Five Years Later: They Lied About Iraq

You don't say. And Sen. Rockefeller, the Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, which put together the current Phase II report, preresponds to the pushback:

“There is no question we all relied on flawed intelligence. But, there is a fundamental difference between relying on incorrect intelligence and deliberately painting a picture to the American people that you know is not fully accurate.

The "Everybody - even the Europeans! - agreed that Iraq had WMDs!" is not going to cut it anymore.

And, without comment:

The report found that the clandestine meetings between Pentagon officials and Iranians in Rome and Paris were inappropriate and mishandled from beginning to end. Deputy National Security Advisor Steve Hadley and Deputy Secretary Paul Wolfowitz failed to keep the Intelligence Community and the State Department appropriately informed about the meetings. The involvement of Manucher Ghobanifer and Michael Ledeen an the meetings was inappropriate.

And: My senator hits it harder:

“This is stunning: the Secretary of Defense, testifying before Congress about whether or not ground forces would be strategically necessary in a war against Iraq, said that the Executive Branch “knew” something that it did not know.

“The intelligence available at the time made this clear, and two months later a report prepared specifically for Secretary Rumsfeld directly contradicted what he told the Committee. As far as I know, neither Rumsfeld nor anyone else from his office made any attempt to contact the Committee and correct the public record, and the result was that Congress and the American people were misled on a question of the utmost importance. I do not think that this is a matter that Congress can afford to ignore and I hope that the Armed Services Committee will take a serious look at Secretary Rumsfeld’s statements.”

Administration Warned of Iraq Debacle

No surprise, but it has to come out.

U.S. intelligence agencies warned the Bush administration in early 2003 that invading Iraq could create internal conflict that would give Iran and al Qaeda new opportunities to expand their influence, according to an upcoming Senate report.

Officials familiar with the Senate Intelligence Committee investigation also say analysts warned against U.S. domination in the region, which could increase extremist recruiting.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the report's declassification is not finished. It could be made public as soon as this week.

The committee also found that the warnings predicting what would happen after the U.S.-led invasion were circulated widely in government, including to the Defense Department and the Office of the Vice President. It wasn't clear whether President Bush was briefed.

It wasn't clear? I'll make it clear: President Bush was briefed on it and he was too extremist and stupid to take the advice. Or he was such a second-hand patsy that it wouldn't have made any difference.

I met a writer for the Weekly Standard recently and he, a helluva nice and very smart guy, was big on the "What's done is done" thing that is very popular among "some people." There is of course truth to that, but it ignores something so fundamentally human: that examining our past is how we learn from our mistakes. And this is one of the big ones.