I wonder if you have seen Gregory Theilman's face on
the network news, heard his voice on the radio or the
read his story on the front page of your major city
newspaper? Probably not. Like Charles Wilson, Rand
Beers, Colleen Mueller, Eric Schaeffer and other
whistleblowers whose names have been scrawled on the
John O'Neill wall of heroes, he is seen or heard from
a lot less often then "all the _resident's men" or
their propapunditgandista apologists who warm the
seats on those inside the beltway panel discussions
that purport to engage in reasoned dialoge from both
sides of the political spectrum. Of course, they do
not, with the exception of Crossfire, the only one of
these shows that has real partisans from the
Democratic side, James Carville and Paul Begala...Two
more GIs died overnight in Iraq (for what?) We now
know, documented in numerous ways by identified and
credible sources, that the _resident and his cabal
DISTORTED the truth of intelligence reports to
rationalize its thirst to propell this country and its
young men and women into a unilateral military action,
which has landed us in a guerrilla war...Theilman and
the others represent what is very best in America, you
shoul be seeing and hearing them on Anything ButSee
(ABC), SeeNotNews (CNN), MustNotBeSeen (NBC)and SeeBS
(CBS), not just the newspeak of Rumsfeld and
Fleischer as they twist and spin...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,995188,00.html
White House 'lied about Saddam threat'
Julian Borger in Washington
Thursday July 10, 2003
The Guardian
A former US intelligence official who served under the
Bush administration in the build-up to the Iraq war
accused the White House yesterday of lying about the
threat posed by Saddam Hussein. The claims came as the
Bush administration was fighting to shore up its
credibility among a series of anonymous government
leaks over its distortion of US intelligence to
manufacture a case against Saddam.
This was the first time an administration official has
put his name to specific claims. The whistleblower,
Gregory Thielmann, served as a director in the state
department's bureau of intelligence until his
retirement in September, and had access to the
classified reports which formed the basis for the US
case against Saddam, spelled out by President Bush and
his aides.
Mr Thielmannn said yesterday: "I believe the Bush
administration did not provide an accurate picture to
the American people of the military threat posed by
Iraq."
He conceded that part of the problem lay with US
intelligence, but added: "Most of it lies with the way
senior officials misused the information they were
provided."
As Democrats demanded a congressional enquiry, the
administration sharply changed tack. The defence
secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, told the Senate the US had
not gone to war against Iraq because of fresh evidence
of weapons of mass destruction but because Washington
saw what evidence there was prior to 2001 "in a
dramatic new light" after September 11.
At a press conference yesterday, Mr Thielmann said
that, as of March 2003, when the US began military
operations, "Iraq posed no imminent threat to either
its neighbours or to the United States".
In one example, Mr Thielmann said a fierce debate
inside the White House about the purpose of aluminium
tubes bought by Baghdad had been "cloaked in
ambiguity".
While some CIA analysts thought they could be used for
gas centrifuges to enrich uranium, the best experts at
the energy department disagreed. But the national
security advisor, Condoleezza Rice, said publicly that
they could only be used for centrifuges.
Mr Thielmann also said there was no significant
pattern of cooperation between Iraq and al-Qaida. He
added: "This administration has had a faith-based
intelligence attitude ... 'We know the answers - give
us the intelligence to support those answers'."
Responding to claims of deliberate distortions, Mr
Bush accused his critics of "trying to rewrite
history" and insisted "there is no doubt in my mind"
that Saddam "was a threat to world peace".