7/10/2004

Signifying nothing?

The first piece of the Senate report on intelligence failures seems to have gone pretty much according to plan...basically, every conclusion the U.S. intelligence community came to about Iraq was dreadfully, logic-defyingly untrue, the CIA told Bush, and naturally enough he went ahead and invaded the place like anyone else would have done. Only that was never the reason Bush was really thinking about (that would be the remaking the middle east in our own image/ending the cycle of authoritarian dependency reason). And despite these findings, he really does have weapons* anyhow. And a relationship* with al Qaeda. Unless you really press the issue. Then it's the CIA's fault. How were we to know?

What a mess. I thought Rockefeller did a good job in the press conference, though I imagine he and the other Democrats had a tough choice laid out for them: endorse this report, and get the facts out about how truly absurd the WMD/al Qaeda linkage rationales for war were, albeit with some empty language exonerating the administration for the headlines, or we'll stop this thing up until after the election. I think that was probably an honest choice for him to make...we need some detailed consensus about exactly what was true and not true about Iraq, but we'll see how it plays as the media digest more of the report.

P.S. Apparently there is a harsh appraisal of the Feith Pentagon outfit. It's nice to see people are keeping this story alive. If someone decided to really focus on this, it could apparently mean jail time and big congressional inquiries--the military is not supposed to conduct intelligence functions relegated to the CIA.

* i.e., weapons-making/wanting capacity, weapons of mass destruction program-related activties, weapons of mass destruction appreciating, and potential for relevant scheming about weapons of mass destruction.

* in this instance, relationship is defined as any of the following: talking to, writing letters to, sharing evilness, not having a relationship.

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