A front page story at the Washington Post has an damning sub-head
and it's lede is no less an indictment
Intelligence provided by former undersecretary of defense Douglas J. Feith to buttress the White House case for invading Iraq included "reporting of dubious quality or reliability" that supported the political views of senior administration officials rather than the conclusions of the intelligence community, according to a report by the Pentagon's inspector general.
No where in this article do we find the conclusion reported by the New York Times about the very same report
A Pentagon investigation into the handling of prewar intelligence has criticized civilian Pentagon officials for conducting their own intelligence analysis to find links between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda, but said the officials did not violate any laws or mislead Congress, according to Congressional officials who have read the report.
Though much later in the article, the Washington Post does allude to this, obliquely, and by quoting "Pentagon officials" as if in defense
Pentagon officials said in responses cited in the summary that no senior policymakers mistook these briefings as "intelligence assessments," the inspector general said that administration officials had indeed cited classified intelligence that allegedly documented a close al-Qaeda-Iraq relationship.
The report in question is not about WMDs and Iraq, it is about al Qaida's connections with Iraq. And the opinion of Sen Levin, who was one who commissioned the IG's investigation, is featured prominantly.
"The bottom line is that intelligence relating to the Iraq-al-Qaeda relationship was manipulated by high-ranking officials in the Department of Defense to support the administration's decision to invade Iraq," Levin said yesterday. "The inspector general's report is a devastating condemnation of inappropriate activities in the DOD policy office that helped take this nation to war."
It must be a severe disappointment to the esteemed Senator that the report concluded that "officials did not violate any laws or mislead Congress" even though the Washington Post reports that
The summary document confirmed a range of accusations that Levin had leveled against Feith's office, alleging inaccurate work.
I guess this hit piece by antiwar writer Walter Pincus is the consolation prize. And the AP follows up with other misleading statements, such as:
The 2004 report from the Sept. 11 commission found no evidence of a collaborative relationship between Saddam and Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida terror organization before the U.S. invasion.
Which clearly is not true. The 9-11 Commission could find no evidence of links between Iraq and al-Qaida in the matter of 9-11, the subject of its investigation, but did find
"On particular projects, specifically including weapons development, al Qaeda would work cooperatively with the Government of Iraq."
And I have documented the numerous, pre-war links my own self.
So Senator Levin wants to investigate this to death even though the report he commissioned says there is nothing to investigate.
I can only echo Senator Chambliss' comment
"I'm trying to figure out why we are here,"
But it should be obvious:
Repeat after me the Left's meme "Bush lied; people died"
