Democrat Jim Slattery, in a debate with Sen. Pat Roberts (in photo) at the Kansas State Fair Saturday, attacked Roberts on his role as then-chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee in the intel failures leading up to the Iraq war — a conflict that Slattery said had overstretched the military and played into Iran’s hands. “There has to be accountability when our political leaders make these kinds of terrible mistakes,” Slattery said.
Roberts gave a flippant response: Everyone was wrong about the intelligence, he said. (Not true — it’s just that the ones who raised questions and conflicting intel weren’t listened to.)
“Jim, you wouldn’t even know about this information unless the fact that I released it,” Roberts said of a long-delayed committee report on how intelligence was used to take America to war.
Slattery is right to demand a fuller accounting of Roberts’ central oversight role in this disastrous intelligence failure.
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16 Comments
Laughable!
Democrats spend the last 20 years gutting the intelligence budgets trying to eliminate the CIA, then attack a republican on the intelligence failures.
Old news, flat news and irrelevant news.
When you can’t poke the sharp stick of divisive Lib mantra talk at Palin, it’s circle the buzzards and head on back to Kansas.
Liberal attack dogma. It’s all they have.
It’s still terribly relevant, it’s still costing us billions of dollars and lives. It’s not something that can be swept under the old news rug ( which is terribly lumpy by the way).
If Slattery need material against Roberts, he should review some of the Roberts threads over the last few years.
“Roberts gave a flippant response: Everyone was wrong about the intelligence, he said.”
No, just everyone Roberts listened to – Limbaugh, O’Reilly, Boortz, Hageee, Parsley, McCain, etc …
So that’s it, huh? The Democrats whom you like to claim can’t get anything done has gutted intelligence budgets? A good trick since the Repubs have been running things for so long…
Did Roberts call cheney et. al. with their special shadow intel. group in for questioning?
Just can’t admit what a failure your con leaders are. Says a lot about you.
Peemom what has your dimo’s done? They made a lot of promises in 2006 but they have kept none of them.
Gas has also doubled since the dimo’s took control.
You should be so proud.
Randy, give it up. You are becoming not even readable anymore.
Your threads are becoming desperate.
Never Forget! Keep reminding them Randy, Kansans have such short attention spans.
“sunflower5
Posted September 8, 2008 at 10:07 pm | Permalink
Peemom what has your dimo’s done? They made a lot of promises in 2006 but they have kept none of them.
Gas has also doubled since the dimo’s took control.
You should be so proud.”
NOT TRUE. The Democrats passed the legislation through the House (the only place they control) that they said they would. This legislation has been blocked in the Senate where cloture rules give the CONS de facto control.
I hesitate to post on this topic because it will flare up the angry lefty hordes, but here goes: Randy, scrutiny of Roberts oversight role has been done, by many a media outlet. The bottom line was as Roberts said in the debate: the reason we know there was an intel failure is because Roberts worked with republicans and democrats on one of the most thorough reviews of intelligence ever.The CIA and other agencies were not happy when that report came out. Yes, you may assert that some (like maybe two agencies) were more correct with their intelligence than was the pathetic CIA, but the report that was written for the policy makers, the much maligned NIE, did not contain these dissenting opinions and made very declarative statements. Members of Congress were supposed to read this document. Most did not. Senator Roberts did, and when no WMD were to be found, Roberts set to work. I have read the report, which is fascinating and is still on the committee’s website. Had all members of congress done their homework and read the NIE, perhaps history would be different. But alas, we went to war on faulty intel. chicken before the egg. When the dust cleared, the intel was bad, and Roberts exposed and then went to work to fix it.
He did such a thorough review, not:
Cheney, Libby Blocked Papers To Senate Intelligence Panel
By Murray Waas / 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.
The new information that Cheney and Libby blocked information to the Senate Intelligence Committee further underscores the central role played by the vice president’s office in trying to blunt criticism that the Bush administration exaggerated intelligence data to make the case to go to war. ”
Did he even look into the special agency Cheney oversaw that was cherry picking intel. and passing it on?
His committee was getting intel. and briefings in real time, he should have caught on and raised a red flag for his colleagues, not privy to all the info.
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