resolution was unconstitutional.  But Bush, starting the war on his own, would not have been able to argue later that Congress had authorized it. 

The one place I might disagree with Brad is that the Congress had the same access to information that the Bush administration had. My understanding is that Congress's access to classified intelligence reports is limited. It shouldn't be, but I am pretty sure it is.

Members of Congress WERE able to reach their own conclusions based on the evidence

Sorry, that's mistaken.

The administration took unprecedented steps to integrate WH staffers into the intel gathering process, even going as far as establishing a new intel processing office in the Pentagon, but under control lof WH staffers, the Office of Special Plans. In addition it was the general aministration policy to fire, punish, and supress intel which ran counter to ther agenda.

What Congress eventually saw had a built in bias, was basically a lie. It was deliberatly shaped by the Bush Administration to present a skewed picture. It lacked counter arguments and disclaimers which the Admin deliberatly supressed.

Congress never had a chance, becasue the WH was shaping what intel they saw. That's a terrible violation of War Powers and has done terrible damage to the checks and balances of our democracy. 

Bush went to the Congress for a resolution/authorization which would forestall his future critics.

Yes and he did so with cooked intel. Cooked by his people placed in the Pentagon and CIA. It's that simple and is a terrible abuse of War Powers.

The administration does NOT have the Congressional right to deceive congress by infiltrating the Pentagon and CIA with politcal hacks. I'd have thought Iran Contra and Vietnam made that clear. 

Congressional < Constitutional

Yeah, intelligence was witheld from Congress.  However, I had access only to news reports in the public media, and I'm not an elected representative of the people whose responsibility it is to make responsible decisionsin the governance of the country.   And yet, despite the fact that I had less information than any given member of congress, despite the fact that I spent relatively little time evaluating the matter, I knew Saddam Hussein didn't pose any kind of threat to the US.  I knew the allegations of Al Qaida ties were bogus.  I knew Saddam Hussein wasn't seriously pursuing nuclear weapons.  I knew that the war was largely to ensure a groundswell of jingoistic fervor in time for the midterm elections. 

And the Democrats in Congress should have know that, too.  The voted for the war resolution because of some assinine desire to look "strong on national security."  They knew that the President was looking to go to war, come what may.  Perhaps they didn't expect the fiasco that has ensued.  But they voted out of fear for their own political skins, rather than in the best interests of the country. 

 The reason why John Kerry looked so lame defending his vote for the war was because he couldn't own up to the truth - he voted for the war because he had presidential ambitions that he thought would be injured as the result of a "no" vote. 

 The Democrats knew what they were voting for.  They voted for war; perhaps not the war we're having now, but a war of choice against an enemy they can't truthfully say they thought was a threat.  What the Democrats are carping about now is that the Administration played a better PR game than they did, that they sold the war to the rubes that vote, and that the Democrats either had to take a principled stand or be complicit.  In the end, they chose complicity.

Agreed; Bush and Cheney are coming back into court -- the court of public opinion(?) -- with dirty hands.

But what do you say to Mark's claim that Cheney's making an argument which contradicts his usual position that constitutionally, the Congress has neither the will nor the means to manage the nation's foreign policy which includes going to war?

I suppose I'm asking why Mark's argument doesn't apply to the IIRC of October 2002, itself.  In other words under Cheney's constitutional theory, what's the Administration doing in front of Congress, anyhoo?

You may be right but all those you mentioned had particular world views.  There view of the facts were seen through the lens of those views.  This does not necessary negate their dishonesty or suggest they are not interested in power.

I was thinking of how the ideology allowed the American colonists and the British Crown to see the identical acts in very different ways.

Mark's point about deference given to any President claiming to be protecting the nation seems right on the money.  Daniel A. Greenbaum

"Deference" suggests "giving way" or "stepping aside" or perhaps, the giving of "respectful attention."

"Deference" does not require one to carry the person deferred to's water -- which is what the Democrats did. 

I was thinking of how the ideology allowed the American colonists and the British Crown to see the identical acts in very different ways.

I understand, as mentioned I also went with the "self deception" line for a bit. It definitly had pundit appeal and was a popular pundit hedge on the issue for a long time. It even has a nice ring to it, the "even worse, they deceived themselves" bit ...

But like I said, I think it's too sophistic ultimatly, which is why I dropped it. It just doesn't fit when examined closly.

It has it's place. For example in manifest destiny philisophical discussion on slavery, Hitler, etc. the "self deception" argument is fine. In that debate all bad things are just the products of sick minds and self deception. Fine.

But back to brass tacks and today's politcal reality: Bush lied and deceived Congress. No "Bush deceived himself so he could deceive Congress" defense or sophistry is needed.

But what do you say to Mark's claim that Cheney's making an argument which contradicts his usual position that constitutionally, the Congress has neither the will nor the means to manage the nation's foreign policy which includes going to war?

Well I think it's rather hypocritical, a bizarre sort of rationalization, and factually challenged. Prime Cheney, with a bit of Rumsfeld.

Basically Cheney is in effect claiming it was ok to manipulate Congress and lie to the public to prompt a referendum on false pretenses... because they didn't have to ask Congress to invade Iraq anyways. Presumably the full scale armored invasion of Iraq would have been an Executive “police action” in the “police action” on terror.

lol.

Cheney is saying they were going to war on cooked intel if they wanted to, and they just did us all a favor by lying to us give us the illusion we had some democratic say in the matter....  Bizarre in the extreme.

Also it rather avoids the fact Bush would most certainly have been impeached one way or another had he decided to launch full scale war without Congressional approval or precedent. Congress maintains War Powers constitutionally, based either on the popular War Powers Resolution, or the uncontested War Powers Clause, US constitution, Article One.

Basically, Cheney is full of shit and living in his own maniacal world. But then, what else is new?

I think you bring up an interesting point about not only the hypocrisy in Cheney’s posturing but also how the Bush presidency may actually affect future presidencies in the form of more limits to their power.

This also pertains to how, seemingly, congress and this administration over-reacts to events resulting in things like the PATRIOT act. Of course this all might be construed another way such as this administration has used events to push their agenda and seldom have they missed an opportunity, which may be a more accurate description.

What bothers me about how congress acted during the build up to war is that here we have Bush coming forward making what I at the time viewed as rather remarkable claims about this small country on the other side of the world being a national threat. So if a mere mortal like me found these claims to be bizarre why didn’t congress find them equally hard to believe? Could there not have been a little room for some commons sense to enter the equation? Why didn’t someone in congress say “well George, that is a little hard to swallow, do you have any more proof than a couple of empty trailers and some aluminum tubes? I can understand that the function of congress is not to analyze intelligence but these are just a few simple questions that could have been asked without too much trouble

I had above-top secret clearances while serving in the Army Security Agency in the early 1970s.  Although I never encountered anything interesting--much less sexy--I have a good idea of some of the kinds of things that were going on in the special-access-only offices that were part of our little group.  I know Congress doesn't get the same intelligence that the White House gets, and I know we in the public only get dim shadows of what our professionals collect.

Way back then, I started listening to the CBC and BBC on shortwave.  I still love radio, and can get BBC on my XM, and I hope they add the CBC too.  Now, the internet and blogs allow us to access an even wider array of news and other information from around the world.

I have to respectfully disagree with NickDoe. I knew we were being lied to.  I knew that there was no connection between Sadam and Osama.  And I believed Hans Blix, and Scott Ritter, and lots of others who said that what the top people in Bushco were saying about weapons of mass destruction was just not true.

I didn't need to see the raw intelligence, because I've been keeping up with events and people in this part of the world for thirty years now.  I wish I could remember when I first read the Neocon's blueprint for the "New American Century," which was published in September 2000.  From the beginning sounded to me about as grounded in reality as the "thousand-year reich,"  and just as scary.

Scary.  To me, that's the word that sums up Dick Cheney and any of his ideas.

Be afraid.  Be very afraid.

Bushco est delenda.

What they really think is rather directly expressed in a Tony Blankley column from last week that appeared in today's printed version of the Guardian (but not available on-line).

(http://www.washingtontimes.com/op-ed/20051115-093244-2178r.htm)

Passing over the distorted view of recent history, I still wonder from where they derive their unusual interpretation of the United States Constitution. I must confess that I have not read any of the allegedly "scholarly" defenses of Presidential war powers, but it is hard to avoid the obvious conclusion that the source in terms of "original intent" for such powers is the power of the British Crown. This question was at the heart of the American Revolution, and the Crown on that occasion ultimately elected to make peace with the Continental Congress rather than continuing to contest the issue.

Even though I think Cheney's views of the Constitution and of American history are twisted and distorted, beneath his misleading bluster he still has a point. It is incumbent upon the Congress to assert its authority in the domain of warmaking, and it was certainly within Congress's power under the Constitution to insist on additional conditions before the President committed our armed forces to battle. Whatever ambiguity there may be on this issue in the case of an attack on the United States, in the case of Iraq there was no attack on the United States. Again, putting Cheney's outrageous bluster to one side, he can argue that Congress could have interpreted the evidence that was presented at the time as sufficiently lacking in "imminent threat" to the United States as to require the President to give UN weapons inspectors more time to complete their tasks, or for the President to produce more direct evidence of Iraqi capability of striking the United States or its overseas interests.

This is a legal and constitutional argument, not a political one. From the perspective of what used to be the twentieth century tradition of bipartisan foreign policy, it is clear to me that the Administration said to Congress and the public, "trust us, Saddam Hussein is a really bad guy, and we have to take him out before he does something terrible." The politics were much more on the basis of trust than on the basis of evidence, in contrast to the Cuban missile crisis, for example. But I still think that Congress has to keep the politics in constitutional perspective on matters of war and peace. They rolled over (with the encouragement of the MSM), but it is not too late for them to reassert their constitutional prerogatives.