[Ghoulish Delight]

Originally Posted by Alex

GD opposes on geopolitical grounds but did say

I don't think I've said anything since inconsistent with my statements there. I said we were in Afghanistan for legitimate reasons and were turning our attention toward Iraq for illegitimate reasons.

I still think Saddam was someone that needed to be dealt with, but that was not the way to go about doing so. "Do something to nip it in the bud" never equated to military aggression in my mind.

I'm a little appalled at myself for suggesting assassination.

This all then leads to what people believe was deliberate misleading or falsification of intelligence by Bush. While it is true that the intelligence was bad, I do not believe it was intentionally falsified, which is the major argument of those who were for "doing something" now base their opposition on.

The Senate Intelligenc Committe disagrees with your belief.

Statements and implications by the President and Secretary of State suggesting that Iraq and al-Qa’ida had a partnership, or that Iraq had provided al-Qa’ida with weapons training, were not substantiated by the intelligence. Ø Statements by the President and the Vice President indicating that Saddam Hussein was prepared to give weapons of mass destruction to terrorist groups for attacks against the United States were contradicted by available intelligence information.

Okay, so there's just a small sample of the willful misleading of the public. Ah, I can hear you say, but what of the Congress members who saw the itnelligence and drew their own conclusions? Surely they could not have been duped...

Additionally, the Committee issued a report on the Intelligence Activities Relating to Iraq conducted by the Policy Counterterrorism Evaluation Group and the Office of Special Plans within the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy. The report found that the clandestine meetings between Pentagon officials and Iranians in Rome and Paris were inappropriate and mishandled from beginning to end.

Potentially important information collected during the meetings was withheld from intelligence agencies by Pentagon officials.

Finally, senior Defense Department officials cut short internal investigations of the meetings and failed to implement the recommendations of their own counterintelligence experts.

This is just he summary report. It rather bleakly shows a concerted effort to justify war, not to collect facts. It shows that Congress did not just see faulty information and come to the same faulty conclusion, they were fed a distorted picture of the intelligence, purposefully shielded from the full picture, and willfully influenced by Cheney and the Pentagon into drawing conclusions that weren't even supported by the bad intelligence.

All from a President who, almost 2 years before 9/11, was sitting in cabinet meetings talking about finding a way to depose Saddam.

Zero credibility.