15 July 2003
White House: No Political Motive Behind Bush Uranium Statement
Counters charges by congressional Democrats
By Wendy Ross
Washington File White House Correspondent
Washington -- White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan, at his first briefing at the White House July 15, was repeatedly asked the question that had plagued his predecessor, Ari Fleischer -- why did President Bush include a questionable statement about Iraq's nuclear intentions in his January 2003 State of the Union address?
In the address, Bush said "the British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa," a statement that the White House later said should not have remained in the speech.
But "it is nonsense to suggest that there was any political reason behind" the statement, McClellan said, directly rebutting remarks made earlier in the day by the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, Bob Graham of Florida, and the ranking Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, Carl Levin of Michigan.
On the floor of the Senate, both senators said the president's statement on Iraq was not a mistake but part of a broad pattern of dissembling in making the case for war with Iraq.
Levin said "the president's statement that Iraq was attempting to acquire African uranium was not a 'mistake.' It was not inadvertent. It was not a slip. It was negotiated between the CIA and the NSC," he said, referring to the Central Intelligence Agency and National Security Council.
"It was calculated. It was misleading," said Levin.
Graham too said the statement was not a mistake, that it was a deliberate effort to create a false impression.
He accused Bush of deception. "He deceived the American people by allowing into a State of the Union speech -- at a critical point when he was making the case for war with Iraq -- a statement that he either knew was wrong or should have known was wrong, " Graham said. Graham is one of several Democrats who are campaigning to become their party's nominee in the next presidential election.
But McClellan strongly disagreed. Even without that statement there was ample evidence that Iraq was not telling the truth about its intentions, McClellan told reporters.
"(T)here is a lot of evidence showing that Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear weapons program," McClellan said, but that was just "one part of the larger body of evidence," that included the U.N. Special Commission's "final report in 1999, which documented that thousands of chemical and biological weapons remained unaccounted for; and by Saddam Hussein's active defiance of the international community, and continued defiance, including the well-documented fact that Iraq never fully and completely cooperated with U.N. inspectors."
"And Iraq's threat became even more real when we started looking at it through the lens of a post-9/11 world," he said.
"(W)ith or without" that statement, McClellan said, there "is still a solid case and a solid reason of why we went to war in Iraq."
"(T)he reason we acted was for a number of factors ... unaccounted stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons; a long history of defiance, deception and trying to deceive," as well as Saddam Hussein's "support for terrorists," the White House spokesman said.
Reminded by a reporter that the world is still waiting for the evidence to be presented about the link between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda and for weapons of mass destruction to be found, McClellan said "some evidence" has already come forward, "and we're continuing to, with the help of David Kay and the Iraq Survey Group, pursue this issue and learn more about his weapons of mass destruction program.
"But there are already two mobile biological weapons labs, I remind you, that have been discovered. There was a nuclear scientist who had buried materials and documents that could be used to begin a program... (T)here is already evidence coming forward, and we continue to pursue the rest of it. And we're confident that we will find the full extent of his weapons of mass destruction program and his weapons of mass destruction."
Regarding the statement in the State of the Union speech, McClellan pointed out that before its delivery the speech was circulated both within the White House and to the appropriate agencies, from State Department to Defense Department to the Central Intelligence Agency. "And it was cleared. If CIA had said, 'Take it out of the State of the Union speech,' it would have been taken out," he said.
In a July 11 statement, The Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet took responsibility for not removing the questionable sentence.
Tenet said "the president had every reason to believe that the text presented to him was sound. These 16 words should never have been included in the text written for the president."
"From what we know now, [Central Intelligence] Agency officials in the end concurred that the text in the speech was factually correct -- i.e. that the British government report said that Iraq sought uranium from Africa," Tenet said in his statement.
"This should not have been the test for clearing a presidential address. This did not rise to the level of certainty which should be required for presidential speeches, and CIA should have ensured that it was removed," he said.
In the House of Representatives July 15, Majority Leader Tom DeLay (Republican of Texas) dismissed questions about President Bush's credibility as "incredibly overblown," calling them the result of Democratic presidential hopefuls vying for support in advance of their primaries.
DeLay told a reporter Tenet should "absolutely not" depart the Bush administration.
(The Washington File is a product of the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
|
NEWSLETTER
|
| Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list |
|
|
|
