Common Cause Blog

Defunding Democracy

We learn today from the WaPo that the Bush Admin. is cutting back on funding for programs to being democracy to Iraq:

While President Bush vows to transform Iraq into a beacon of democracy in the Middle East, his administration has been scaling back funding for the main organizations trying to carry out his vision by building democratic institutions such as political parties and civil society groups. ... Jennifer Windsor, executive director of Freedom House, an advocacy group that hosted a Bush speech last week, called the situation "a travesty" and said she is "appalled" that more is not being done. "This is the time to show that democracy promotion is more than holding an election. If the U.S. can't see fit to fund follow-up democracy promotion at this time," then it is making a mistake, she said.

The mind boggles. But it's not surprising. The Bush Admin. - and Congress - have failed to fully fund democracy in this country. Our election system, 7 months before a major mid-term election, is still a mess. Funding is not the only problem, but without a permanent commitment from the federal government we will never have a system of voting worthy of the 'world's greatest democracy.'

Who Knew What

The Congressional Research Service just issued a report stating that President Bush had access to more intelligence information than Congress did during its deliberations to grant the President authority to invade Iraq. This contradicts one of the statements the president and Vice President have been making for weeks that members of Congress knew what the White House knew. From today's Washington Post:��

A congressional report made public yesterday concluded that President Bush and his inner circle had access to more intelligence and reviewed more sensitive material than what was shared with Congress when it gave Bush the authority to wage war against Iraq. ...

The report does not cite examples of intelligence Bush reviewed that differed from what Congress saw. If such information is available, the report's authors do not have access to it. The Bush administration has routinely denied Congress access to documents, saying it would have a chilling effect on deliberations. The report, however, concludes that the Bush administration has been more restrictive than its predecessors in sharing intelligence with Congress.

Click here to read the whole report.

Infinite Digression

Yesterday, Vice President Cheney lashed out at Senators who have accused the White House of intentionally misleading the country into war.

"The suggestion that's been made by some U.S. senators that the president of the United States or any member of this administration purposely misled the American people on prewar intelligence is one of the most dishonest and reprehensible charges ever aired in this city."

What about purposely misleading the American people about purposely misleading them in the past? Would that be worse?

Pass the Chalabi

I thought it would be timely to dig up some old news about Ahmad Chalabi as he is in town this week meeting with Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and the national security adviser, Stephen Hadley. This is from the New York Times, June 2, 2004:

Ahmad Chalabi, the Iraqi leader and former ally of the Bush administration, disclosed to an Iranian official that the United States had broken the secret communications code of Iran's intelligence service, betraying one of Washington's most valuable sources of information about Iran, according to United States intelligence officials.

The general charge that Mr. Chalabi provided Iran with critical American intelligence secrets was widely reported last month after the Bush administration cut off financial aid to Mr. Chalabi's organization, the Iraqi National Congress, and American and Iraqi security forces raided his Baghdad headquarters...

American officials said that about six weeks ago, Mr. Chalabi told the Baghdad station chief of Iran's Ministry of Intelligence and Security that the United States was reading the communications traffic of the Iranian spy service, one of the most sophisticated in the Middle East.

According to American officials, the Iranian official in Baghdad, possibly not believing Mr. Chalabi's account, sent a cable to Tehran detailing his conversation with Mr. Chalabi, using the broken code. That encrypted cable, intercepted and read by the United States, tipped off American officials to the fact that Mr. Chalabi had betrayed the code-breaking operation, the American officials said...

The account of Mr. Chalabi's actions has been confirmed by several senior American officials, who said the leak contributed to the White House decision to break with him.

Maybe this would also be a good time to pitch the report Common Cause did on the run up to the Iraq war and all of the things that were said and not said by administration officials before Congress and the American people. Ahmed Chalabi, of course, played no small part in this campaign to sell the war to the Americans. Chalabi was the head of the Iraqi National Congress, which considered itself the government in exile. Clearly it was in Chalabi's interest to convince the Americans to invade Iraq and dislodge Saddam Hussein. Not surprisingly, Chalabi has been tagged as the source of a lot of information that we now know to have been exaggerated or false about Hussein and his threat to the United States.

Congressional Oversight: A Sham

According to a Washington Post article out today, the Chairman and Ranking Member of the Senate Intelligence Committee cannot agree on the scope of the investigation into the administration's use of intelligence leading to the Iraq war. Remember, the Senate Democrats effectively shut down the Senate recently to protest the lack of progress on the so-called "phase II" of the Intelligence Committee's investigation of pre-war intelligence.

The Chairman of the committee, Senator Pat Roberts (R-KS) says that the investigation will be limited to comparing administration officials' statements to intelligence reports to see if there is any disagreement. Senator�Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) says the investigation should include asking the same officials if they were aware of any dissention in the intelligence community to the findings of an individual report.

I would characterize this as Senator Roberts simply extending the administration's tactics of weeding out bits of intelligence to support their campaign for war and then blaming the intelligence community when that intelligence turns out to be wrong - regardless of whether the intelligence community may have concluded that the intelligence was dubious. For example, we know that the CIA was highly skeptical of the information that was being gathered about Saddam's connection to Al Qaeda or his attempts to buy uranium from Niger. Yet, the administration trumpeted this information as gospel.

Senator Roberts has a particularly skewed understanding of congressional oversight. Roberts appears to believe that his role as Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee is one of finding excuses for the administration's missteps, rather than holding the White House accountable. There is a wealth of information about the Office of Special Plans in the Pentagon and Vice President Cheney's efforts to "stovepipe" information to bypass regular intelligence vetting. As it turns out, some of the intelligence the White House received AS A RESULT of this process, was unreliable.

Now, Senator Roberts is going to fight to prevent a congressional review of this process by designing the investigation - which he has fought to kill for two years now - so that it will vindicate this form of intelligence gathering.�Senator Roberts is doing this country a huge disservice by abdicating his responsibilities as a U.S. Senator and Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee by effectively signing off on this process and the disastrous results it has produced.

Senate Intelligence

In July, the Boston Globe reported that the Senate Intelligence Committee' investigation of the administration's use of intelligence in the run up to war in Iraq was stalled. It quotes Senator Pat Roberts (R-KS), chairman of the committee:

Roberts, Republican of Kansas, said in February that the committee's investigation of the administration's use of intelligence is ''on the back burner," and said in April that other issues have more urgent claims on the committee's attention.

Roll Call:

Roberts launched a defense of his record on the Senate floor, saying his committee staff has been exploring questions raised by Democrats since May of this year and that his staff informed Intelligence ranking member Jay Rockefeller's (D-W.Va.) staff on Monday that the investigation would begin in earnest next Tuesday.

"Staff has been working on this very diligently," Roberts said.

As a result of the action yesterday, the Republican leadership in the Senate has agreed to report on November 14, from three Republicans and three Democrats, the status of the investigation. One of the places the renewed investigation should begin is where the first investigation left off. From the National Journal:

Vice President Cheney and his chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, overruling advice from some White House political staffers and lawyers, decided to withhold crucial documents from the Senate Intelligence Committee in 2004 when the panel was investigating the use of pre-war intelligence that erroneously concluded Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, according to Bush administration and congressional sources.

Among the White House materials withheld from the committee were Libby-authored passages in drafts of a speech that then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell delivered to the United Nations in February 2003 to argue the Bush administration's case for war with Iraq, according to congressional and administration sources. The withheld documents also included intelligence data that Cheney's office -- and Libby in particular -- pushed to be included in Powell's speech, the sources said.

It's Official

If there is going to be official confirmation that the Bush Administration had insufficiently planned for the post-war period in Iraq, this is it.

The US government had "no comprehensive policy or regulatory guidelines" in place for staffing the management of postwar Iraq, according to the top government watchdog overseeing the country's reconstruction.

The lack of planning had plagued reconstruction since the US-led invasion, and been exacerbated by a "general lack of co-ordination" between US government agencies charged with the rebuilding of Iraq, said Stuart Bowen, the special inspector-general for Iraq reconstruction, in a report released on Sunday.

His 110-page quarterly report, delivered to Congress at the weekend, has underscored how a "reconstruction gap" is emerging that threatens to leave many projects planned by the US on the drawing board.

"Nearly two years ago, the US developed a reconstruction plan that specified a target number of projects that would be executed using the Iraq Relief and Reconstruction Fund.

"That number was revised downward [last year]. Now it appears that the actual number of projects completed will be even lower," Mr Bowen says in his report.

Stuart Bowen is the inspector general in Iraq charged with oversight of the reconstruction spending. The lack of planning for the post-war period in Iraq has been blamed by many for the disorder and slow progress in the reconstruction. More importantly, the unorganized post-war period helped the insurgency get its footing. In retrospect, the administration's biggest mistake in Iraq - after the failure to level with the American people about why we were going to war - was the lack understanding about what was going to happen after the fall of Baghdad. Mr. Bowen is just confirming what has been clear since "Mission Accomplished."