I Cogitate

Graham Seen As War Seer
William March
The Tampa Tribune
June 7, 2007

TAMPA - As a presidential candidate in 2003, Bob Graham took a lonely and unpopular stance against going to war in Iraq - it helped curtail his shot at the presidency and end his long political career.

But Sunday night, when Democrats now running for president debated the war, much of the discussion focused on the evidence Graham cited in 2003, and why they and much of the nation had failed to see that he was right.

"The real winner of that debate," said South Florida Democratic political operative Derek Newton, "was Bob Graham."

If so, the victory comes four years too late for Graham, whose campaign sputtered to a halt before 2004 even began.

In an interview this week, Graham declined to express the bitterness many people might feel in his place.

He said the failure of Democratic candidates to accept his views at the time and vote against authorizing the war doesn't disqualify them from running for president today.

Instead, he said those who voted for the war-authorizing resolution can't be faulted for having believed what the Bush administration told them.

"Hindsight is always a good thing to have," Graham said. "But a lot of people, including some who are now running for president, took the position that 'if the president of the United States tells me something is truthful, I have the right to accept that without having to verify it.'

"That's not an unreasonable position," Graham said. "And it's not a position that disqualifies someone from being president of the United States."

Rushing past warning signs
By BOB GRAHAM - special to the St. PetersburgTimes
June 17, 2007

When the U.S. intelligence community released its October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) regarding Iraq and weapons of mass destruction, it had little idea that it would become the political hot potato of the 2008 presidential primaries. In recent Democratic and Republican debates, those candidates who were Senate and House members in 2002 were asked if they had read the NIE before casting their vote to go to war. Though each had access to the NIE before the vote, most had not.

A NIE provides the highest level of analysis from the U.S. intelligence community. The president typically orders an NIE, but the head of national intelligence or the Senate and/or House intelligence committees can also direct its preparation. An NIE represents the collective view of the intelligence community - all 17 agencies gathered around the same table, each contributing everything it knows on the subject. While the NIE states a consensus view, each of the agencies is encouraged to offer reservations from or dissents to the majority opinion.

The October 2002 NIE raised serious questions in my mind about some of the critical assertions supporting a pre-emptive war in Iraq. I became highly dubious about the credibility of the overall case for war. The NIE strongly influenced my vote against giving President Bush war-making authority in Iraq - one of only 23 such votes in the Senate...

...There was unanimity on one issue. Every intelligence agency agreed that if Saddam had weapons of mass destruction, he would use them only if he were first attacked...

...Alarmed, I tried to alert the public and instructed the intelligence agencies to produce a declassified version of the NIE. Intelligence officials usually declassify documents by drawing black lines through sensitive matters. In this case, we received a newly minted "declassified" NIE. It was 65 pages shorter. Gone was the debate over the aluminum tubes and any other dissents or reservations. Gone was the unanimous conclusion that Saddam would only use weapons of mass destruction if Iraq were first attacked.

That was the last straw. The Bush administration was clearly scheming to manipulate public opinion in favor of war. I was livid. Five days later, during Senate debate on Iraq, I said that those who gave the president warmaking authority would have "blood on their hands..."

The Rove Goes on Forever
James Moore
The Huffington Post
August 13, 2007

When I first started reporting on Karl Rove in the late 1970s, I was impressed by his singularity of purpose and his willingness to say or do whatever was necessary to succeed. This amorality, a complete lack of concern for right or wrong or harm done, will be his legacy in the American political process. Lives and careers might be destroyed, great institutions compromised, the truth sullied until it is unrecognizable, but all of that will be acceptable collateral damage to Karl as long as he and his party and candidates have won the day.

Rove’s Legacy
George Packer
The New Yorker
August 13, 2007

Karl Rove’s resignation brought to mind a conversation I had a few weeks ago with an Administration official who genuinely wanted to hear my account of why the Iraq war has gone so badly. In a word, I said, “politics.” At every turn, the White House has tried to use the war, and the larger war on terror, to consolidate power, to reward ideological and political loyalists, to win electoral advantage, to push the Democrats into a corner, to divide the country into patriots and defeatists. President Bush insisted on pursuing a highly partisan domestic agenda rather than unite the country around the war in the spirit of F.D.R. (who said that “Doctor New Deal” had been replaced by “Doctor Win the War”). So many disastrous wartime decisions can be traced back to the original sin: policy mattered less than politics. The message in Washington was more real than anything happening in Iraq.

The official objected passionately.

Rove’s departure coincides with a piece about him by Joshua Green in the September issue of The Atlantic­an account of how Rove’s arrogance and political brutality cost Bush most of his domestic agenda even when Congress was in Republican hands. The pillars of Rove’s permanent Republican majority collapsed one after another even as the White House kept winning elections. Though Iraq doesn’t seem to have interested Rove much, it paid a high price for his realignment strategy. For example, one former official chided the President for pursuing a divisive and ultimately doomed overhaul of social security after the 2004 elections, just as the public was beginning to lose confidence in the war effort: “When you send troops to war, you have no higher responsibility as President than to keep the American people engaged and maintain popular support. But for months and months after it became obvious that Social Security was not going to happen, nobody­because of Karl’s stature in the White House­could be intellectually honest in a meeting and say, ‘This is not going to happen, and we need an exit strategy to get back onto winning ground.’ It was a catastrophic mistake.”

The Rove approach to governing helped lose Iraq. That may be the most enduring legacy of this supposed political genius.

The Architect and the War
Karl Rove played a key role in the selling of the Iraq War, which may help explain why he’s still bullish on the ultimate outcome, no matter how grim the news.
Web-Exclusive Commentary
By Michael Isikoff
Newsweek

Aug. 13, 2007 - In the summer of 2003, Karl Rove flew off to Bohemian Grove—the famed male-only retreat for the wealthy and powerful—where he had a revealing exchange in the Northern California woods about the state of affairs in Iraq. Spotting AOL founder James Kimsey, a big financial backer of President Bush who had just gotten back from Baghdad, Rove shouted out: “Hey Kimsey, it must have been wonderful to see the happy faces on all those liberated Iraqis!”

Kimsey was appalled. “Are you nuts?” he replied. He tried to tell the president’s political guru that the Iraqis he saw were sullen and resentful and that “if we don’t do something soon, all hell is going to break loose.”

But Rove wanted to hear nothing of it. “Nice talking to you,” Rove responded and walked away.

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