sorry, this is a dupe

[jbfam4]

Chapman: Shifting the blame for the debacle in the Iraq war
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/chi-0407180435jul18,1,6613331.column

Published July 18, 2004

Sorry posted here, yesterday.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=103x63219

The Senate Intelligence Committee has accused the U.S. intelligence community of gross errors in the information that justified the invasion of Iraq, and how do diehard supporters of the war take the news? They're thrilled.

In their view, this exonerates President Bush of the charge that he stretched the truth in his zeal for war. "A few apologies would seem to be in order," crowed an editorial in The Wall Street Journal, arguing that "this unanimous study" found the claims that Bush misled Americans "are without merit." Bush said he welcomed the assessment of "where the intelligence-gathering services went short"--deftly shifting the blame away from himself.

But the committee was not exactly unanimous in acquitting Bush. In fact, ranking Democrat Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia and two of his Democratic colleagues, Carl Levin of Michigan and Richard Durbin of Illinois, attached a statement that was highly unflattering: "Administration officials undertook a relentless public campaign which repeatedly characterized the Iraq weapons of mass destruction program in more ominous and threatening terms than the intelligence community analysis substantiated. Similarly, public statements of senior officials on Iraqi links to terrorism generally and Al Qaeda specifically were often based on a selective release of intelligence information that implied a cooperative, operational relationship that the intelligence community did not believe existed."

They were not the only ones who said Bush deliberately deceived us. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), in her own statement, charged that "the administration did not fairly represent the intelligence" and "oversold the imminent need for war." When the president said we needed to remove Saddam Hussein because he might pass unconventional weapons to Al Qaeda, noted Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), he "directly contradicted the intelligence information he had been given"--which was that Hussein was not likely to do so, unless he was attacked.