Another Moderate Republican's Reputation Bites the Dust?

Paul Kiel sends us to Today's Must Read:

Ex-9/11 Panel [Staff] Chief Denies Secret White House Ties: Book Charges Zelikow May Have Interfered With the 9/11 Commission's Report By JUSTIN ROOD: Jan. 30, 2008: The former executive director of the 9/11 Commission denies explosive charges of undisclosed ties to the Bush White House or interference with the panel's report. The charges are said to be contained in New York Times reporter Philip Shenon's unreleased book, "The Commission: The Uncensored History of the 9/11 Investigation," according to Max Holland... [who] says he bought a copy of the audio version at a bookstore....

9/11 Commission co-chairs Tom Kean and Lee Hamilton hired former Condoleezza Rice aide Philip Zelikow to be executive director, Zelikow failed to tell them about his role helping Rice set up President George W. Bush's National Security Council in early 2001 and that he was "instrumental" in demoting Richard Clarke, the onetime White House counterterrorism czar who was fixated on the threat from Osama bin Laden.... "[Zelikow] had laid the groundwork for much of what went wrong at the White House in the weeks and months before September 11. Would he want people to know that?" Shenon writes, according to Holland.

Zelikow denied that was the case. "It was very well-known I had served on this transition team and had declined to go into the administration. I worked there for a total of one month. I had interviewed Sandy Berger, Dick Clarke and most of the NSC staff."... Shenon also says that while working for the panel, Zelikow appears to have had private conversations with former White House political director Karl Rove, despite a ban on such communication.... Shenon reports that Zelikow later ordered his assistant to stop keeping a log of his calls, although the commission's general counsel overruled him, Holland wrote.

Zelikow told ABC News he was under no prohibition that barred his conversations with Rove.... Zelikow said 9/11 Commission general counsel Daniel Marcus did not raise the matter with Zelikow at the time. Reached by phone Wednesday afternoon, Marcus declined to confirm or deny the events. Zelikow flatly denied discussing the commission's work with Rove. "I never discussed the 9/11 Commission with him, not at all. Period." What's more, the idea of Zelikow and Rove conspiring over the commission's work was unrealistic, the ex-director indicated. "I was not a very popular person in the Bush White House when this was going on. There's a lot of carryover of that to this day."...

Halfway into the panel's operation, Zelikow told his bosses under oath of the once-hidden ties, Holland's blog says Shenon's book reports. Upon hearing the details, Shenon writes, Marcus concluded Zelikow "never should have been hired," according to Holland...

Comments

[anne]

Philip Zelikow was not a moderate Republican, never ever a moderate of any sort. Zelikow was a firm support and adviser to National Security Adviser and Secretary of State Condeleezza Rice from the beginning, and was another Administration advocate of needless and disastrous and immoral war in and occupation of Iraq. There was never a moderate thought on international affairs to either Rice or Zelikow. Forging war and occupation in all falseness, is not moderate.

[anne]

http://www.publicintegrity.org/WarCard/

January 22, 2008

False Pretenses: Following 9/11, President Bush and seven top officials of his administration waged a carefully orchestrated campaign of misinformation about the threat posed by Saddam Hussein's Iraq.
By Charles Lewis and Mark Reading-Smith

President George W. Bush and seven of his administration's top officials, including Vice President Dick Cheney, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, made at least 935 false statements in the two years following September 11, 2001, about the national security threat posed by Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Nearly five years after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, an exhaustive examination of the record shows that the statements were part of an orchestrated campaign that effectively galvanized public opinion and, in the process, led the nation to war under decidedly false pretenses.

On at least 532 separate occasions (in speeches, briefings, interviews, testimony, and the like), Bush and these three key officials, along with Secretary of State Colin Powell, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, and White House press secretaries Ari Fleischer and Scott McClellan, stated unequivocally that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction (or was trying to produce or obtain them), links to Al Qaeda, or both. This concerted effort was the underpinning of the Bush administration's case for war.

It is now beyond dispute that Iraq did not possess any weapons of mass destruction or have meaningful ties to Al Qaeda. This was the conclusion of numerous bipartisan government investigations, including those by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (2004 and 2006), the 9/11 Commission, and the multinational Iraq Survey Group, whose "Duelfer Report" established that Saddam Hussein had terminated Iraq's nuclear program in 1991 and made little effort to restart it.

In short, the Bush administration led the nation to war on the basis of erroneous information that it methodically propagated and that culminated in military action against Iraq on March 19, 2003. Not surprisingly, the officials with the most opportunities to make speeches, grant media interviews, and otherwise frame the public debate also made the most false statements, according to this first-ever analysis of the entire body of prewar rhetoric.

President Bush, for example, made 232 false statements about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and another 28 false statements about Iraq's links to Al Qaeda. Secretary of State Powell had the second-highest total in the two-year period, with 244 false statements about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and 10 about Iraq's links to Al Qaeda. Rumsfeld and Fleischer each made 109 false statements, followed by Wolfowitz (with 85), Rice (with 56), Cheney (with 48), and McClellan (with 14).

The massive database at the heart of this project juxtaposes what President Bush and these seven top officials were saying for public consumption against what was known, or should have been known, on a day-to-day basis. This fully searchable database includes the public statements, drawn from both primary sources (such as official transcripts) and secondary sources (chiefly major news organizations) over the two years beginning on September 11, 2001. It also interlaces relevant information from more than 25 government reports, books, articles, speeches, and interviews....

The false statements dramatically increased in August 2002, with congressional consideration of a war resolution, then escalated through the mid-term elections and spiked even higher from January 2003 to the eve of the invasion.

It was during those critical weeks in early 2003 that the president delivered his State of the Union address and Powell delivered his memorable U.N. presentation. For all 935 false statements, including when and where they occurred, go to the search * page for this project; the methodology used for this analysis is explained here. **

* http://www.publicintegrity.org/WarCard/Search/Default.aspx

** http://www.publicintegrity.org/WarCard/Default.aspx?src=project_home&context=methodology&id=953

[Charles]

Zelikow's political ties were an issue at the time. I believe I expressed concern about this to the Commission chairs.

If one wanted to concoct a scenario in which no one had any confidence in the US Government, one could not have achieved it more expeditiously than the Bush White House.

[Doctor Jay]

With so many people's credibility shot after they came into contact with the Bush White House, you start have to asking yourself who is really to blame here? They have a gift for taking people who are normally upstanding solid citizens, using their credibility to advance the WH's agenda, and compromising them for the future. And when the news story comes out, it's about the person who was compromised, not the White House. It turns out the DiIulio was the smart one, and walked away before they had him really screw himself up.

[JMOHR]

Why do so many Bush appointees fall in credibility when they enter the Whhite House?

1. Bush seeks out only those who are willing to prove extreme loyalty to his position. I would not doubt that the closest must kill another person while being taped in order to prove loyalty.

2. The very mixture of religious style belief in policies (and I would suggest a belief on the part of some that God appointed this idiot) leads to a loyalty that places personal commitment over the law or ethics.

3. A hidden belief on the part of the Republican elite that power is the moral value which justifies any means to attain that end. There are only winners and losers. The winners have justified their tactics and deserve to survive. The losers are inferior and deserve to perish.

4. An echo chamber that encourages the egos and selfworship in the infalliability of the president and the inevitablity of the cause.