Schneider: Bush administration's 'Clintonian' behavior
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CNN senior political analyst Bill Schneider
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(CNN) -- The allegations made by President Bush in the State of the Union address that Iraq tried to buy uranium in Africa has set off a political firestorm in Washington. The White House now says the claim was unsubstantiated, and CIA Director George Tenet Friday took responsibility for the mistake.
CNN anchor Fredricka Whitfield spoke Sunday with CNN senior political analyst Bill Schneider about the possible impact on Bush's political future.
WHITFIELD: Well, let's kind of start at the beginning if we can. We're talking about speech writing. What [is] the process of speech writing? It seems like there are a lot of layers of people, a lot of eyes that would have looked over this speech. And if there were this glaring mistake a number of people would have caught [it]?
SCHNEIDER: Well, it was vetted by the CIA. The president said that. The CIA said that. It's a very elaborate process. The State of the Union Speech is arguably the most important single speech the president gives all year, because it sets his agenda every year at the end of January. And it goes through many, many layers of bureaucracy and preparation. Clearly, this speech was setting the stage for the prospective confrontation with Iraq and laying out the groundwork for that.
And the reporting now indicates the White House national security aides checked this information very carefully with the CIA. But there's a suggestion there that they were pressuring the CIA to include some indication that Iraq was trying to obtain nuclear material for [a] nuclear program. And that they were pressing the CIA to include something that would indicate that Iraq was trying to acquire this material from Africa, something that they could defend.
And they ended up with that rather peculiar statement that said the British government is reporting that Iraq has tried to obtain uranium from Africa. That's how they tried to protect the president. They said to the CIA, is that statement factually correct? And the CIA said reluctantly, well, yes, even though they had doubts about it. Well, there's something rather, to be a bit impolite, Clintonian about saying it was factually correct that the British were reporting it, when the CIA knew very well that the report was very dubious.
WHITFIELD: Wow. So because of that pressure, does this essentially become the excuse for overlooking these doubts?
SCHNEIDER: Apparently it does. They say it was factually correct, but now they acknowledge it should never have gotten into the speech. It did not meet the standards for inclusion in a speech as important as this. That is why we're having the firestorm right now. Tenet has expressed responsibility for allowing it to get in there, even though he may not have personally done it, he was the head of the CIA. The problem is the words came out the president's mouth, so a lot of people say the president is responsible for what he says in the State of the Union.
WHITFIELD: [White House spokesman] Ari Fleischer says it's over. Bush says it's over. Most people say no, it's just beginning.
SCHNEIDER: That very much depends on really the Republicans and whether they demand that Tenet be held to account. That he be questioned before a Senate or congressional investigation, whether they believe he ill-served the president. There's a lot of criticism. If it's coming only from Democrats then it may be over. But if it starts to come from Republicans then this could go on for quite a while.
WHITFIELD: Well, the early poll results are already indicating this is impacting the popularity of the president. How do you decipher all of these polls?
SCHNEIDER: Well, not impacting it very much because people don't believe the president purposely misled the public. About 38 percent in a "Newsweek" poll just released ... say that the president was deliberately misleading the American public. That is, he had the intent to deceive. That 38 percent is an interesting number because that's exactly the percentage of people who say that they would support a Democrat over President Bush. The indication is that's probably Democrats who are saying that.
There's one number in that "Newsweek" poll that may save the president. And that is, 69 percent say that they believe Iraq did have banned chemical and biological weapons. And that number is virtually unchanged from a month ago. So as long as Americans believe, yes, the weapons were there, the president is likely to get off the hook.
