Another Crack in the Dike
The Senate Majority Leader and the members of his party got their knickers all in a frist when Harry Reid, Senate Minority Leader, invoked Rule 21, forcing the body into secret session. At first, almost everyone assumed that Sen. Reid was using a rather canny tactic to keep the focus on the Administration misdeeds, but it now appears that the Democrats had what must certainly be seen as a good reason to remind the GOP that an investigation of the intelligence used in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq had not been completed.
A recently declassified Defense Intelligence Agency document made it clear just how much the regime cherry-picked the intelligence to justify the war. The NY Times has an article detailing the information.
A top member of Al Qaeda in American custody was identified as a likely fabricator months before the Bush administration began to use his statements as the foundation for its claims that Iraq trained Al Qaeda members to use biological and chemical weapons, according to newly declassified portions of a Defense Intelligence Agency document.
The document, an intelligence report from February 2002, said it was probable that the prisoner, Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, “was intentionally misleading the debriefers’’ in making claims about Iraqi support for Al Qaeda’s work with illicit weapons.
The document provides the earliest and strongest indication of doubts voiced by American intelligence agencies about Mr. Libi’s credibility. Without mentioning him by name, President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Colin L. Powell, then secretary of state, and other administration officials repeatedly cited Mr. Libi’s information as “credible’’ evidence that Iraq was training Al Qaeda members in the use of explosives and illicit weapons.
...The newly declassified portions of the document were made available by Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Mr. Levin said the new evidence of early doubts about Mr. Libi’s statements dramatized what he called the Bush administration’s misuse of prewar intelligence to try to justify the war in Iraq. That is an issue that Mr. Levin and other Senate Democrats have been seeking to emphasize, in part by calling attention to the fact that the Republican-led Senate intelligence committee has yet to deliver a promised report, first sought more than two years ago, on the use of prewar intelligence. [Emphasis added]
The picture of the run-up to a disasterous war that has cost thousands of lives and billions of dollars is now coming into focus. This revelation, along with the little mentioned Downing Street Memos and the debunking of the Iraqi-Niger yellow cake transaction by Joe Wilson (and the outing of his wife in revenge), makes it clear that those of us who have maintained for several years now that this President intended to go to war in Iraq at least as early as September 12, 2001, if not earlier, were correct in our assessment. The war was based on lies, and the regime knew they were lies right from the start.
Somebody besides a White House Staffer needs to be held accountable for these lies and their consequences. Actually, more than just "somebody."
A recently declassified Defense Intelligence Agency document made it clear just how much the regime cherry-picked the intelligence to justify the war. The NY Times has an article detailing the information.
A top member of Al Qaeda in American custody was identified as a likely fabricator months before the Bush administration began to use his statements as the foundation for its claims that Iraq trained Al Qaeda members to use biological and chemical weapons, according to newly declassified portions of a Defense Intelligence Agency document.
The document, an intelligence report from February 2002, said it was probable that the prisoner, Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, “was intentionally misleading the debriefers’’ in making claims about Iraqi support for Al Qaeda’s work with illicit weapons.
The document provides the earliest and strongest indication of doubts voiced by American intelligence agencies about Mr. Libi’s credibility. Without mentioning him by name, President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Colin L. Powell, then secretary of state, and other administration officials repeatedly cited Mr. Libi’s information as “credible’’ evidence that Iraq was training Al Qaeda members in the use of explosives and illicit weapons.
...The newly declassified portions of the document were made available by Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Mr. Levin said the new evidence of early doubts about Mr. Libi’s statements dramatized what he called the Bush administration’s misuse of prewar intelligence to try to justify the war in Iraq. That is an issue that Mr. Levin and other Senate Democrats have been seeking to emphasize, in part by calling attention to the fact that the Republican-led Senate intelligence committee has yet to deliver a promised report, first sought more than two years ago, on the use of prewar intelligence. [Emphasis added]
The picture of the run-up to a disasterous war that has cost thousands of lives and billions of dollars is now coming into focus. This revelation, along with the little mentioned Downing Street Memos and the debunking of the Iraqi-Niger yellow cake transaction by Joe Wilson (and the outing of his wife in revenge), makes it clear that those of us who have maintained for several years now that this President intended to go to war in Iraq at least as early as September 12, 2001, if not earlier, were correct in our assessment. The war was based on lies, and the regime knew they were lies right from the start.
Somebody besides a White House Staffer needs to be held accountable for these lies and their consequences. Actually, more than just "somebody."
posted by Diane at 3:59 AM
1 Comments:
Not only did they know the intelligence was bogus, they had to realize that it meant al Qaeda *wanted* them to invade Iraq. But that didn't slow them down in the slightest.
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