Phase II

The headlines out of the Senate Intelligence Committee's "phase two" report into the administration's use (and abuse) of pre-war intelligence:

• Statements and implications by the President and Secretary of State suggesting that Iraq and al-Qa'ida had a partnership, or that Iraq had provided al-Qa'ida with weapons training, were not substantiated by the intelligence.
• Statements by the President and the Vice President indicating that Saddam Hussein was prepared to give weapons of mass destruction to terrorist groups for attacks against the United States were contradicted by available intelligence information.
• Statements by President Bush and Vice President Cheney regarding the postwar situation in Iraq, in terms of the political, security, and economic, did not reflect the concerns and uncertainties expressed in the intelligence products.
• Statements by the President and Vice President prior to the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate regarding Iraq's chemical weapons production capability and activities did not reflect the intelligence community's uncertainties as to whether such production was ongoing.
• The Secretary of Defense's statement that the Iraqi government operated underground WMD facilities that were not vulnerable to conventional airstrikes because they were underground and deeply buried was not substantiated by available intelligence information.
• The Intelligence Community did not confirm that Muhammad Atta met an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague in 2001 as the Vice President repeatedly claimed.

Going forward, I merely urge people to recall that the administration didn't make all this stuff up for fun. They did it because they know that the public is not, in fact, particularly jazzed about preventive war and unilateral militarism. It's a lesson I wish more Democratic politicians would learn.

Comments

they could've shortened the report considerably if they'd just written, in 64pt Arial on a single sheet of paper: The Dirty Fucking Hippies Were Right About Everything.

Posted by cleek | June 5, 2008 1:54 PM

SEE if ONE fucking reporter asks Bush or Cheney why they Conned the country into a disasterous war.

By the way, has anyone seen Cheney in public in the past two years?

"Don't Ask -Don't Tell" doesn't apply just to gays in the military, it seems.

Posted by Don Williams | June 5, 2008 2:07 PM

Or they could have pulled an Al Franken and shortened it further:

LIIIIIIIIIIIIAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRSSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!!

Posted by drjimcooper | June 5, 2008 2:09 PM

Of course, EVERYTHING said about Bush and Cheney in the Senate Intel Report ALSO applies to Hillary's justifications for her vote to invade Iran.

She had access to the intelligence. And she had Nancy Pelosi and Senator Bob Graham saying there's no there there.

But, yeah, let's make her the Vice Presidential nominee. That way, whenever Obama attacks McCain on the war, McCain can point to Hillary and say:

"I didn't do anything your Vice President didn't also do."

And by the way, we both agree that we both are qualified to be President -- and you are not.

Plus, we like to drink vodka together."

Posted by Don Williams | June 5, 2008 2:13 PM

Dear Nancy Pelosi,
I'm back on the table.

Posted by I.M. Peachment | June 5, 2008 2:20 PM

It's a testimony to how gutless, spineless, and craven liberals have become in this country that nothing will likely ever happen in the House or Senate (or, for that matter, in the Press) following this report.

One thing about "movement" conservatives: they go for the jugular. Imagine (somehow) that this situation were reversed. The House would have already called for impeachment hearings, the press would be all over the findings, and the (hypothetically) Democratic nominee would have to face questions like: Do you believe your successor lied to the American people? What was the *real* motivation for going to war in Iraq, in your opinion? Do you agree with the findings of the Senate's investigations? Why or why not?

As an independent, one of the things that is so very uninspiring about the Democratic party in this country is that it is so very frightened of actually doing anything that might cause a ruckus. They are castratti all.

Posted by wj | June 5, 2008 2:23 PM

They did it because they know that the public is not, in fact, particularly jazzed about preventive war and unilateral militarism.

Soon, Mr. Yglesias will have eaten a critical mass of Vienna Sausages. Then, he will be one of us!!!

MU-WA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HAAAAAAAAAA!
.

Posted by Grand Moff Texan | June 5, 2008 2:24 PM

Hasn't this been old news since, like, 2005? Did this really require an Intelligence Committee report?

Of course, Matt is absolutely right about the Administration's motivations for lying about the evidence. I'm waiting for the part where they say the administration fabricated evidence - remember the letters requesting nuclear material written from "Iraqi officials" in which names and titles were spelled incorrectly? Or the "Curveball" informant?

Posted by yaya | June 5, 2008 2:27 PM

thank you Don Williams.

I'm so fucking sick of hearing, "but even TEH CLINTONS thought Saddam had WMD!", yeah and they were either a) just as willingly complicit in this atrocity as the Bush administration or b)rooked by obvious propaganda.

It should be tattooed on the heads of every pundit in DC, "all the information one needed to make an accurate assessment of the 'threat' posed to the US by the government of Saddam Hussein was available at the time." It was not hidden in so much as that anyone, not experts, wonks or foreign policy gurus, but any average semi-literate human who wanted to find out could have, and many of us did. The McClatchy/Knight-Ridder guys all got it right in real time.

As with every con, the only people who were fooled were the ones who wanted to be.

Posted by dearleader nyc | June 5, 2008 2:29 PM

So?

Posted by Dick Cheney | June 5, 2008 2:32 PM

You forget that the Saddam/Al Qaeda link has not not been proven wrong yet.

This report is long on speculation and short on facts, unlike my book "The Connection" and Doug Feith's "War and Decision" available now wherever fine blood-soaked clumps of shit is sold.

Posted by Sephen Hayes | June 5, 2008 2:39 PM

I'm so disgusted with the way this is being reported in the NY Times today. The article has the headline: “Senate Panel Accuses Bush of Iraq Exaggerations” and the lead sentence uses the term "exaggerations" as well.

The term “exaggerations” seriously downplays the findings of the report and implies something harmless and excusable. This is just not the case. And the use of the term has the added effect of diminishing the significance of the report itself.

It is clear that the content of the report shows a concerted effort by the Bush administration to deceive the American people in order to gain support for a pre-emptive strike on Iraq – allegedly to counter an immediate threat against the United States posed by Saddam Hussein and Iraq. The report makes clear that this “threat” did not exist. Statements made by the Bush administration were not simply exaggerations. They were intentional false and misleading statements.

And these so-called “exaggerations” were anything but harmless – which, again, is what the term implies. As a result of these “exaggerations, over 4,000 Americans have been killed in Iraq; over 30,000 Americans have been wounded; and as many as 650,000 Iraqis have been killed. Defending these statements as “exaggerations” – which is what the article does – is a mockery of professional journalism.

Posted by robert | June 5, 2008 3:04 PM

Re robert's comment "I'm so disgusted with the way this is being reported in the NY Times today"
------------
Is that the NY Times which employed Judith Miller as star reporter?? Which published her frightening "Iraqi WMD" ghost stories prior to the invasion?

Ha ha ha ha. You guys crack me up. The one actor I can think of that was, in my opinion, bigger liars than Bush/Cheney in the runup to war
was the NY Times. Because, in my opinion, the NY Times owners thought taking out Saddam would be "Good for Israel".

That's the same Times, by the way, which told the American people on Sept 23 2001 that our support for Israel was not a motive for the Sept 11 attack. Even though the Times own archives would show Bin Laden in 1998 citing our support for Israeli killing of Palestinian Muslims as one of the three main reasons for Al Qaeda's Jihad.

The same Times which REFUSED to report Bin Laden's interview with Pakistani's DAWN in Nov 2001. In which Bin Laden cited US sales of advanced weapons to Israel as justification for the Sept 11 attack.

Too bad we can't ask former editor -- and "Guardian of Zion " --AM Rosenthal what he thinks. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A._M._Rosenthal#Awards

Posted by Don Williams | June 5, 2008 3:24 PM

Funny how we haven't heard anything about those massive underground WMD bunker labs since, oh, 2002/2003.

Posted by Jon H | June 5, 2008 3:30 PM

It's also scary to me that the release of this report and its findings (which thank god exists for historical purposes) are not even being covered among the many 'top headlines' listed on the websites of ABC, CBS and NBC.

Posted by robert | June 5, 2008 3:55 PM

The same goes for CNN, though this is not really a surprise. This story doesn't make the "Latest News" list -- which is very long, and includes such other important stories as:

- Beck: We Can Win In Iraq If We Really Want To
- Freed Man Now Uses Twitter To Help Friend
- 'Swingtown' Orgies Raise Eyebrows

Posted by robert | June 5, 2008 4:06 PM

they could've shortened the report considerably if they'd just written, in 64pt Arial on a single sheet of paper: The Dirty Fucking Hippies Were Right About Everything.

What if they tried putting that sentence on endless reams of paper, over and over again, in varying patterns? Then when Shelley Duvall discovered it Cheney would come jumping out with an axe in his hand maniacally screaming, "Here's Dickie!"

Just an idea.

Posted by Edward, the mad shirt grinder | June 5, 2008 4:17 PM

It was obvious that Bush lied in 2004 and more so in 2006. John Kerry could've easily said, "look. I voted for the war because I trusted the President of the United States. I now know that George Bush is not worthy of my trust. He lied to me and I'm sorry that I believed him. I should've known better."

If he had, he'd be running for a second term.

Hilary Clinton could've easily said much the same thing, and she would've probably been the nominee. But she waited far too long to repudiate her mistake, and it cost her the nomination.

Posted by Aatos | June 5, 2008 5:18 PM

Oh. Nevermind. This story isn't feature on The Drudge Report (which has 50 active stories linked). So I guess it's not news afterall. My mistake.

Posted by eric | June 5, 2008 5:35 PM

Headlines from Senate Report on the run up to the Iran war, issued today, June 5, 2013:

1) Statements and implications by the President and Secretary of State suggesting that Iran and Iraqi insurgents had a partnership, or that Iran had provided Iraqi insurgents with weapons training, were not substantiated by the intelligence.

2) Statements by the President and the Vice President indicating that Ahmadinejad was prepared to give weapons of mass destruction to terrorist groups for attacks against the United States were contradicted by available intelligence information.

3) Statements by President Obama and Vice President Clinton regarding the postwar situation in Iran, in terms of the political, security, and economic, did not reflect the concerns and uncertainties expressed in the intelligence products.

4) Statements by the President and Vice President prior to the October 2007 National Intelligence Estimate regarding Iran's nuclear weapons production capability and activities did not reflect the intelligence community's uncertainties as to whether such production was ongoing.

5) The Secretary of Defense's statement that the Iranian government operated underground WMD facilities that were not vulnerable to conventional airstrikes because they were underground and deeply buried was not substantiated by available intelligence information.

6) Statements by The Atlantic's "pundit" and Iran hawk Matt Yglesias that the Iran war was justified in order to prevent Iranian nuclear proliferation were deprecated as being from an ignorant source "barely out of college."

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | June 5, 2008 5:52 PM

So I guess this will help Vincent Bugliosi's argument that Bush should be tried for murder.

Posted by Paul B | June 5, 2008 5:58 PM

"They did it because they know that the public is not, in fact, particularly jazzed about preventive war and unilateral militarism. It's a lesson I wish more Democratic politicians would learn."

This goes for pundits as well? After all you too supported this war, no?

Posted by Syd B | June 5, 2008 8:44 PM

1) No mention of these findings was made on tonights ABC News broadcast.

2) Possibly because the big story was that several AL Qaeda leaders were brought up to plea at a military tribunal in GITMO -- and that evidently forced this report off the broadcast.

3) I sure that was pure happenstance.

Posted by Don Williams | June 5, 2008 9:48 PM

Old news. Anyone who has faith in everything they read in "intelligence" reports, or what other people say based on their reading of them, is living in a fool's paradise. Better information is nearly always available.

It was the consensus view of the "intelligence" community that the Nationalists were winning the Chinese civil war, the North Koreans wouldn't come south, the Chinese would stay out of Korea, that it was a good idea to support the overthrow of Mossadeq and the elevation of the Shah, to invade Cuba and assassinate Castro, ditto to support the Diem brothers and later the murder of the Diem brothers, that we shouldn't plan for the evacuation of Saigon, that the Khomeini revolution was no problem, the Soviet Union was getting stronger, and that had no clue about the development of nukes by Pakistan and India. And that the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade was a Serb military target. And etc, etc, etc.

Posted by robert powell | June 6, 2008 9:05 AM

Re robert powell

Just a few corrections to Mr. Powells' comments.

1. The notion that the Chinese wouldn't enter the Korean War if the Yalu River was approached by UN troops was the opinion of General Douglas MacArthur, not the CIA.

2. The notion that the Soviet Union was getting stronger was not the opinion of the CIA. In fact, the CIA thought otherwise. It was the opinion of a task force under Richard Pipes, father of Daniel Pipes, which was set up because the Reagan Administration didn't believe the CIAs' assessment of Soviet military potential. Not surprisingly, the hard liners under Pipes told Reagan administration officials what they wanted to hear. Sound familiar, recall George Tenet.

Posted by SLC | June 6, 2008 10:25 AM