harry hope

From Reuters, 7/13/03:
http://www.abcnews.go.com/wire/US/reuters20030713_231.html

Bush Aides Seek to Put Out Credibility Firestorm

By Thomas Ferraro

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -

Top aides to President Bush insisted on Sunday he did not hype Iraq's
suspected weapons of mass destruction as they sought to put out a
political firestorm ignited by a disputed statement he made in his
case for war.

But questions about Bush's credibility persisted, threatening to
further erode public support for the U.S.-led occupation of Iraq and
create more difficulty at home for U.S. ally British Prime Minister
Tony Blair.

Appearing on Sunday television shows, national security adviser
Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld repeated that
it was a mistake for Bush to cite in his State of the Union address a
British finding, which U.S. intelligence was unable to confirm, that
former Saddam Hussein sought to buy uranium from Africa for Iraq's
nuclear program.

The White House first acknowledged the error last week.

CIA Director George Tenet accepted responsibility, saying his agency
should not have signed off on the one-sentence inclusion in the
president's speech last January.

But Rice and Rumsfeld brushed off suggestions Bush had manipulated
intelligence in making his case for war.

"The notion that the president of the United States took the country
to war because he was concerned with one sentence about whether Saddam
Hussein sought uranium in Africa is clearly ludicrous," Rice told
CBS's "Face the Nation."

"And this has gotten to that proportion."

"End of story," Rumsfeld declared on ABC's "This Week."

On CNN's "Late Edition" Rice also said Tenet should not step down.

"Absolutely not. The president has confidence in George Tenet," she
said.

Yet, with recent polls showing an erosion of support for the Iraqi
operation, there was heavy criticism from Democrats, some of whom hope
to replace Bush in the White House in 2004.

"This is not an issue of George Tenet. This is an issue of George
Bush," Florida Sen. Bob Graham, a Democratic presidential hopeful,
told NBC's "Meet the Press."

"There was a selective use of intelligence -- that is, that
information which was consistent with the administration's policy was
given front-row seat," said Graham, the former chairman of the Senate
Select Intelligence Committee.

Sen. Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia, the senior Democrat on the
intelligence committee, said in a radio interview the panel may call
Tenet to answer questions this week.

But he criticized Rice for being "dishonorable" in letting Tenet take
the blame and said she must have known about the suspect uranium
report long before Bush's State of the Union address.

"The entire intelligence community has been very skeptical about this
from the very beginning," Rockefeller told National Public Radio's
"All Things Considered" program.

"And she (Rice) has her own director of intelligence, she has her own
Iraq and Africa specialists, and it's just beyond me that she didn't
know about this, and that she has decided to make George Tenet the
fall person... I think it's dishonorable."

Rice went to lengths to state that the British intelligence was not
inaccurate, just unproven by the United States.

"We have never said that the British report was wrong," she said.

Blair arrives in Washington on Thursday for talks with Bush.

Both leaders have been criticized for overplaying intelligence about
weapons of mass destruction, one of the prime justifications cited in
the attack on Iraq.

Three months after Saddam's fall, no such weapons have been found.

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Sniff, sniff. Smell sumthin' burning? Why, It must be Ge****e Bush!

Harry