And these people are supposed to be the leadership of our country! I'll be most Americans thought these idiots had read every document pertaining to the War on Terror. I know I did. And to find out most of them haven't done what I consider to be their jobs has really pissed me off!

Hell's Bells, if I had access to intelligence reports, I would have read every word.

Oh, that's right. They've been too busy flapping their gums and spouting pap with no substance that they didn't have time to read. But they sure do have time to slander, libel, and just plain bitch!

Bastards!

Aww come on! Every friggin flag officer has to have some aide turn a complicated report into a one page Executive Summary. Did they even do that??

Correction:

I'll bet most Americans....

Sorry about that. DAYUM! I can't type when I get excited.

Before the election last year, I recall reading where Kerry had admitted he hadn't bothered to read the entire report. Misled? Or just plain S-T-U-P-I-D?

Good grief! Reids only interest is in bashing Bush and destroying America.

I agree , if I had a chance to read an intelligence reports I wouldabsolutely read it. It shows how interested he is in our security.

This stuff goin' get vicious heading into next November.

Amazing how Bush is to "incompent" to lead a war but compent enough to "mislead" the free world.

Lotsa 'D' students in Congress.

Most of these arrogant assholes in Congress don't bother to read the bills that they vote on. Why would they bother to read a report which was produced by - in their view - some other arrogant asshole in the Executive branch?

Actually, I'm not convinced that Harry Reid can read.

Okay so six or so months ago the Democrats were extolling the astounding stupidity of the President and now they say he misled them. So as I understand it the President is an idiot but he was able to mislead this bunch of scholars. I guess they really do believe that the public has a very short memory span.

"Aww come on! Every friggin flag officer has to have some aide turn a complicated report into a one page Executive Summary. Did they even do that??"

Yes, it came with a summary, and that's what the congress critters say they read, mostly...

Worth recalling some details about the NIE. Try Bob Graham's What I Knew Before the Invasion
----------

In February 2002, after a briefing on the status of the war in Afghanistan, the commanding officer, Gen. Tommy Franks, told me the war was being compromised as specialized personnel and equipment were being shifted from Afghanistan to prepare for the war in Iraq -- a war more than a year away. Even at this early date, the White House was signaling that the threat posed by Saddam Hussein was of such urgency that it had priority over the crushing of al Qaeda.

...

At a meeting of the Senate intelligence committee on Sept. 5, 2002, CIA Director George Tenet was asked what the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) provided as the rationale for a preemptive war in Iraq. An NIE is the product of the entire intelligence community, and its most comprehensive assessment. I was stunned when Tenet said that no NIE had been requested by the White House and none had been prepared. Invoking our rarely used senatorial authority, I directed the completion of an NIE.

Tenet objected, saying that his people were too committed to other assignments to analyze Saddam Hussein's capabilities and will to use chemical, biological and possibly nuclear weapons. We insisted, and three weeks later the community produced a classified NIE.

...

Under questioning, Tenet added that the information in the NIE had not been independently verified by an operative responsible to the United States. In fact, no such person was inside Iraq. Most of the alleged intelligence came from Iraqi exiles or third countries, all of which had an interest in the United States' removing Hussein, by force if necessary.

Ugh, what's that awful stench?

Oh, just tubby and his left-wing memes. I should've known.

The blockquote was supposed to include all four paragraphs above -- sorry about that.

-----------------
Meanwhile, the Cheney admin story about use of intel is completely falling apart. The irony is that if they hadn't stonewalled so long, they might have gotten the whitewash out before all these new revelations that they now have to address.
------------
From Today's LA Times:

The German intelligence officials responsible for one of the most important informants on Saddam Hussein's suspected weapons of mass destruction say that the Bush administration and the CIA repeatedly exaggerated his claims during the run-up to the war in Iraq.

Five senior officials from Germany's Federal Intelligence Service, or BND, said in interviews with The Times that they warned U.S. intelligence authorities that the source, an Iraqi defector code-named Curveball, never claimed to produce germ weapons and never saw anyone else do so.

According to the Germans, President Bush mischaracterized Curveball's information when he warned before the war that Iraq had at least seven mobile factories brewing biological poisons. Then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell also misstated Curveball's accounts in his prewar presentation to the United Nations on Feb. 5, 2003, the Germans said.

Curveball's German handlers for the last six years said his information was often vague, mostly secondhand and impossible to confirm.

"This was not substantial evidence," said a senior German intelligence official. "We made clear we could not verify the things he said."

Oh, just tubby and his left-wing memes. I should've known.

The stench is the uncovering of filthy lies after two years.

Check the new info about Curveball.

Then see if there's ONE among you who can address the facts.

Anyone at all?

As VDH reminds us, the Dems are not just wrong about the proper standard we should apply to Iraq's WMD's (something which DID exist after the first Gulf War and which they have NOT proven were destroyed or accounted for by the time of Iraq's liberation). They are also wrong about the importance of WMD's in our decision to invade. In their October 2002 resolution authorizing the use of force against Hussein, the Senate - including a majority of Democrats - articulated no less than twenty-three separate justfications for the war. WMD's were only one.

Spin that, bitches.

I think one of the most remarkable developments in domestic politics recently is that anyone who still believes in accountability, the US legal system, transparency in government, not leaking classified information, protecting national security, removing security clearances from those who have leaked classified information...

... anyone who believes in any of these things is now labeled LEFT WING.

I think that's great. The right wing has defined the left as the only ones embracing the best principles of the US government.

There's a reason the Dems want public education without competition - the dumbing down will only reflect well upon such ignoramouses as Reid.

Doesn't matter if Reid can read. Reid wouldn't know the difference between read and reed if his life depended upon it. The reason we can know this is because he doesn't know the difference between disagreeing with the President and attacking him with half-truths, distortions and outright lies.

Hasn't read it yet! Harrumph! He wasn't elected to attack the President. He was elected to conduct the business of the nation, and he can't seem to tear himself away from his personal mission long enough to stay informed.

VRWC tries to cloud things up as usual by forgetting about the UN inpectors, among other things: "In their October 2002 resolution authorizing the use of force against Hussein, the Senate - including a majority of Democrats..."

You really don't know the answer to this yourself?

You really don't know, even though I've posted on this?

Really?

So according to you and your "justifications" (who called them that?), why did Colin Powell have to tell such whoppers to the UN?

Why did Cheney and the rest have to exaggerate about the NUCLEAR aspect of Saddam's capabilities?

If the case could have been made honestly, why didn't they?

If they were working in good faith, why stonewall the investigations?

Spin that, losers.

You can also read what the LA story means about failure to investigate.

So the Silbermann-Robb Commission hasn't spoken to Curveball or the German intelligence officials who handled his case and provided the conduit of information to US intelligence agencies. Almost certainly, the Senate intel committee investigation hasn't either. But the LA Times has managed to speak with a slew of current and former intelligence officials who have provided information not included in those official reports.

Now, gaining direct access to the sources of even an allied intelligence agency is quite dicey and frequently not possible. Even more so in a highly politicized investigative context as opposed to in the process of intelligence gathering and analysis. So there's no reason to fault these investigations for not getting a hold of Curveball himself; nor do I think there would have been any particular purpose served in doing so.

But the Times article suggests that many people in the stream of information passing back and forth between German and US intelligence and the White House were not spoken to either. And those people provided information which puts the whole matter in a rather more sinister light -- not just botched intelligence work and analysis but deliberate distortions of what evidence we had before the war and refusals to come clean about highly relevant contradictory information.

This speaks again to a point we and many others have made repeatedly: the highly circumscribed nature of these two investigations. The very structure and scope of these inquiries were designed to leave much of the story untold -- quite apart from the numerous intentionally misleading passages we've noted in the Senate intel report from last year.

O.K., tubby, where's the accountability for not reading intel reports? Where's the accountability for outright lies?

Speaking of accountability, where's the accountability for publishing classified information? (See WaPo and NYT about how much accountability they've taken on for doing this in just the past few months.)

And you, where's the accountability for you for the parroting of leftist (and sometimes treasonous) "talking points" you continually throw into this blog? Just 'cause Tubby Teddy or Dingy Harry say something, or it's reported in such upstanding and always truthful and unbiased stanchions of Truth as the NYT or WaPo doesn't mean the information is unquestionable.

Get a life, sir, or figure out how to verify information somewhere other than the al Jazeera or Dems' websites.

Here are the official causi bellorum of the United States as adopted by the majority of Democrats and Republicans alike in October of 2002. All the sleight of hand and all the selective amnesia in the world won't change the record. It does provoke questions about whether the Dems will remember a month from now that they just voted to stay in Iraq, but that's about it.

Spin faster, bitches! Spin!

VRWC: You forget that *I* was the one who posted to the actual text of the resolution about a week ago to make a point about the inspections -- and predictably NOT ONE OF YOU could address it -- essentially admitting I was right.

I take it you have no answer about the lies and deceptions around intel? You don't recall how the Cheney admin sold the US public on the war? You forgot about the UN inspectors being kicked out?

Powell at UN? Cheney on nuclear WMD?

Nothing at all?

Don't bother spinning. It's no good anymore.

And isn't it funny that I keep being accused of quoting people and sites I NEVER QUOTED?

Jeez, can you get ANYTHING right?

I think I hear a rumbling troll tummy. Back to Steve's point about the Dem's amnesia problem, though. Seems to me they are still relying on sympathetic portrayals in the fellow traveling MSM, the spin cycle, and changing the subject when the counterstory of good news inevitably comes. That's so last century.

Rove plays his game better than they do. It's rope-a-dope for the early rounds while the moonbats drive the Dems to extreme positions and then they get a sustained late drubbing for all the craziness. It should be a fun election.

O.K., tubby, where's the accountability for not reading intel reports? Where's the accountability for outright lies?

Bring it on! NIE had to be demanded, was rushed in 3 weeks, not verified or vetted, and delivered just in time for vote. Key points of contention were glossed over or omitted.

Your republican leadership at work.

Accountability for lies? That's all I've been asking for.

"Rove plays his game better than they do. It's rope-a-dope for the early rounds while the moonbats drive the Dems to extreme positions..."

Repubs are great at the PR games, and at campaigns. It's GOVERNING that they are shitty at.

The "extreme" position that some Dems hold is the one held by the majority of the country:

Bush mislead the country into war. The war was a mistake.

The cherry-picking and distorting of intel gets a little clearer each week.

Spin that, losers.

You are one boring fucking troll.

You are one boring fucking troll.

It's why he gets starved. His sources frequently contradict him, he is immune to any evidence that does not support his preconceptions, and when you go to the trouble of demolishing him he just changes the subject and comes back in a few days with the same tired dreck you just refuted. Fun for a little while, but debating a dishonest True Believing Moonbat like tubby loses its appeal pretty quickly.

The "Bush lied" meme is a good example. The blatant dishonesty of claiming that Bush supposedly knew what every major intelligence outfit did not know (something that has yet to be proven, BTW) and then deceived a Congress with access to the same intelligence he had always gets exposed when it's debated. Doesn't matter a whit. He's got it tattooed on his brain and will go to his grave repeating it, probably with a lot of other drivel about mind control and water floridation, rigged voting machines, and the right wing news media.

It's a little sad, but then again I don't like him much so I'm pretty quickly over it.

23 separate reasons for the war in that bipartisan resolution. But ChimpyBushHitlerMcHaliburton misdirected the world's intelligence agencies and WMD's were the real reason we're in Iraq. Riiiiight.

For those of you too busy to read through tubino's dishonest drivel, email me for the executive summary and I'll overnight you a piece of shit-stained ass paper.

On the other hand, you probably don't want tubby staying for the weekend. He tends to drive property values down.

I wouldn't waste the postage stamp Warden, although I do appreciate your public service.

I saw some Dem congressman on the tube tonight. Every time he was asked if, since Reid, Kennedy et al were given the same intel BusHitler & Co. was, why was BusHitler lying and ReidKennedyBoxeretc.etc.etc. were only "misled"? The best answer he could come up with was, "The buck stops here."

That, of course, does not explain why GW's is a lie and such paragons of Truth as TubbyTeddy are innocent victims, but hey, anything to change the subject...