Why was the intelligence so bad? (Elephant in room.)

[gulliver]

It pains me to hear Bush blame bad intelligence for the Iraq war. That has to be a new definition for chutzpah.

Why was the intelligence so bad a year and a half after Bush supposedly "learned the lessons of 9/11?" If there was bad intelligence, that's on Bush's tab. It's a marvel to see him successfully using one liability to pay off another.

On edit: Changed subject line to take out "in hell" as in "Why in hell was the intelligence so bad?" I emphasize it that way in conversations, but it seems a little much for a subject line in a post.

[rateyes]

1. The only "bad intelligence"...

is in Bush's brain. He knew his claims were lies. So, now it has come down not to, "The congress saw the same intelligence I did," which is a bunch of crap, but "I was as fooled by the intelligence as Congress was." It's just another load of crap.

What pains me is that there are people willing to believe it. They are the fools.

[gulliver]

2. He knew or should have known his claims were wrong.

He hyped intelligence that he didn't triple check. The smoking gun is the State of the Union claim that Iraq sought nuclear materials from Africa. The President of the United States based an incendiary claim in a matter of war based on crude forgeries. He had to retract his biggest piece of war reporting. If he were a journalist, he would never get another job.

If the poor bozo could make a mistake that big on evidence that flimsy in the State of the Union, imagine how many other "mistakes" were made. Bush did nothing to make the intelligence better after 9/11 supposedly showed him it needed to be. And Bush apparently didn't kick the tires of any of his intelligence. Only a Republican who didn't care about their country would let that slide.

[baldguy]

3. There was nothing wrong with the original intel.

But when it didn't mesh with the Bush Regime's pre-conceived opinions - the responsible analysts were reassigned or fired, and the intel was "fixed" so that it did.

[gulliver]

5. I agree. But I want to cut off Bush's escape.

He screwed the pooch whether the intel was good or bad. I don't accept that the intel was all bad. The existing evidence shows that wasn't the case at all. Bush had more than enough information to doubt the WMDs and particularly the nuclear WMD intel. Yet he not only did not doubt it, he hyped it without double-checking it.

But if the intel was bad as Bush claims, that's Bush's failure. He had a year and a half to double-check the intelligence, and most importantly, he supposedly had learned the lessons of 9/11 (as he never tires of saying). What Bush is saying boils down to "I screwed up the war decision because I failed to lead my intelligence agencies to produce good intelligence, even after 9/11."

[cantstandbush]

4. It doesn't matter! Didn't Bush say he would have invaded Iraq even

knowing what he now knows today: no WMDs, no-link between Saddam and 9/11, no link to Al-qaeda, no threat to the US from Saddam. Why can't you people get it trough your heads that nothing about this Iraq invasion mattered but two things: Saddam had threatened to begin trading oil dollars in EUros AND Bush was being controlled by the PNACers and THEY badly wanted a war with Iraq.

[gulliver]

6. Bush might be saying he would have invaded ...

... even knowing what he knows now for one simple reason. Bush knows that the "bad intel" line is starting to fade. If he can't prove he did his best to get good intel, he's in trouble. So now he has to diminish the importance of the intel.

At this point, all his chips are on an Iraq he can sell as a "victory". The end has got to be good enough to sell as justifying the means. The intel arguments are all fading. He's caught. But if we let him change the subject and sell pretty visions of Iraq, he gets away.

People tend to look carefully at results if they learn that the process that achieved them was all screwed up. If Bush succeeds in diminishing the importance of the messed up way he got us into war, it makes it easier for him to sell the war as a success.