You're twisting my words. I've never, not once, not ever, said that Bush was lying about Iraqi WMD. I'm saying that the intelligence on Iraqi WMD programs was massaged and cherry-picked to support the war, and dissenting intelligence was rejected, even when it came from US intelligence sources.
For the allegation that dissenting intelligence, all of which proved to be accurate, I am sticking with the words of former CIA director Tenet, National Security Advisor Hadley, the President's own commission investigating intelligence failures, the Senate Intelligence Committee's report (first part is out now, second part still to come), and various declassified documents.
With respect to the Niger yellowcake, the Senate Intelligence Committee concluded that the most that the President reasonably could have said is that Saddam "might" have been trying to obtain yellowcake from Niger, and that the CIA should have told the President and members of Congress that the State Department intelligence agency disputed this, and that the CIA was reviewing it because it had become apparent that the assessment was based on forgeries and false reports.
See conclusion 1 of that report: "Conclusion 1: Most of the major key judgments in the Intelligence Community’s October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), Iraq’s Continuing Programs for Weapons of Mass Destruction, either overstated, or were not supported by, the underlying intelligence reporting. A series of failures, particularly in analytic trade craft, led to the mischaracterization of the intelligence."
See Niger Conclusions, pp. 37-48 of the Niger chapter in the Senate Intelligence Committee report.
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With respect to the aluminum tubes, see the conclusions at the end of the chapter on the next chapter, on Iraq's nuclear program.
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nytimes.com
I am aware that you still think that somebody (the Easter Bunny?) spirited WMD out of Iraq, but the President and the Senate and the CIA don't say this. |
