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Truth Exposed by Senate Armed Services HearingTruth Exposed by Senate Armed Services Hearing
The Senate Armed Services Committee held a hearing today at which the Inspector General of the Pentagon, Thomas Gimble, testified that – and I'm loosely paraphrasing – the Iraq War was launched on a pack of lies.
Gimble has produced a report documenting the actions of the Office of Special Plans, which included the gathering of "intelligence" and the presenting of that "intelligence" to top administration officials. The Pentagon is not an agency authorized to gather intelligence, and no agency is authorized to do that sort of work without informing the Congress.
Chairman Carl Levin called the hearing, and for much of it was the only Democrat present. Most of the Democrats on the Committee never showed. Claire McCaskill (D., Mo.) and James Webb (D., Va.) participated briefly. Hillary Clinton (D., N.Y.) never showed, and her office said she was in New York, according to Medea Benjamin, a CoFounder of Code Pink and my main source for what happened today.
James Inhofe (R., Okl.) participated briefly, but for a long
time, there were only four committee members present, according to
Media: Levin and John Warner (R., Va.), Jeff Sessions (R., Ala.), and
Saxby Chambliss (R., Ga.). This lopsided attendance was reflected in
the print media coverage, and will probably show up on the television reports.
"Levin was fabulous," Medea said. She and Lori Perdue, who both broke
down crying during the hearing (see below), gave me an account after
the committee had gone into closed session. "Levin was really tough,
charged, determined. But most of the Democrats were missing in
action. Three Republicans, Sessions, Warner, and Chambliss grilled
Gimble." This grilling, Medea explained, was all in defense of the
work of Doug Feith and the Office of Special Plans, a defense that
apparently used some strangely contorted arguments. The grilling was
only countered by Levin with a little help by Webb and a short assist
by McCaskill.
McCaskill asked whether the intelligence agencies that legitimately
gather intelligence shouldn't carry more weight than an office assigned
only to analyze it. But the Republicans, Medea said, kept insisting
that nothing illegal had been done, and that the Inspector General's
report had been poorly conducted. He had failed to interview Stephen
Hadley or Condoleezza Rice. Gimble countered that Hadley had refused
to be interviewed and that as the IG for the "Defense" Department he
had no authority over Rice. Levin then spoke up with the most
encouraging comment of the day: We will make sure they come, he said.
If there is any information that you want, we'll get it!
Let the subpoenas fly!
Medea and Dave Barrows managed to get themselves thrown out of the
hearing today. Sessions was busy alleging that nothing was wrong with
an alternative intelligence operation, especially considering how
flawed the work of the intelligence community has been. Are you
insinuating, he asked, that intelligence was misused on purpose to take
us to war?
Medea said that she and Dave jumped up and said Yes, it was lies to take us to war.
Somehow, that got them thrown out, but not before Medea and Lori broke
down sobbing with satisfaction when Levin that nothing could be more
devastating than using alternative intelligence to decide whether we go
to war or not….It's" as critical as anything I've seen," Levin
concluded. He asked Gimble if the work of Feith's office had affected
the public's understanding of why we needed to go to war. Gimble
replied in the affirmative.
But, said Medea, Sessions kept insisting that the information from
Feith's office had forced the intelligence community to go back and
look at things and do a better job. And Gimble kept replying that, no,
it had not changed the conclusions of the intelligence community. And,
in a dramatic twist of revisionist history, Sessions brushed it all off
by claiming that none of this had anything to do with why we'd gone to
war anyway, that we'd gone because Iraq was supposedly violating UN
resolutions and shooting down US planes.
The first slide, the one criticizing the work of the intelligence
community was removed when the presentation was made to the
intelligence community. Gimble said that the CIA disagreed with half
of the 28 points Feith made. Republicans latched onto that to claim
that the other half must have been useful information. Gimble said
that it was not, and that it amounted to a one-sided presentation with
no required balance.
However, Gimble claimed that a process had been in place to prevent
this sort of behavior, and that the process had been disregarded.
McCaskill asked whether such a thing might not happen again, and Gimble
replied that he did not think it would. Yet we know that Feith's work
was authorized by Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, and we have strong reason to
believe Cheney was behind it. Last time I checked Cheney was still the
Vice President and Levin had yet to subpoena anyof those three.
Call Senator Carl Levin's office and thank and encourage him: (202) 224-6221.
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