« Previous Post | Main | Next Post »

Pincus on point

by Mark Gisleson

And it comes back to those sixteen words. Dan Balz and Walter Pincus report on "Why Commander in Chief is Losing the War of the 16 Words." Interesting conclusions.

For all the purported discipline and unity within the Bush administration, disputes among members of the national security team have been common, particularly in the run-up to the war with Iraq. Those disputes, however, generally pitted the State and Defense departments against one another, but once Bush made a decision, the combatants generally accepted that and moved on.

What is unusual about this episode is that the combatants are officials at the White House and the CIA -- and that the White House has tried without success to resolve the controversy. The biggest lesson learned so far, said one administration official, is that "you don't pick a bureaucratic fight with the CIA." To which a White House official replied, "That wasn't our intention, but that certainly has been the perception."

White House allies outside the government have expressed surprise at the administration's repeated missteps over the past two weeks, using phrases such as "stumbled," "caught flat-footed" and "can't get their story straight." Said one senior administration official, "These stories get legs when they're mishandled and this story has been badly mishandled."

It was Walther Pincus who also broke the story about the more embarrassing parts of that White House redacted NIE report last Monday.

In fact, the NIE, which began circulating Oct. 2, shows the intelligence services were much more worried that Hussein might give weapons to al Qaeda terrorists if he were facing death or capture and his government was collapsing after a military attack by the United States.

"Saddam, if sufficiently desperate, might decide that only an organization such as al Qaeda, . . . already engaged in a life-or-death struggle against the United States, could perpetrate the type of terrorist attack that he would hope to conduct," one key judgment of the estimate said.

It went on to say that Hussein might decide to take the "extreme step" of assisting al Qaeda in a terrorist attack against the United States if it "would be his last chance to exact vengeance by taking a large number of victims with him."

Pincus, not surprisingly, has many ties to the CIA, and I don't think it would be unfair to suggest that his recent stories have been the CIA's revenge on a White House that's quick to find scapegoats (i.e., the CIA). Ironically, this now infamous Robert Novak column reminds us that it was Walter Pincus who first made mention of Joseph Wilson's fact-finding mission to Niger back on June 12. [A big thanks to Steve Perry for links and insights.]

New Press Secretary Scott McClellan isn't having an easy time of it. Reporters threw Valerie Plame at him right out of the gate in yesterday's press conference. Mother Jones contrasts the case of Valerie Plame with the Dr. David Kelly story. NBC has joined in the fray with a report from Andrea Mitchell, but as of this morning, a Google News search for "Valerie Plame" brings up as its number one link this Bush Wars post from Wednesday. I guess Andrea's entitled to call her story an "exclusive." No one else in big media seems to want it.

Editor & Publisher ran an article on Iraq casualty reporting recently, and the reader feedback gets a bit toasty.

While it's hardly my place to offer strategic advice to Karl Rove, the way things are going, the Bushies are going to run out of Husseins to kill long before their scandals go away. Here are some other causes (other than Liberia and Korea) that Karl could use to distract the public while possibly achieving some good in the world.

Jump on Thailand's bandwagon to free Ang San Suu Kyi.

Help put an end to the epidemic of collegiate drunkenness by embracing the effort to legalize pot (and score big points with the "hate Ashcroft" crowd).

Launch a government-led project to develop "safe" ice cream.

Stab your pharma buddies in the back and throw your support behind Gil Gutnecht's prescription drug proposal.

Revitalize Log Cabin Republicans by unexpectedly championing the rights of Indonesian transvestites.

OK, that last one might damage the base, but any harm done will be more than offset by putting John Ashcroft in a gunny sack and dropping him off a bridge well before the 2004 election cycle starts in earnest. It's either that, or they could try telling the truth. (Just kidding.)

UPDATE: Ooh, nice chart here. And, a bit late, here's the Mark Kleiman post that layed out the key Plame questions back on July 1, as well as the new David Corn post.

Posted by Steve Perry at July 24, 2003 9:51 AM

« All the President's Lies | Main | Plame update »