NYT: Senate Iraq Report Said to Skirt White House Use of Intelligence

[RamboLiberal]

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/08/politics/08inte.html?hp=&pagewanted=print&position=

A bipartisan Senate report to be issued Friday that is highly critical of prewar intelligence on Iraq will sidestep the question of how the Bush administration used that information to make the case for war, Congressional officials said Wednesday. But Democrats are maneuvering to raise the issue in separate statements. Under a deal reached this year between Republicans and Democrats, the Bush administration's role will not be addressed until the Senate Intelligence Committee completes a further stage of its inquiry, but probably not until after the November election. As a result, said the officials, both Democratic and Republican, the committee's initial, unanimous report will focus solely on misjudgments by intelligence agencies, not the White House, in the assessments about Iraq, illicit weapons and Al Qaeda that the administration used as a rationale for the war.

The effect may be to provide an opening for President Bush and his allies to deflect responsibility for what now appear to be exaggerated prewar assessments about the threat posed by Iraq, by portraying them as the fault of the Central Intelligence Agency and its departing chief, George J. Tenet, rather than Mr. Bush and his top aides.

Still, Democrats will try to focus attention on the issue by releasing as many as a half-dozen "additional views" to supplement the bipartisan report. "How the administration used the intelligence was very troubling," Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, said in an interview this week. "They took a flawed set of intelligence reports and converted it into a rationale for going to war."

The unanimous report by the panel will say there is no evidence that intelligence officials were subjected to pressure to reach particular conclusions about Iraq. That issue had been an early focus of Democrats, but none of the more than 200 intelligence officials interviewed by the panel made such a claim, and the Democrats have recently focused criticism on the question of whether the intelligence was misused.

[BattyDem]

1. WTF?

"Under a deal reached this year between Republicans and Democrats, the Bush administration's role will not be addressed until the Senate Intelligence Committee completes a further stage of its inquiry, but probably not until after the November election. "

Will someone please explain to me why the Dems agreed to that deal?! I am so fed up with them letting Bush* off the hook!!! :grr:

[acmavm]

2. Why have they agreed to all the white-wash crap that they've gone

along with? No guts. They don't represent us, they just try to cover their own butts. The repub control everything, but the dems don't fight. Well, now they'd better get off their asses and quit holding back.

[Sadie5]

3. This makes me sick

Business as usual with the Dems. Just rollover and lie down like good guys so that the Repigs can step on you!

[troublemaker]

4. In fairness, it was probably the price of having any investigation at all

Being in the minority sucks.