All over town this weekend, on overpasses and chainlink fences along the freeway there were hand-lettered signs "The war is a lie." and "Bush Lied". I've been seeing them for months now, but it seems there was a concerted effort to add new signs this weekend, as there were more signs in the afternoon than in the morning along the same freeways.

These signs are highly amusing to me. Along with their partners "Impeach!" Impeach who? Yo Momma? Seriously. Finish your thought, ADHD child. Of course, some of the signs DO say Impeach Bush, but I have to ask, why? I mean, the man has about 6 months left in his term. How much of that time is actually useful political time? ZERO. And how long would it take to go through an impeachment process? Probably more time than he has left as President. Get off it.

But the "lie" meme perseverates. And congress commissioned a study of the available intelligence to determine whether the President actually lied. Senator John D Rockefeller led the Select Committee on Intelligence in this investigation. In a statement Thursday, the senator announced, "In making the case for war, the administration repeatedly presented intelligence as fact when it was unsubstantiated, contradicted or even nonexistent[.]"

But is that really what the report says? Not really. Clearly the information at hand was overinterpreted, aka SPUN, into the message that the Bush administration wanted to present. Probably in an effort to convince the American people to get behind the push to war in Iraq.

However, the report finds that in many circumstances, and on a variety of subjects, the President's (and other administration officials') statements on the war "were generally substantiated by intelligence community estimates." These subjects include Iraq's nuclear weapons program, biological and chemical weapons capability, overall WMD capability, and support for AQ terrorists.

Which to me, raises a very important question, namely, How did our intelligence get so far off base? Did our operatives buy into the lies that scientists and supervisors were passing on to the regime? Or did the CIA et al. deliberately mislead both the Clinton and Bush administrations? Where is the actual failure, then? If the President is essentially parroting what the intelligence community tells them is fact?

So then what can we do with this knowledge, that our intelligence is, at best, flawed? How do we use it to plan and implement strategies for dealing with our enemies and their plots to thwart us? Knowing that such critical intelligence may be wrong makes it extremely difficult to build support for military endeavors, regardless of the import to national security.

Which brings me back to lying. Which is the lie then, Sen. Rockefeller's statement that the report finds that "Bush Lied", or the actual text of the report which shows that the intelligence community "lied" and Bush and Co. believed them?

h/t Babalu

Posted by: caltechgirl at 10:53 AM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
Post contains 495 words, total size 3 kb.

1 Very logical train of thought... something I'm not capable of lately. I know what you mean about the intelligence... but I still believe that it was not wrong. Hussein had plenty of time to disperse/bury, etc... they have found huge weapons caches buried in the desert... and large quantities of ricin. How much is enough I guess is what I'm asking...

Posted by: pam at June 09, 2008 01:37 PM (l6NIn)

2 That's a damn good point. How much is enough to count as "enough"?

Posted by: caltechgirl at June 09, 2008 01:38 PM (IfXtw)

3 sorry to go way off topic, but please consider yourself tagged

Posted by: wRitErsbLock at June 10, 2008 05:01 AM (+MvHD)

4 They also found a number (several hundred, as I recall) chemical warheads. And last I checked, that is not equal to zero.

Posted by: Ken S, Fifth String on the Banjo of Life at June 10, 2008 08:32 AM (Yh9SA)

5 Think it could it have anything to do with the lack of human intel that former Pres. Clinton got rid of?

Posted by: NAVY CPO at June 11, 2008 10:29 AM (sGtp+)

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