The chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Mike Rogers of Michigan, needs to be watched like a hawk because he is making pronouncements on Syria’s use of chemical weapons that are totally unsupported by any available intelligence or by the administration. Rep. Rogers is trying to gin up a war.
“I think when you look at the whole body of information over the last two years there is mounting evidence that it is probable that the Assad regime has used at least a small quantity of chemical weapons during the course of conflict,” Rogers said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”
Citing President Barack Obama’s comments nearly a year ago that the use of chemical weapons by the Syrian government a “red line” for U.S. intervention, the Republican congressman from Michigan said it’s “abundantly clear that red line has been crossed.”
The administration has been pushing back.
The U.S. ambassador to Syria says the Obama administration has no evidence so far to support claims of chemical weapon use but is looking carefully at the conflicting reports.
Robert Ford made the comments Tuesday at a House hearing, one day after President Bashar Assad accused U.S.-backed rebels of using such weapons in Aleppo province.
The Obama administration disputed that claim, and a U.S. official said there was no evidence that either Assad forces or the opposition had used chemical weapons in an attack in northern Syria.
As the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Rogers is privy to information that the rest of us don’t have, but he isn’t privy to any information that the administration doesn’t have.
Look at how Rep. Rogers moves seamlessly from saying there is “mounting evidence that it is probable” to arguing that “it’s abundantly clear that [a] red line has been crossed.” Those two statements are completely inconsistent, and yet he made them both on today’s Face the Nation program.
The press has been making a great show on the 10th anniversary of the invasion of Iraq of showing remorse for not getting the story right. The big story was that we were being lied into a war, and they were loathe to reach that conclusion, let alone blast it in the front-pages and headlines. Well, ladies and gentlemen of the press, now is the time to go after Rep. Mike Rogers like a bulldog, grab ahold of his trousers and don’t let go until he can back up what he is saying. Because I think he is making this up out of whole cloth. I think he is lying. I think he is taking advantage of his position to make it appear that he is getting reports that he is not in fact getting. I do not believe that there is any evidence…none…that Syria has been using a little bit of chemical weapons or a lot.
So, here is what you ask him.
Have you received intelligence reports that the Assad regime has used at least a small quantity of chemical weapons during the course of conflict? Was that briefing from the CIA, the Pentagon, or some other intelligence agency? Will those findings be in the next National Intelligence Report? To your knowledge, has the administration seen the same reports? Who else on your committee has seen these reports or heard these briefings?
He should be hounded with these questions morning, noon, and night until he either provides satisfactory answers that can lead to further inquiry or until he stops lying.
You want to redeem yourself? Don’t let this man get away with this. This is the type of loose talk about war that the president warned against before he traveled to Israel.
It needs to be treated for what it is: a threat against peace and an effort to embroil this country in a civil war in Syria. If he is lying, he should be removed for his position on the intelligence committee and he should be voted out of office.
The word “mounting” in the phrase “mounting evidence” is a tell that Rodgers is making stuff up.
If there was evidence, he’d tell us there was evidence. Have you ever heard anyone who had evidence for a claim say that the evidence was “mounting?”
I watched the House Intelligence Chair live this morning, and I spit at the TV screen. Look at the first sentence from the block quote of Rogers here- that is one long set of weasel words. Having just passed the 10th anniversary of the second Iraq invasion, my response to this warmonging is not just no, but Fuck No.
I’m writing letters to the editors of all my local newspapers, trying to help remind the readers of the expensive waste of Iraq and warning of the expensive military adventure for which Congressional leaders are beating the drum right now, including one of my Senators, Feinstein. Dianne’s willingness to play along here is a despicable act, and I don’t trot that adjective out for Democrats very often. I’ll be writing and calling the President as well, encouraging him to resist being pulled into rash action by the dogs of war.
And you believe them? What else could they do – pull a Perry? “Oops.”
And this from the party that wants to balance the budget in 10 years. While they’re at it, could the media ask him how he’s going to pay for a war?
I’ve read several times that we have CIA & Special Forces on the ground in Syria. The president would know if chemical weapons had been used. Frankly, I don’t think it matters much anymore b/c I don’t see him sending troops now b/c Sunni & Shia/Hezbollah are all joining sides to fight in Syria in their spare time. It wouldn’t surprise me if Iraq, Iran, and Lebanon went up in flames along with Syria. It’s a fucking mess. I wouldn’t send troops unless I could send at least 500,000! Out of control!
That is the size of the 1965 VietNam buildup. Be careful what you wish for!
Yeah, I’m hopeful that cat is proposing such an insane opening troop level in order to display opposition to sending any troops at all. That said, “be careful what you wish for”- point extremely well taken.
If there was a time to send troops to Syria (which is a big if), it was a year or two ago. I would have voted no. Now, things are much more screwed up than we decided things were too screwed up to send in troops.
So, this is what nonintervention in Syria looks like. I feel on warm and fuzzy.
The problem with the media is that over the 19th and early 20th century they were there to campaign for justice. Slavery, labour rights, women’s sufferage, etc. Of course once those fights were won they sat there wondering what exactly was their point. So they went after some fairly sleepy and toothless dragons like the British royalty, the catholic church and so on. The result was that they got used to danger free campaigning.
And then when suddenly some actual Dragons came along with real teeth and breathing real fire they collectively shat themselves and fell into line. And now when once again a real Dragon is spewing fire again they are collectively soiling themselves again.
Booman, you could make an entire post on the extraordinarily infuriating article the Post’s news media reporter placed in the paper today. Gotta say, if this a prime example of lessons learned, the big papers’ coverage of future war drum beating will be hopeless.
We’re in the territory of The Onion all over again. Even the headline for this article is parody-proof:
“On Iraq, journalists didn’t fail. They just didn’t succeed.”
I’m not kidding, though I wish I were- that’s the headline. Given that cowardice and abandonment of moral clarity, the content of the article is unsurprisngly awful. Here’s some:
“”If you want to say the press failed, you have to ask, what was the press supposed to do?” says Gerald F. Seib, Washington bureau chief of the Wall Street Journal. “Did we get to the bottom of the claims of weapons of mass destruction? No, but no one did, either, including the United Nations, with all of the resources it brought to bear on that question.””
Hey, idiot Seib, the UN weapons inspectors were very successfully getting to the bottom of the claims of waepons of mass destruction- they weren’t finding any, and Blix said his inspectors would have the entire country covered within months. It was the U.S.’s unstoppable invasion that chased Blix’s inspectors out of the country, not Saddam Hussein. Note how Seib wishes to hide that inconvenient, important fact from us.
More:
“Two prominent skeptics of the administration, ElBaradei and U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix, helped level the imbalance somewhat. But they were never going to command as much credibility among Americans as those in office, (then-Post reporter Walter) Pincus says.
That left anonymous sources. Pincus and other reporters found people in the intelligence community who questioned the administration’s case. But those with the most knowledge about classified material were unwilling to be identified publicly. And while anonymous sources are fine for suggesting the presence of smoke, they don’t cinch the case for fire.
In hindsight, The Post’s executive editor at the time, Leonard Downie Jr., says he regrets not giving Pincus’s stories more prominence (most of them landed in the neighborhood of A18). But even Pincus recognizes that no one outside Iraq really knew precisely what was happening inside Iraq. “If there’s disagreement inside the government about what’s true and what isn’t, how the hell can the press determine what’s true?” he says.”
UN-FUCKING-BELIEVABLE. They have no idea how they sound, and they have learned nothing. In fact, they have reacted to the attacks they have recieved by retreating into a childlike defensive position. Poor them! Their readers just don’t understand them, man.
Check out the pure assertions, immune to factual response, in this section of the article:
“Many critics of the media’s prewar reporting seem to believe that a more confrontational press could have stopped the march into Iraq. That’s wishful thinking. It not only assumes that journalists could agree on the facts, it also implies that the media could single-handedly override the president’s influence and that of other leaders.
(Then-Post editor Len) Downie believes that no amount of media skepticism would have stopped the administration. “We were going to war,” he said.”
It’s official. The wartime Editor of the Washington Post says that in regards to their pre-war coverage, they didn’t care- they were IRRELEVANT.
So what to expect next? Here’s the conclusion:
“Could it happen again? The months preceding the invasion were fraught with wariness about unknowable threats — some of which were, of course, exaggerated. We’re susceptible to the same panic as rogue states such as Iran and North Korea allegedly move toward the development of nuclear weapons. Such conditions can breed demagoguery.
But the news media’s memories of Iraq can be useful if they stiffen journalists’ backbones. The prewar reporting wasn’t a disaster. But it wasn’t good enough. We should remember why, if only so we aren’t doomed to repeat it.”
So, so inspiring. They should all quit if they can’t be bothered to care more than this.
Plus when North Korea left the Nuclear non proliferation treaty and thereby pretty much signaled they were developing Nukes, the Press collectively did not give a shit as they were running along howling at the W case for invading Iraq and Lord Bush did not want to be distracted. And then when 9 months later NK detonated a nuke they went “er..”