1) Everybody was not, in fact, working from the same misleading information. The administration's line about WMD these days is: OK, we might have been wrong -- but everybody was wrong, and everybody came to the same conclusion we did. The foreigners came to that conclusion through their intelligence services, and the Democrats (especially that weaselly Kerry and ambitious Hillary) did it when they voted for the war resolution.
--snip
2) ... The Administration had two responses when asked in 2003 "what's the rush?" about beginning the invasion. One was logistical: the troops were in place, they couldn't wait forever, soon it would be hot (as if they would not be in Iraq thorugh many summers!). This obviously is a "Guns of August" style of reasoning: the trains are moving toward the front, so we might as well start World War I.
The other response was: we've waited 12 years, why wait any more? The answer to that was, first, that Iraq was now crawling with weapons inspectors, who at a minimum would make it hard for Saddam to cook up any surprise plans -- and, second, that beginning a war could touch off a lot of messy complications left out of the optimistic war scenarios.
--snip
3) As for managing Iraq after the fall of Baghdad, there is no shared blame at all. The Bush Administration owns every aspect of this disastrously bungled situation.
The failure to stop the looting; the deliberately low-ball on the number of occupying troops; the rash decision to disband the Iraqi army; the inattention to how quickly American "liberators" would become "occupiers"; the lassitude about recruiting or training enough Arabic speakers or getting serious about developing an Iraqi force -- on these and a dozen other familiar points, the Administration cannot possibly say, "Hey, everybody was wrong." These were the decisions of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, in many cases bulldozing or ignoring contrary views from within the military and other parts of the government.
1. To point (1), So Congress believed Bush's lies.
Bush had access to the truth, but chose to present only lies, distortions, and exaggerations. So he tricked them. He bears the blame for that, not his victims.
But at the time, Administration officials were most emphasically NOT saying "hey, we're all operating in the dark here." The implied message of every briefing for reporters, every speech to the public, and every background session with legislators, was: If you knew what we knew, then you'd be as alarmed as we are. That was the message of Dick Cheney's statement that "there can be no doubt" that Iraq "now" had weapons of mass destruction, of Condi Rice's warning about the mushroom cloud, and of Colin Powell's presentation to the UN. The argument over Iraq's capabilities was by definition one sided, because the Administration's presumed insider knowledge trumped what anyone else could say. To pretend this was just a big widely-shared confusion is dishonest and wrong.
--snip
You are exactly correct. BushCo took the intelligence, cooked it, skimmed off the doubtful statements/findings, distilled the rest down to a sticky mess of obfuscations, outright lies and lies of omission.
And he force fed this to the U. S. Congress and the American people. This administration will pay a heavy, heavy price for this.
0/5/01: Bush Pulls Security Clearances From 92 Senators
“We can’t have leaks of classified information. It’s not in our nation’s interest.” - President George W. Bush, 10/9/01
President Bush’s defiant statement came in the immediate weeks following 9/11, as the administration clamped down on the information it provided to Congress. President Bush issued an order limiting access to classified intelligence only to 8 members of Congress — the Speaker of the House, House Minority Leader, Senate Majority Leader, Senate Minority Leader, and chairmen and ranking members of the House and Senate intelligence committees.
What precipitated this course of action?
Gannett News Service reported on 10/1/01 that Bush was restricting information because, “The Washington Post reported last week that various lawmakers had been told there would be more terrorist attacks if the United States retaliated.”
Here’s what the Washington Post reported:
Asked whether more terrorist attacks are inevitable if the United States retaliates, Shelby said, “You can bet on that.” U.S. intelligence officials have told members of Congress there is a high probability that terrorists associated with Osama bin Laden will try to launch another major attack on U.S. targets here or abroad.
So at this slightest whiff of evidence that information was being leaked, President Bush pulled classified intelligence access for 92 senators. There was no ongoing criminal investigation nor was there evidence that all the members who had their access limited had leaked information. And now he refuses to hold Karl Rove and Scooter Libby to anywhere near the same standard, despite confirmation of their involvement in the leak of an undercover CIA agent’s identity.
4. This destroys the *everybody had the same intel* lie.
It's important that everyone hears about this rule by * to severely limit what the Congress knew about the intelligence. And the handful of 8 or so Senators/Reps who DID see the information, they couldn't discuss it because it was classified. Nice move on *'s part.
Senator Bob Graham railed about this, as he was head of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence at the time, and knew that * was deliberately withholding crucial information from Congress, in the push for his Iraq War Resolution. That was why Sen. Graham voted against the war; with what he knew, he saw there was no evidence of Saddam's involvement in 9-11 or collusion with Al Qaeda. And he knew that stampeding into Iraq would detract from the real war against terrorists.
So the rest of the Senators/Reps who did NOT have all this intelligence information naturally voted to support more inspections/disarming, with the caveat that those things must be exhausted first, before using the military to disarm Saddam.
Bottom line, * selectively withheld crucial information from the majority of voting members of Congress and Senate, knowing he'd hornswaggle his way into Iraq in the end.
And then, * would have a *yea* war vote to bludgeon Kerry with in the campaign. These people know exactly what they are doing.
He should be on Washington Journal to discuss this. He knows more about what is going on than most writers and most of Congress. And he doesn't have an agenda except for finding the truth and reporting how things really are.
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