Reply #6: Office of Special Plans

[davekriss]

Before the Bush War, I recall all kinds of "senior" CIA types leaking that they disagreed with the rewrites and pressures and OSP summarizations of the actual "intelligence" (the latter -- what was squeezed out of the steel trap imposed by the Bush administration -- was not "intelligence", it was deliberate disinformation used to manufacture consent for war).

I recall also that, prior to the saber-rattling that started in the early Spring of 2002, the CIA supplied intelligence sufficient for Colin Powell and Condi Rice to separately state that Iraq represented no threat to the United States and its friends, that Iraq was successfully contained (anyone recall that principled and sane policy of Containment and Deterrence?). That was the Party line until we heard Condi announce so mournfully, in the spring, that Saddam Hussein might (might!) be holding as prisoner a fighter pilot thought killed in the first days of the first Gulf War. It was a trial balloon. To gauge the susceptibility and gullibility of the U.S. public to emotional triggers all meant to instill fear and rage and let loose the dogs of war.

U.S. foreign policy is filled with disgrace after disgrace post WWII, but no President has disgraced us anywhere near the degree of George Walker Bush, by far the "worst President ever". These are truly sad times. The emperor has no clothes but the people are blind...while they and their children and their childrens' children get their pockets picked clean...