Lying Your Way Into War

Last week, on that hole-in-the-news-cycle they call Friday, the Pentagon released a report that admits -- finally -- that the intelligence they released was not the same as the intelligence that they had regarding the Pentagon's "justifications" (if lies can ever be called justifications) for invading Iraq.

The report said the team headed by Douglas Feith, under secretary of defense for policy, developed "alternative" assessments of intelligence on Iraq that contradicted the intelligence community and drew conclusions "that were not supported by the available intelligence."

The report says, in part (my emphases):

While such actions were not illegal or unauthorized, the actions were, in our opinion, inappropriate given that the products did not clearly show the variance with the consensus of the Intelligence Community and were, in some cases, shown as intelligence products.

In other words, the "products" were the opinion of Douglas Feith, the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, approved by Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz, and passed off as "intelligence." In words even more direct, clear, and understandable, they lied to us.

Howie (and his ilk -- all 25% of them) still won't believe that there were no links between Iraq and al Qa'ida. Whatever the Bush administration says must be true.

But that's a problem. It is a problem because this entire affair -- the six year history of the Bush administration -- has weakened rather than strengthened the US Intelligence Community and our national security. As reported earlier here, here, here, here, and here, the CIA under the Bush administration is in danger of being emasculated, turned into an instrument of politics rather than objective intelligence gathering. The DoD Report does nothing to quell this fear. Feith's activities, with Rumsfeld's and Wolfowitz's knowledge and approval,

undercuts the Intelligence Community by indicating to the recipient of the briefing that there are "fundamental problems" with the way that the Intelligence Community was assessing information.

In other words, the objective truth didn't suit their desires: the invasion of Iraq. So alternative stories had do be manufactured. The US Intelligence community, in doing its job, wasn't doing the job the Bush administration wanted: justifying an invasion of Iraq. So it was time to make the CIA irrelevant.

It is time for us, the American people, to write an alternative ending to the Iraq war, and to the dismal accomplishments of the Bush administration: IMPEACHMENT.