So many of us have always held that it would be big news if the Bush White House were to ever tell the truth about anything.
Well, they did. And it is.
After lying through their teeth for more than 48 hours — said lies being repeatedly uttered by President George Bush, National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley, Press Secretary Dana Perino — they have suddenly chosen to come clean:
On Wednesday, White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said McConnell told Bush in August that Iran may have suspended its nuclear weapons programme and that the new information might cause the intelligence community to change its assessment on Iran.
Speculation is now inevitably going to turn to the question of why. Why on earth are they admitting the truth?
It wouldn’t have anything to do with McConnell threatening to refute the President’s version of their August conversation, would it?
He did, after all, release the Iran NIE, very much against the administration’s wishes. And the president’s version of the August conversation — he told me there was new information about Iran’s nukes; I didn’t ask him what it was, and he didn’t tell me; and I never learned Iran was believed to have suspended its newkiller program till last Tuesday — not only made Bush look like a particularly incompetent twit, it also made McConnell look thoroughly unprofessional and derelict in his duties. Not only for not telling Bush right then, but also for keeping it out of Bush’s intelligence briefings till last week.
If McConnell did indeed make a policy decision that he’s not willing to let himself and the intelligence community be made to look like fools just to support Bush’s political agenda and his lies, he would have left Bush no choice but to come clean. No matter how much it hurts. No matter how much it goes against the grain.
The fallout of admitting this lie is going to be fun to watch over the next few days.
*** Update, 1:15 am, December 6 ***
Perino’s coming clean statement is a masterpiece of obfuscation, and is worth reading. It’s the most denial-of-reality truth-telling you will ever witness. It’s not a mea culpa at all. Rather it’s a just-like-we-have-always-said tour de force. With two short phrases buried like nuggets in a bedrock of misdirection.
In August, DNI Director McConnell advised President Bush that the intelligence community would not be able to meet a congressionally imposed deadline requiring a National Intelligence Estimate on Iran because new information had been obtained just as they were about to finalize the report.
He said that if the new information turns out to be true, what we thought we knew for sure is right. Iran does in fact have a covert nuclear weapons program, but it may be suspended. The Director advised that there were many streams of information that had the potential to be in conflict, and it would take more time to vet it all to determine validity, and that’s why they were not able to meet the deadline.
Director McConnell said that the new information might cause the intelligence community to change its assessment of Iran’s covert nuclear program, but the intelligence community was not prepared to draw any conclusions at that point in time, and it wouldn’t be right to speculate until they had time to examine and analyze the new data.
CNN is also reporting that:
Perino said her account came from a conversation that McConnell had Wednesday with another White House official. Earlier, Perino’s deputy, Tony Fratto, had refused to provide reporters with further details about the August meeting between Bush and McConnell.
That could mean many different things, so I don’t want to oversell it. But it could certainly mean that McConnell said: “This is what my version is going to be. Now, you want to tell them or shall I?”
*** Update 2, 6 pm, December 6 ***
Me myself:
The fallout of admitting this lie is going to be fun to watch over the next few days.
And it is. Here’s Perino tying herself in knots trying to explain to CNN‘s dim-witted Ed Henry how Bush’s claim that McConnell “didn’t tell me what the information was” in August is not a lie. And isn’t it simply breathtaking how much relevant information she is appallingly ignorant of, so late into this major story?