George Bush in an interview with Charles Gibson stated he regretted the U.S relied on flawed intelligence as the basis for starting the war in Iraq. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, sipping her Kool Aid, repeated the same regret just recently. We did base our invasion on flawed intelligence: it was the intelligence of Rumsfeld, Cheney, and our addicted-to-failure-president, George Bush. Oh yeah, and throw in Wolfowitz and the other ditzy neo-cons as well.
The neo-cons put a target on Saddam's back in the 1990's, they just couldn't implement anything until after Sept. 11. The only thing they'd succeeded in doing was create an alliance with the leader-in-exile of the Iraqi National Congress, Ahmad Chalabi, a convicted criminal whom the neo-cons described as the George Washington of Iraq. Chalabi didn't care what they called him as long as they kept giving him money, which they did. These are the seeds of the Iraqi war. And these men are the creators of the flawed intelligence.
Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz were so obsessed that following September 11, (although Ben Laden, the architect of 9/11 was known to be based in Afghanistan), they wanted to attack Iraq. They had this fantasy that they could get rid of Saddam, democratize Iraq and it would provide a model for the entire Middle East. This fantasy obliterated any other reality for these deep thinkers, and they were willing to use the tragedy of September 11 to make it real. Such cold, cynical, heartless thinking is more than flawed intelligence, it's evil. That these men thought of of 9/11 as an opportunity to implement some vague neo-con scatter brained plan is an abomination.
Enter Cheny, the next Machiavellian brainiac, who decides that CIA information will now come directly to him, unfiltered. Prior to this, all information gathered by the CIA was checked to make sure it was factual before it was passed on to the president. So, now this mishmash of information is totally unreliable. Nobody knows good intel from bad, but Cheney begins to cherry pick whatever he needs to back up the neo-con plan to attack Iraq and get rid of Saddam. Yes, Cheney purposely relied on flawed intelligence to push us into war. There was even a cherry picking agency created by the Pentagon. It was called the Office of Special Plans. This agency's only job was to sift through the ragbag of intel and prepare assessments suitable for use in the Bush Administration's prewar scare campaign.
So, the president and his staff purposely shaped the flawed intelligence they now use to excuse themselves. That takes chutzpah to its highest level. Yet, the president, Cheney, Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld, don't seem to feel they've done anything wrong. The dead speak their names with dread, but these men continue spouting the same bullshit, seeing the rightness of their idea instead of the wrongness of its execution, and all the bloody horror it unleashed.
And Condoleeza Rice? The puppet speaks with its master's voice.
