Monday, May 28, 2007

Another Iraq War Lie Uncovered

Bush & Co. has spent much of the last 4 years blaming the Iraq disaster on the Intelligence Community- the 16 agency collective that is responsible for evaluating short-term & long term threats to the U.S., and gathering information for policy-makers and troops in the field. The first big lie was that the Intelligence Community got it all wrong about Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction. The fact is, the intelligence community never reached a consensus about WMD. There was just as much information doubting the WMD claim as there was supporting it. However, the Bush Administration ignored information that didn't support the WMD argument. As the Downing Street Memo confirmed, Bush & Co. was dead set on attacking Iraq Months in advance and was cherry picking information, only highlighting intelligence that supported an invasion. The policy was already set, and the neo-cons launched a campaign to form the intelligence to fit the policy, rather than listening to all of the intelligence and allowing the intelligence to guide policy, which is the norm.

The next big lie from Bush & Co. regarding Iraq was that the insurgency could not have been predicted... that U.S. Intelligence agencies didn't anticipate the disaster. We later heard bits and pieces of information that also doubted this argument, but now it is finally confirmed in a new report from the U.S. Senate Panel that is investigating the Iraq fiasco. The report states that the Bush administration was informed about what the aftermath of an invasion might look like. And the Intelligence Community was right on target.

Instead of properly planning for the aftermath (or better yet... cancelling the disaster altogether) Bush & Co.... (in which none of the principal players ever served in war) went ahead with the disaster anyway.... leading to the unnecessary deaths of roughly 3,500 U.S. Service members, and tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians; not to mention the 25,000 or more Americans who have been injured.

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