Bush: Misleading at Best
By Dan Froomkin
Washington Post
The White House acknowledged last night that President Bush learned in August that Iran might have shelved its nuclear weapons program, contradicting what the president said at his press conference earlier this week.
Bush said Tuesday that was first briefed on a dramatic new intelligence report about Iran just last week. He said that national intelligence director Michael McConnell told him in August there was some new information about Iran, but "didn't tell me what the information was."
Critics and journalists alike responded with incredulity that Bush didn't insist on some details. And so late yesterday, White House Press Secretary Dana Perino disclosed in an unusual e-mailed statement to reporters that McConnell had in fact told Bush that the new information "might cause the intelligence community to change its assessment of Iran's covert nuclear program."
Perino insisted that Bush was told at the time that the findings were provisional enough that there was no need to change the tenor of his statements about Iran. But that doesn't hold water either. As I documented in yesterday's column, Bush's word choice on Iran did indeed change significantly in early August. He stopped speaking definitively about an Iranian nuclear weapons program -- shifting to vaguer accusations about their pursuit of the knowledge necessary to make such a weapon -- while ratcheting the rhetorical stakes up higher than ever, even going so far as to repeatedly warn of a possible nuclear holocaust.
Yet another challenge to the newly revised White House story is an alternate narrative, woven by some investigative reporters, in which White House officials and particularly Vice President Cheney were involved in a pitched battle over the last 18 months to squelch a report they knew would undermine a key pillar of their foreign policy. In this scenario, Bush presumably knew even before August that what he was telling the American people was unsupported.
(Continued here.)
Washington Post
The White House acknowledged last night that President Bush learned in August that Iran might have shelved its nuclear weapons program, contradicting what the president said at his press conference earlier this week.
Bush said Tuesday that was first briefed on a dramatic new intelligence report about Iran just last week. He said that national intelligence director Michael McConnell told him in August there was some new information about Iran, but "didn't tell me what the information was."
Critics and journalists alike responded with incredulity that Bush didn't insist on some details. And so late yesterday, White House Press Secretary Dana Perino disclosed in an unusual e-mailed statement to reporters that McConnell had in fact told Bush that the new information "might cause the intelligence community to change its assessment of Iran's covert nuclear program."
Perino insisted that Bush was told at the time that the findings were provisional enough that there was no need to change the tenor of his statements about Iran. But that doesn't hold water either. As I documented in yesterday's column, Bush's word choice on Iran did indeed change significantly in early August. He stopped speaking definitively about an Iranian nuclear weapons program -- shifting to vaguer accusations about their pursuit of the knowledge necessary to make such a weapon -- while ratcheting the rhetorical stakes up higher than ever, even going so far as to repeatedly warn of a possible nuclear holocaust.
Yet another challenge to the newly revised White House story is an alternate narrative, woven by some investigative reporters, in which White House officials and particularly Vice President Cheney were involved in a pitched battle over the last 18 months to squelch a report they knew would undermine a key pillar of their foreign policy. In this scenario, Bush presumably knew even before August that what he was telling the American people was unsupported.
(Continued here.)
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