Card: Prewar Intelligence Doubts 'Moot'

[Guest Cerebus]

Ok, I'm pretty conservative (not as many as others on this board but still...) but this just annoys the fuck out of me...

 

Card: Prewar Intelligence Doubts 'Moot'

WASHINGTON - President Bush (news - web sites)'s chief of staff dismissed as "a moot point" any lingering question about whether Bush relied on faulty intelligence to justify the invasion of Iraq (news - web sites).

 

Andy Card also rejected charges from fellow Republican Newt Gingrich that the administration's postwar policies went "off a cliff" after an impressive invasion that deposed Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)'s government.

 

Overall intelligence has been "very, very good," Card said Sunday. But, he added, "Intelligence is a collection of dots, and then an analysis on how those dots might be connected. Some of those dots may not be what they appear to be, and some of the connections may not have been what people would have suggested."

 

More than seven months after Bush declared major combat over, American inspectors have not found the weapons of mass destruction, which Bush accused Iraq of hiding and used as a major reason for going to war. Searchers have found quantities of chemicals and substances that could be used to make both weapons and legitimate civilian items.

 

Card deflected questions about the intelligence that led Bush to issue the warnings that Iraq was a threat to the United States because of its illegal weapons. In October 2002, Bush said Iraq had "a massive stockpile of biological weapons that has never been accounted for and is capable of killing millions."

 

"When you go there today, and you see some of the mass graves of the dead, where he murdered his own people, you just can't help but think that we are much better off," Card said on CNN's "Late Edition." "So I think it's a moot point. The good news is Saddam is no longer a threat to his own people."

 

The White House has said repeatedly it believes such weapons eventually will be found, but Card did not repeat that prediction Sunday. "We think there's evidence of some programs that they had," he said. "I can't speak to whether they were ongoing or not ongoing. All I can tell you is his intent was not very good."

 

In his first interviews on the Sunday news shows in nearly a year, Card fended off sharp criticism on Iraq from prominent members of both political parties.

 

Gingrich, former speaker of the House, said in the Dec. 15 issue of Newsweek magazine that he was proud of what Gen. Tommy Franks, who planned and commanded the American-led invasion of Iraq, did "up to the moment of deciding how to transfer power to the Iraqis. Then we go off a cliff." He is a member of the bipartisan Defense Policy Board, which advises Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.

 

Card bristled at the charge.

 

"Well, Newt Gingrich is not all-knowing. And I'm sure he has opinions. He has always expressed them," Card said on the CBS program "Face the Nation." "Things are going better than they could have been expected to go at this time, and we're making great progress."

 

Card spoke on a day when insurgents attacked a U.S. military patrol in northern Iraq, killing one soldier and wounding two. Guerrillas also detonated a bomb that derailed half the cars on a freight train, popular targets because they often carry U.S. military supplies.

 

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (news - web sites), D-N.Y., suggested on Sunday that next summer's planned transfer of power from American occupying authorities to Iraqis might be driven by Bush's re-election campaign, to be bringing troops home by November.

 

On CBS' "Face the Nation," Clinton said she hoped that was not the case. But during a Thanksgiving holiday visit to Baghdad, Clinton said, she heard from soldiers "questions ... about whether this was really about what's best for the long-term stability of Iraq or what's best for the November elections."

 

"That's clearly mistaken," Card said. "What drives our policy in Iraq: the Iraqi people, and their needs and the desire for greater security."

 

Card also responded to conservative critics who aver that federal spending has spun out of control under Bush. The chief of staff renewed a pledge to cut the deficit by half in the next five years — a promise that came into doubt after Bush last month persuaded Congress to spend an additional $87 billion for Iraq rebuilding and military costs.

 

Bush "is taking an appropriate line on spending. He is a great watchdog for the taxpayers' money," Card said on Fox.

 

Campaigning in California, Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry (news - web sites) scoffed at the assertion.

 

"Spending is up, the government is larger than it's been in years, and this is the administration that's promised to cut both," Kerry said in a conference call with reporters. "They ought to win a Pulitzer Prize for fiction if they can pass that one on."

 

Cuttins the deficit in HALF? I doubt, even with the most optomistic estimates for the economy, he'll be able to do that if we want to stay in Afghanistan & Iraq...