When David Kay dropped a huge turd in the punch bowl last week, I didn't expect the mainstream media to completely fucking miss the point regarding the bad intel on Iraq, and swallow Kay's line that it's the CIA's fault.
But they did.
So it was left to Knight Ridder's excellent Jonathan Landay, Warren Strobel and Joseph Galloway to get it right. Or, rather, to state the obvious.
Bush's inquiry into Iraq intelligence must include Cheney, Pentagon
What went wrong with intelligence on Iraq will never be known unless the inquiry proposed by President Bush examines secret intelligence efforts led by Vice President Dick Cheney and Pentagon hawks, current and former U.S officials said Monday.
[...]
The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, didn’t dispute that the CIA failed to accurately assess the state of Iraq’s weapons programs. But they said that the intelligence efforts led by Cheney magnified the errors through exaggeration, oversights and mistaken deductions.
Those efforts bypassed normal channels, used Iraqi exiles and defectors of questionable reliability, and produced findings on former dictator Saddam Hussein's links to al Qaida and his illicit arms programs that were disputed by analysts at the CIA, the State Department and other agencies, the officials said. “There were more agencies than CIA providing intelligence . . . that are worth scrutiny, including the (Pentagon’s now-disbanded) Office of Special Plans and the office of the vice president,” said a former senior military official who was involved in planning the Iraq invasion.
The article is a must read.
posted by dackHey, I think we can all sleep a little better knowing that Bush is going to personally appoint the people who will investigate this fiasco.
I'm sure it will be every bit as fruitful as Governor Arnie's investigation into his own groping activities and O.J. Simpson's search for The Real Killer.
Posted by: Thom on February 3, 2004 08:30 AMThe Office of Special Plans no longer exists, so I guess it's down the memory hole.
Posted by: billy on February 3, 2004 10:12 AM