Skewed Intelligence

That the Bush administration skewed, twisted and manipulated intelligence in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq is without question. The only debate between Democrats and Republicans these days seems to be over the sincerity with which administration officials did the manipulating. But an article in today's New York Times demonstrates in fascinating(and nauseating)detail the lengths to which Senior administration officials were willing to go to bend and twist the intelligence to fit their desire for war.

The issue of the aluminum tubes was perhaps the single most important element in the administration's argument that Saddam Hussein was seeking to reconstitute his nuclear weapons program, which itself was the strongest plank in the argument for war. The whole argument has already been discredited of course; there was no nuclear weapons program, the aluminum tubes were never meant for centrifuges designed to produce enriched uranium, and the "yellowcake" issue has been nothing but a fiasco. But the NY Times article shows in incredible detail how the issue of the tubes arose in the first place, how the administration buried and hid from public view the criticisms of that intelligence, and how they continued to use it as a plank in their rationale for war despite the fact that they knew at the highest levels that the intelligence was considered questionable at best by leading US atomic experts.

Several passages from the article are worth quoting at length, but one sticks out in particular to me. Discussing the controversy over the intelligence that swirled behind the scenes, and the general lack of public knowledge about it,

"Still, the bureaucratic infighting was now so widely known that even the Australian government was aware of it. 'U.S. agencies differ on whether aluminum tubes, a dual-use item sought by Iraq, were meant for gas centrifuges,' Australia's intelligence services wrote in a July 2002 assessment. The same report said that the tubes evidence was 'patchy and inconclusive.'"

It's disheartening that Australian intelligence should know more about the debate that raged in the administration than the American people themselves.

Overall it's an excellent article, and the Times even goes so far as to criticize their own coverage of the issue in not making the public more aware of the arguments of those who criticized this intelligence and it's uses. As I stated, that the administration lied(yes lied)in the run-up to war is without question. But having it laid out in such detail is liking watching an autopsy. It's both sickening and sad to see the lengths to which our leaders were willing to go to lodge us into the mess that is now Iraq.