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Oliphant: For Bush, no excuse (Great column!)

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RamboLiberal Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jul-13-04 04:26 PM
Original message
Oliphant: For Bush, no excuse (Great column!)
Edited on Tue Jul-13-04 04:28 PM by rmpalmer
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2004/07/13/for_bush_no_excuse?mode=PF

THE VERY BEST that can be said on President Bush's behalf is that he used the CliffsNotes version of intelligence information about Iraq as the basis for a poorly planned and rushed invasion of Iraq in March of last year.

The problem with this charitable approach to Bush is that it's unfair to CliffsNotes.

The lazy student's version of anything is at least an accurate summary.

But the intelligence information about Iraq was wrong. In terms that Bush can perhaps recall from his days at Yale as a budding intellectual of limited achievement, it's as if he went forth to his final exam on Dickens and wrote confidently that David Copperfield murdered Uriah Heep with a fireplace poker. The policy sophisticates and intelligence insiders are having a field day with the Senate Intelligence Committee's limited and highly censored report on prewar information. However, the sophisticates are missing the truly jarring truth.

In plain English, the Central Intelligence Agency was serving Bush large helpings of baloney in the form of summaries of analyses and conclusions that were directly contradicted by the detailed information on which these analyses and conclusions were supposedly based. For those seeking to blame the summaries, including Bush's own campaign and policy big shots, the desperate finger-pointing works only on the basis of an assumption that is grounds for tossing Bush out of office.

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carpediem Donating Member (700 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jul-13-04 05:29 PM
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1. That is a great column!
I am going to send that to my father-in-law. He sent us the email about swift boat veterans for truth yesterday, to which we sent a reply explaining their agenda and the connection to the Nixon administration. So it's our turn to send him something. This looks like a good one to send. Thanks.
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dand Donating Member (636 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jul-13-04 06:54 PM
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2. Oliphant is brilliant,
how can anything be so clear, and yet these little war criminals still have the support of so many? Thanks for a great post.
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Miss Authoritiva Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jul-13-04 07:55 PM
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3. Well the deniability only has to be plausible, not necessarily probable.
Is it plausible that Bush/Cheney read only the cover summaries? Yes.

Is it probable that Bush/Cheney read only the cover summaries? Yes for Bush, maybe for Cheney.

Is it plausible that Rumsfeld, Rice, Powell, and their legions of underlings read only the cover summaries? Yes.

Is it probable that Rumsfeld, Rice, Powell, and their legions of underlings read only the cover summaries? No.
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Disturbed Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jul-13-04 08:17 PM
Response to Reply #3
4. It is even more probable
that Shrub told his staff to come up with info. that could be used to convince Congress and the American public that Iraq needed to be invaded immediately and that the bullshit was delievered.
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