Why NOW is one of the best Shows you haven't seen
Just watched the 2:00 am repeat showing of NOW on KQED regarding the TOTAL SHAM Colin Powell speech was to the UN. Why bother with this now? Because they are setting us up for either the US or Israel to bomb Iran. They lie like most people breath. And when they get people to support them in their delusions and word games people die.
The NOW story is damning. The WH used stuff from known bad sources, and repeated unconfirmed reports as facts. It is just stunning how blatantly we were lied to.
http://www.pbs.org/now/
Here is part of the transcript
BRANCACCIO: The business about mobile labs was not the only claim administration officials were making based on false information. Anyone with a TV would have noticed they were also intent on linking Saddam Hussein to Al Qaeda.
Television Clips: CHENEY: Al Qaeda sent personnel to Baghdad to get trained…
RICE: The head of training for al Qaeda, they sought help…
RUMSFELD: When I say contacts, I mean between Iraq and al Qaeda.
BRANCACCIO: The president said so too, most notably in a prime time speech to the nation in October 2002.
PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH speech, Oct. 7, 2002: We've learned that Iraq has trained Al Qaeda members in bomb-making and poisons and deadly gases.
BRANCACCIO: According to the administration, these were more than just suspicions: they claimed to have a first hand, eyewitness account. In his U.N. speech, Secretary of State Colin Powell spelled it out.
POWELL: Fortunately, this operative is now detained and he has told his story. I will relate it to you now, as he himself, described it.
BRANCACCIO: That operative who said Iraq was working with al Qaeda was an al Qaeda official named Al Libi. Al Libi was captured in 2001 and sent to a prison in Egypt where he may have been tortured, according to published reports. It was during his imprisonment in Egypt that al Libi "confessed."
BRANCACCIO: There's only one problem with al Libi's confession: it was most likely false. It was only after the invasion the C.I.A. admitted as much. But here's the thing-there were doubts about this guy going back years.
SEN. CARL LEVIN (D-MI), press conference Nov. 14, 2005: The intelligence community said, "That's not what we believe."
BRANCACCIO: Senator Carl Levin is a Democrat from Michigan. A member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, he gets secret briefings. He says when it comes to dubious claims about a link between Iraq and al Qaeda, the public doesn't know the half of it.
Levin's been working to declassify what he can. One item he recently brought to light: a Pentagon assessment of al Libi that goes back to a year before the war. It reads, "it is…likely this individual is intentionally misleading debriefers." And there's more, agents wrote that Iraq was, "wary of Islamic revolutionary movements," like al Qaeda, and was, "unlikely to provide [them] assistance."
LEVIN: There is a clear difference between what the administration was saying in that regard, and what the intelligence community was saying.
BRANCACCIO: Levin says before the war, intelligence officials told members of Congress they didn't believe Iraq was working with al Qaeda — certainly the White House must have known that too. Levin eventually voted against the war.
LEVIN: The administration was making statements, repeated statements, that there was a relationship between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda, the people who attacked us. Those statements were exaggerated, they were misleading. And the C.I.A. had concluded that, in fact, there was no significant relationship at all between the two.
BRANCACCIO: So did the administration mislead the public? The President says he was just conveying the best information he had at the time. The White House refused to comment for this story. But late last year, Vice President Dick Cheney had this to say:
VICE PRESIDENT DICK CHENEY speech (Nov. 21, 2005): Any suggestion that pre-war information was distorted, hyped, or fabricated by the leader of the nation is utterly false. Senator John McCain put it best: "It is a lie to say that the president lied to the American people."
BRANCACCIO: Senator Levin believes at the very least, the administration played fast and loose with the facts. Consider, he says, the president's now infamous line about uranium from his 2003 State of the Union speech.
PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH speech (Jan. 28, 2003): The British have learned that Saddam recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.
BRANCACCIO: The administration has admitted that statement was false. But just weeks ago, another damaging revelation: this newly declassified memo from the State Department. It shows administration officials were warned before the President's speech that the uranium claim was probably untrue.
LEVIN: The only purpose, the only purpose, of telling the American people that the British have learned that Saddam was seeking uranium in Africa was to create the impression that we believed it. But we didn't believe it. The intelligence community did not believe it.
BRANCACCIO: Levin believes Vice President Dick Cheney also played with language in a way that is not accidental. One of Cheney's oft-repeated remarks? Unsubstantiated reporting of a meeting between the Iraqis and one of the 9/11 hijackers.
CHENEY (NBC News, "Meet the Press", Sept. 8, 2002): "We have reporting that places him in Prague, with a senior Iraqi intelligence official."
LEVIN: The CIA did not believe that meeting took place. "We have reporting that places him in Prague." Technically, that was true. But it creates the impression we believed something we didn't.
Dick Cheney's use of language to obscure information is more damaging to America than any phrase Bill Clinton ever parsed.
"We have reporting." Is the reporting believed to true? No. But I guess if nobody asks you "Is that reporting to be believed?" everything works. Now whose job was it to ask those questions? Now that we know his tricks, the media need to ask him those kind of follow up questions. Of course he will play the "National Security card" and we will all be told to shut up.
Boy, playing the fake national security card is almost as good as Bush playing his Born Again Christian card. It shuts people up fast.
The NOW story is damning. The WH used stuff from known bad sources, and repeated unconfirmed reports as facts. It is just stunning how blatantly we were lied to.
http://www.pbs.org/now/
Here is part of the transcript
BRANCACCIO: The business about mobile labs was not the only claim administration officials were making based on false information. Anyone with a TV would have noticed they were also intent on linking Saddam Hussein to Al Qaeda.
Television Clips: CHENEY: Al Qaeda sent personnel to Baghdad to get trained…
RICE: The head of training for al Qaeda, they sought help…
RUMSFELD: When I say contacts, I mean between Iraq and al Qaeda.
BRANCACCIO: The president said so too, most notably in a prime time speech to the nation in October 2002.
PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH speech, Oct. 7, 2002: We've learned that Iraq has trained Al Qaeda members in bomb-making and poisons and deadly gases.
BRANCACCIO: According to the administration, these were more than just suspicions: they claimed to have a first hand, eyewitness account. In his U.N. speech, Secretary of State Colin Powell spelled it out.
POWELL: Fortunately, this operative is now detained and he has told his story. I will relate it to you now, as he himself, described it.
BRANCACCIO: That operative who said Iraq was working with al Qaeda was an al Qaeda official named Al Libi. Al Libi was captured in 2001 and sent to a prison in Egypt where he may have been tortured, according to published reports. It was during his imprisonment in Egypt that al Libi "confessed."
BRANCACCIO: There's only one problem with al Libi's confession: it was most likely false. It was only after the invasion the C.I.A. admitted as much. But here's the thing-there were doubts about this guy going back years.
SEN. CARL LEVIN (D-MI), press conference Nov. 14, 2005: The intelligence community said, "That's not what we believe."
BRANCACCIO: Senator Carl Levin is a Democrat from Michigan. A member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, he gets secret briefings. He says when it comes to dubious claims about a link between Iraq and al Qaeda, the public doesn't know the half of it.
Levin's been working to declassify what he can. One item he recently brought to light: a Pentagon assessment of al Libi that goes back to a year before the war. It reads, "it is…likely this individual is intentionally misleading debriefers." And there's more, agents wrote that Iraq was, "wary of Islamic revolutionary movements," like al Qaeda, and was, "unlikely to provide [them] assistance."
LEVIN: There is a clear difference between what the administration was saying in that regard, and what the intelligence community was saying.
BRANCACCIO: Levin says before the war, intelligence officials told members of Congress they didn't believe Iraq was working with al Qaeda — certainly the White House must have known that too. Levin eventually voted against the war.
LEVIN: The administration was making statements, repeated statements, that there was a relationship between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda, the people who attacked us. Those statements were exaggerated, they were misleading. And the C.I.A. had concluded that, in fact, there was no significant relationship at all between the two.
BRANCACCIO: So did the administration mislead the public? The President says he was just conveying the best information he had at the time. The White House refused to comment for this story. But late last year, Vice President Dick Cheney had this to say:
VICE PRESIDENT DICK CHENEY speech (Nov. 21, 2005): Any suggestion that pre-war information was distorted, hyped, or fabricated by the leader of the nation is utterly false. Senator John McCain put it best: "It is a lie to say that the president lied to the American people."
BRANCACCIO: Senator Levin believes at the very least, the administration played fast and loose with the facts. Consider, he says, the president's now infamous line about uranium from his 2003 State of the Union speech.
PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH speech (Jan. 28, 2003): The British have learned that Saddam recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.
BRANCACCIO: The administration has admitted that statement was false. But just weeks ago, another damaging revelation: this newly declassified memo from the State Department. It shows administration officials were warned before the President's speech that the uranium claim was probably untrue.
LEVIN: The only purpose, the only purpose, of telling the American people that the British have learned that Saddam was seeking uranium in Africa was to create the impression that we believed it. But we didn't believe it. The intelligence community did not believe it.
BRANCACCIO: Levin believes Vice President Dick Cheney also played with language in a way that is not accidental. One of Cheney's oft-repeated remarks? Unsubstantiated reporting of a meeting between the Iraqis and one of the 9/11 hijackers.
CHENEY (NBC News, "Meet the Press", Sept. 8, 2002): "We have reporting that places him in Prague, with a senior Iraqi intelligence official."
LEVIN: The CIA did not believe that meeting took place. "We have reporting that places him in Prague." Technically, that was true. But it creates the impression we believed something we didn't.
Dick Cheney's use of language to obscure information is more damaging to America than any phrase Bill Clinton ever parsed.
"We have reporting." Is the reporting believed to true? No. But I guess if nobody asks you "Is that reporting to be believed?" everything works. Now whose job was it to ask those questions? Now that we know his tricks, the media need to ask him those kind of follow up questions. Of course he will play the "National Security card" and we will all be told to shut up.
Boy, playing the fake national security card is almost as good as Bush playing his Born Again Christian card. It shuts people up fast.
1 Comments:
Agreed about NOW.
When will people realize National Security is something vastly different than what they see on "24"?
Many do, but not enough, alas.
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