Senate Intel Dems Get A Do-Over
The Senate Intelligence Committee's report on pre-Operation Iraqi Freedom intelligence was published two years ago, and it completely exonerated the Bush Administration of the false charge that White House "neocons" fabricated evidence of Saddamite WMD in order to "mislead the country into war." This unquestionably explains why Senate Dems would want to reopen that report and re-write it along the lines of the paranoid partisan fantasies (the so-called "Phase II" report). What is baffling to me is why Senate Republicans let them do it.
The latest incarnation of "Bush lied, people died" goes something like this: US intelligence agencies had little or no direct "humint" resources inside Iraq (thanks to the Clinton administration and a generation of disembowlment of the "dirty" aspects of intelligence gathering in favor almost solely of antiseptic but inadequate reliance on technological alternatives), and so were reliant on Iraqi dissident organizations like the Iraqi National Congress for "on the ground" intel. The INC had no such intel, at least none of any strategic value, but "MSU'd" it anyway and fed it to the Bushies, who eagerly took it and ran recklessly with it because it fit their long-since preconceived notions and biases for war at any cost. Not quite as boner-inducing as "Bush lied!" - more like "Bush was duped but didn't give a bleep!" - but still a vile smear nonetheless.
In point of fact, the guts of "Phase II," as opposed to the Bushophobic "conclusions," clearly establish that....
Conclusions, it need be reiterated yet again, that were shared by every intelligence agency in the Western world - that Saddam Hussein was a genocidal tyrant in support of multiple terrorist networks, including al Qaeda, and in development (nukes) and possession (chemical/biological) of weapons of mass destruction - as the "Phase II" fine print itself concedes.
Indeed, the so-called "conclusions" seem far more zeroed in on the supposedly non-existent ties between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. Leaving aside the fact that there is, in fact, substantial evidence of such ties going back to the early '90s, "Phase II" itself, according to Tom Joscelyn in the Weekly Standard, says almost nothing serious about the subject at all:
In other words, the committee's staff did the exact same thing the Democrats accuse the Bush Administration of doing - uncritically accepting the fanciful testimony of individuals of dubious credibility because it fits their preconceived ideological notions.
(I also can't help but take note that Saddam's description of what he'd have done "if he'd considered the US his enemy" - allying with North Korea and Red China - has already been done by Iran without drawing even a raised eyebrow from these same senatorial whitewashed sepulchres.)
The Donks' projections don't end there:
In other words, the Democrats on the Intelligence Committee also cherry-picked evidence supporting their propaganda meme, another despicably dishonest act of which they accuse the President. And thus, to turn the false words of Carl Levin and Jay Rockefeller back on them, it is this "Phase II editing" that is "a devastating indictment of the Democrat Party's unrelenting, misleading, and deceptive attempts" to smear the Bush Administration's case for war in Iraq as "fundamentally misleading." It is the Democrat Party that is trying to "mislead the country" out of not only Iraq, not only out of the Middle East altogether, but also back into the same weak, idiotic, suicidally pacifist foreign policy that got thousands of American civilians killed five years ago and will get manyfold more killed if it is reinstated.
And so we return to the fundamental question of why - for what possible purpose did majority Republicans allow this history-revisionist travesty? Brother Meringoff has an educated hunch:
In a word, RINOs.
There's a reason why I once christened Chuck Hagel as "perfidious devilspawn." The same goes for all his "moderate/maverick" turncoat co-horts, who will bear the blame if Donk dreams of political victory and American defeat come true in November, and the base wrath that will swiftly and viciously ensue.
The latest incarnation of "Bush lied, people died" goes something like this: US intelligence agencies had little or no direct "humint" resources inside Iraq (thanks to the Clinton administration and a generation of disembowlment of the "dirty" aspects of intelligence gathering in favor almost solely of antiseptic but inadequate reliance on technological alternatives), and so were reliant on Iraqi dissident organizations like the Iraqi National Congress for "on the ground" intel. The INC had no such intel, at least none of any strategic value, but "MSU'd" it anyway and fed it to the Bushies, who eagerly took it and ran recklessly with it because it fit their long-since preconceived notions and biases for war at any cost. Not quite as boner-inducing as "Bush lied!" - more like "Bush was duped but didn't give a bleep!" - but still a vile smear nonetheless.
In point of fact, the guts of "Phase II," as opposed to the Bushophobic "conclusions," clearly establish that....
our intelligence agencies....administered polygraphs to INC-related sources, treated information from these sources with skepticism, and checked it carefully against other information. To the extent that our agencies thought some of the information was worth mentioning, they mentioned it in various documents. However, as far as [can be told] from the fact section of the Intelligence Committee's report, information from INC-related source never caused our intelligence services to reach a conclusion that differed from the conclusion they would have reached without that information.
Conclusions, it need be reiterated yet again, that were shared by every intelligence agency in the Western world - that Saddam Hussein was a genocidal tyrant in support of multiple terrorist networks, including al Qaeda, and in development (nukes) and possession (chemical/biological) of weapons of mass destruction - as the "Phase II" fine print itself concedes.
Indeed, the so-called "conclusions" seem far more zeroed in on the supposedly non-existent ties between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. Leaving aside the fact that there is, in fact, substantial evidence of such ties going back to the early '90s, "Phase II" itself, according to Tom Joscelyn in the Weekly Standard, says almost nothing serious about the subject at all:
The committee's staff made little effort to determine whether or not the testimony of former Iraqi regime officials was truthful. In fact, Saddam Hussein and several of his top operatives - all of whom have an obvious incentive to lie - are cited or quoted without caveats of any sort. In Saddam's debriefing it was suggested that he may cooperate with al Qaeda because "the enemy of my enemy is my friend." According to the report, "Saddam answered that the United States was not Iraq's enemy. He claimed that Iraq only opposed U.S. policies. He specified that if he wanted to cooperate with the enemies of the U.S., he would have allied with North Korea or China."
In other words, the committee's staff did the exact same thing the Democrats accuse the Bush Administration of doing - uncritically accepting the fanciful testimony of individuals of dubious credibility because it fits their preconceived ideological notions.
(I also can't help but take note that Saddam's description of what he'd have done "if he'd considered the US his enemy" - allying with North Korea and Red China - has already been done by Iran without drawing even a raised eyebrow from these same senatorial whitewashed sepulchres.)
The Donks' projections don't end there:
The media has also been quick to cite the report's conclusions concerning Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's relationship (or lack thereof) with Saddam's regime. But once again the committee's staff overlooked much contradictory evidence. The report concludes, "Postwar information indicates that Saddam Hussein attempted, unsuccessfully, to locate and capture al-Zarqawi and that the regime did not have a relationship with, harbor, or turn a blind eye toward Zarqawi."
The staff cites debriefings which support this conclusion, but do not give any weight at all to testimony which runs counter to it. For example, the Phase I Senate Intelligence report noted that a top al Qaeda operative named Abu Zubaydah "indicated that he heard that an important al-Qaida associate, Abu Mus'ab al-Zarqawi, and others had good relationships with Iraqi intelligence." [emphasis added]
In other words, the Democrats on the Intelligence Committee also cherry-picked evidence supporting their propaganda meme, another despicably dishonest act of which they accuse the President. And thus, to turn the false words of Carl Levin and Jay Rockefeller back on them, it is this "Phase II editing" that is "a devastating indictment of the Democrat Party's unrelenting, misleading, and deceptive attempts" to smear the Bush Administration's case for war in Iraq as "fundamentally misleading." It is the Democrat Party that is trying to "mislead the country" out of not only Iraq, not only out of the Middle East altogether, but also back into the same weak, idiotic, suicidally pacifist foreign policy that got thousands of American civilians killed five years ago and will get manyfold more killed if it is reinstated.
And so we return to the fundamental question of why - for what possible purpose did majority Republicans allow this history-revisionist travesty? Brother Meringoff has an educated hunch:
[S]ome senators who regret voting to go to war with Iraq seem to think that it sits better if, instead of being influenced by intelligence assessments that were merely mistaken, they can claim to be misled by assessments that arguably were fraudulent. Perhaps more to the point, some Senators think that it will sit worse for President Bush if they can claim that the intelligence process was contaminated by an outside organization (the INC) that "stove-piped" information to Bush, via the Vice President's office, via the neo-cons at the Defense Department, without proper vetting.
It is for one or both of these purposes, I believe, that the Democrats on the Intelligence Committee, along with Republican Senators Hagel and Snowe, amended the conclusions contained in the original report to make it sound as if INC-related sources were influential, rather than peripheral at best. [emphasis added]
In a word, RINOs.
There's a reason why I once christened Chuck Hagel as "perfidious devilspawn." The same goes for all his "moderate/maverick" turncoat co-horts, who will bear the blame if Donk dreams of political victory and American defeat come true in November, and the base wrath that will swiftly and viciously ensue.
posted by JASmius at 11:00 PM
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