Cooking The Intelligence?

As reported in the Sunday Washington Post, it appears that two separate assessments from the National Intelligence Council, in January, 2003, predicted that the invasion and occupation of Iraq could lead to internal violence and provide a boost to Islamic extremists and terrorists in the region.

Apparently, the reports, which were delivered to White house officials, went on to discuss the fact that in post-Saddam Iraq, domestic groups would fight each other and former Iraqi military could merge with terrorist groups.

One of the assessments suggested that an invasion of Iraq would give a boost to political Islam.

The article says that when these assessments were given to senior officials of the Department of Defense, the DOD said that the assessments were "too negative" and ignored.

Even George Tenet, the disgraceful ex-Director of Central Intelligence (and Medal of Freedom recipient) said, in his recent book, that the NIC papers on Iraq said that "Iraqi political culture is so imbued with norms alien to the democratic experience... that it may resist the most vigorous and prolonged democratic treatments."

Great. This was said before the war.

Let me get this straight:

The NIC tells the national leadership (President Pinhead) that the Iraqis will resist democratic reforms; that the Iraqis will start fighting each other; that former Iraqi soldiers will join with terrorists and foreign fighters; that occupation by western nations will be widely unacceptable in Iraq; and that an invasion/occupation will cause a boost for political Islam, and exacerbate terrorism... and the leadership goes ahead with the invasion and occupation anyway?

As Shakespeare's Hamlet would have said: "That would be scanned"

Our government, no... the President, said that the invasion of Iraq was about "weapons of mass destruction" democratizing Iraq, but had already been told, months prior, that the invasion would not likely produce said democracy, and indeed, would lead to sectarian violence, and increase political Islam and terrorism?

Does that sum it up?

The President, is the same guy that gave us his Top Gun moment on an aircraft carrier, and told us that our mission was accomplished, even though it wasn't. This is the same guy that was told, before the fact, that the war would have the precise results that we have been seeing since 2003... This is the same guy that, despite what he was told by the leaders of the National Intelligence Council, launched a war that has caused the deaths of over three thousand Americans, and untold numbers of Iraqi civilians. This is the same guy that created the failed-state of Iraq. This is the same guy that has caused a number of my colleagues and a few of my good friends to be separated from their families, sent to war, and in the case of two of them, to be wounded in combat.

He knew all along, what was likely to happen... and he did it anyway.

Nice.

Mr. Bush, I am a firm believer that someday, everyone will have to account for themselves before their maker.

You have a lot of explaining to do... and somehow, I don't think that your excuses are going to fly.