[Malone LaVeigh]

Not much I can add to this. Funny it comes from the NYT, however. They've been some of Bush's biggest supporters.

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0128-02.htm

Published on Wednesday, January 28, 2004 by the New York Times
9/11 Commission Says It Needs More Time to Complete Inquiry
by Philip Shenon


WASHINGTON — The independent commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks announced on Tuesday that it was seeking an extension of its deadline to complete the investigation until at least July, raising the prospect of a public fight with the White House and a final report delivered in the heat of the presidential campaign.

The White House and Republican Congressional leaders have said they see no need to extend the congressionally mandated deadline, now set for May 27, and a spokesman for Speaker J. Dennis Hastert said Tuesday that Mr. Hastert would oppose any legislation to grant the extension.

But commission officials said there was no way to finish their work on time, a situation they attribute in part to delays by the Bush administration in turning over documents and other evidence.

The commission said Tuesday that it had not yet received a commitment from the administration for public testimony from prominent White House officials, including Condoleezza Rice, the president's national security adviser. The panel said it was still in negotiations over the possibility of testimony from President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney.

"We are telling the Congress and the president what we need to do the best possible job," said the panel's chairman, Thomas H. Kean, a Republican who was formerly governor of New Jersey, in announcing the panel's decision to seek an extension of at least two months. "Much work remains, and some hard work in finalizing our report."

The commission's vice chairman, Lee H. Hamilton, a former Democratic House member from Indiana, said the panel was "mindful of the politics" of an extension, "but if we do not have the extra time, we would not have as many hearings as we would like."

The request for an extension came after a day of public hearings in which the panel listened to parts of a taped telephone conversation from the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, in which an American Airlines flight attendant aboard one of the hijacked planes calmly relayed information to the airline about the chaos on board, including the stabbings of two of her colleagues and a passenger.

Although the contents of the tape have been previously disclosed, it was the first time it had been played publicly. The flight attendant, Betty Ann Ong, is heard describing how hijackers had forced passengers to the back of the plane and locked themselves in the cockpit.

"Our first-class galley attendant and our purser are stabbed," Ms. Ong quickly but calmly told an agent at the airline's reservation office in North Carolina. "We can't get into the cockpit. The door won't open."

At the hearing, the panel also sharply questioned former officials of the Federal Aviation Administration over why they had not merged terrorism watch lists that might have alerted airlines to block some of the hijackers from boarding the planes on Sept. 11.

The agency's former security chief acknowledged in testimony that he had not known until this week that the State Department maintained a special terrorist watch list, known as Tipoff, that had thousands of names.

The administration initially opposed creation of the 10-member independent commission, known formally as the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States.

Administration officials have acknowledged concern that Democrats, particularly the Democratic nominee for president, will try to make use of the report's findings to embarrass Mr. Bush, especially if the report contains any suggestion that the White House failed to act before Sept. 11 on intelligence suggesting that a catastrophic attack might be imminent.

The White House confirmed news reports last year that an Oval Office intelligence summary presented to Mr. Bush shortly before the attacks suggested that terrorists might be planning an attack using passenger planes.

"It smacks of politics to put out a report like this in the middle of a presidential campaign," said a senior Republican Congressional aide, speaking on condition of anonymity. "The Democrats will spin and spin."

An extension of the commission's deadline would need to be approved in Congress in the next few weeks, and the Senate authors of the bill that created the panel last year, John McCain, Republican of Arizona, and Joseph I. Lieberman, Democrat of Connecticut, have already said that they are willing to try to shepherd an extension bill through Congress, although both have said they expect a fight with Republican Congressional leaders.

"I fully support an extension to ensure that the commission's work is not compromised by the Bush administration's delaying tactics, secrecy and stonewalling," Mr. Lieberman said Tuesday from New Hampshire, where he was campaigning in that day's Democratic presidential primary. "Clearly the president is not interested in a complete and thorough investigation."

Prospects for legislation to extend the deadline were uncertain.

The White House, which in previous statements had suggested that it strongly opposed an extension, said Tuesday that the final decision would be left to Congress.

"Congress is the one who set that deadline when they set up the commission," said Scott McClellan, the White House spokesman. "But we think it's important they move forward as quickly as possible to complete their work," Mr. McClellan said of the commission.

[westex]

Malone
Double up on your reloading time.:D

[Lone_Gunman]

Their report will be a non-issue to most voters. Only people who already plan to vote against Bush will care what their findings are.

[Leatherneck]

What do they have to hide? Intel sources and methods maybe? :rolleyes:

TC
TFL Survivor

[Art Eatman]

"At the hearing, the panel also sharply questioned former officials of the Federal Aviation Administration over why they had not merged terrorism watch lists that might have alerted airlines to block some of the hijackers from boarding the planes on Sept. 11."

Well, whoop tee do. We've known the answer to that since around 9/12. Bureaucratic inertia. Turf wars.

They ain't raised one question that could not be asked about the various agencies' data bases that could be useful in the War on Drugs--if the agencies weren't into the power trips of turf wars. Same for lots of other stuff...

The Lieberman quote is pure election-year politics.

Sorry, Malone, but this is the quintessential "sound and fury, signifying nothing."

Art

[Waitone]

Don't discount the political implications of a delay. Two more months puts the report on the street in July, 3 months from the election.

And yes I think Bush is a political animal. The way he is buying votes every possible way shows me he can // will not be leaving any unpleasantness untended.

[Sean Smith]

Funny it comes from the NYT, however. They've been some of Bush's biggest supporters.

Pure comedy on your part. :rolleyes:

[JohnBT]

"The independent commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks announced on Tuesday that it was seeking an extension..."

If they're independent then why do they have to ask permission for an extension?

John

[greyhound]

Kinda OT, but every time I think I've put 9/11 just a little bit behind me, something comes up. The latest is the recording of that flight attendant.

Makes me angry all over again, and though I am not pleased with President Bush's domestic agenda, his leadership shortly after 9/11 and the fact that he didn't bow to world pressure to treat it as a law enforcement matter (i.e. the staus quo) means he will get my vote, no matter how much I disagree with some of his act.

[Art Eatman]

JohnBT, they're independent as to what they investigate. They're not independent as to the money it costs to do the investigating. "Permission for extension" = "We need more money."

Art

[Quartus]

Funny it comes from the NYT, however. They've been some of Bush's biggest supporters.


If you really believe that.....


Well, let's just say it explains a lot. :rolleyes:


That's on par with saying that Peter Jennings is a careful, professional journalist who doesn't let his political views influence his reporting.

[Malone LaVeigh]

That's on par with saying that Peter Jennings is a careful, professional journalist who doesn't let his political views influence his reporting.No, he's a corporate hack like the rest of them. And if you don't think the NYT is in sync with the Bushies, you weren't paying attention when their reporters and editorial writers were beating the drums for war against Iraq.

Sorry, Malone, but this is the quintessential "sound and fury, signifying nothing."Art, you dissappoint me. Spinmeister does not suit you.

What's hard to understand about this situation? The commission was put in place by a repug congress supposedly to find out what went wrong. This isn't some partisan fishing expedition like the Starr posse. They tried to do their job, and the white house has stonewalled most of their most important requests for access to information. Now the repugs are refusing to give them the time they need to do their job.

I ask again, "What do they have to hide?"

[Tag]

complicity :what:

[HunterGatherer]

What do they have to hide?

Why don't you tell us?

This is the same lame old trick that Mikey Moore (the left's very own Macy's Parade balloon) uses. Ask a vague, seemingly filled with sinister mystery question, and let the handwringing and ignorant speculation begin.

:barf:

Make some specific allegations. Come up with one crumb of a remnant of a shadow of a piece of evidence for said allegations.

Ball is in your court.

[Jeff White]

Malone,

It really doesn't matter. The report is going to invariably contain things that will look damaging in 20/20 hindsight. It won't matter to the spinmeisters in a political campaign that the idea of hijacking jets and turning them into makeshift cruise missiles would never have occurred to anyone outside of a technothriller. It won't matter that the opposition party had been gleefully dismantling our intelligence community since the mid 70s. It won't matter that many of the plans to knock down barriers between different agencies sharing information and the creation of an Office of Homeland Security to look at all the intelligence for possible terrorist threats against CONUS were proposed by the Hart/Rudman Commission in 1998 and quietly shelved by the previous administration. What will matter is that 9-11 happened on Bush's watch.

We don't have polite discourse in this country anymore. Nothing is above politics. There is plenty of blame to be spread among both parties. If you think for one minute that the Gore administration would want that report released at the begining of the campaign, I've got some oceanfront property here in Southern Illinois I'll make you a heck of a deal on.

The very idea that one party or the other could have prevented the attacks on September 11th 2001 sickens me. Sometimes (expetive deleted in deference to Art's Gramma) happens.

The politicians on both sides of the aisle need to get over it already. There is no political hay to be made from an event so fantastic that it was incomprehensible. It's time to learn how it happened so that maybe we can keep it from happening again. National security needs to be bi-partisan.

It would be interesting to see how certain democratic candidates for president voted on intelligence matters since the Church Amendment reformed our intelligence services and are now castigating Bush for going to war on bad intelligence. If the buffoons in both parties had been in power during World War Two, the world would be a much different place. The Pacific rim and Asia to the Indian subcontinent would all be part of the Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere and the rest of the world except for Sub-Saharan Africa would be part ot the Third Reich.

Jeff

[Malone LaVeigh]

Make some specific allegations. That's easy. "The Bush administration has obstructed the work of the 911 committee." The rest of your comments aren't worthy of a response.

[HunterGatherer]

That's easy. "The Bush administration has obstructed the work of the 911 committee." Nice dodge. How about along the lines of what "they" have to hide?

[Malone LaVeigh]

How about along the lines of what "they" have to hide? How should I know? All we know for sure is that Bush and co. are not letting the commission do their job.

Why don't you tell me what they're not hiding? That makes just as much sense.

[Malone LaVeigh]

Again from the NYT:

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0129-12.htm

Published on Thursday, January 29, 2004 by the New York Times
Bush Aide Leads White House Offensive on Iraqi Weapons
by David Stout

WASHINGTON, Jan. 29 — The White House went on the offensive today on the issue of Iraq's weapons program, as President Bush's national security adviser brushed aside calls for an independent investigation into pre-war intelligence.

CLAIM vs. FACT:
Condoleezza Rice & Intelligence

CLAIM:
"You are never going to be able to be positive [about intelligence]."
- Condoleezza Rice, 1/29/04 [Source]

FACT:
The Administration - and Condoleezza Rice personally - made repeated, unequivocal statements that they were positive that Iraq had WMD, and that their 100% certainty was justification for an invasion. Some examples: Rice said on 10/30/03 that "Saddam is the only tyrant of our time not only to possess weapons of mass destruction, but to use them in acts of mass murder." Donald Rumsfeld said on 1/20/03 uneqivocally that "Saddam Hussein possesses chemical and biological weapons." President Bush said unequivocally on 1/3/03 Iraq "not only have weapons of mass destruction, they used weapons of mass destruction" and said definitively on 10/7/02 that "Iraq could decide on any given day to provide a biological or chemical weapon to a terrorist group or individual terrorists." Vice President Cheney said in August of 2002 "there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction...to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us."

FACT:
"For diplomacy to be effective, words must be credible, and no one can now doubt the word of America."
- President George W. Bush, 1/20/04 [Source]

[Jeff White]

Malone,
What makes you think the intelligence didn't tell them that? I seem to recall members of the congressional leadership form both parties being given access to the intelligence and not disagreeing.

I suppose if we want to get really deep into useless conspiracy theories, we could say that George Tenant, a democrat and Clinton appointee gave the administration the wrong intelligence to set up just this situation. :what:

That makes as much sense as the administration going to war just because....Face it, we began dismantling our intelligence capability in the mid 70s. Then we got into it even more in the 80s lest the evil CIA overthrow Daniel Ortega, who seems to be loved as much as Castro in some circles in your party. By the time we really needed an intelligence capability we were left with what we have.

The fact is, no one from either party who saw the raw intelligence believed that Saddam didn't have WMDs any longer.

Malone, you're way to intelligent to really believe the administration made up WMDs as an excuse to go to war. One thing I learned in 29 years in the Army was that intelligence is usually wrong....Bush has done plenty I don't support, but I refuse to believe he sent men to die for no good reason. There are some things that have to be above domestic politics. War is one of them. This wasn't one of those things like bombing Kosovo or invading Grenada. Congress authorized this. A democrat heads the agency that provided the intelligence. So are you suggesting a conspiracy at the higest levels of both parties? Or did Tenant provide faulty intelligence to both the administration and congress for his own purposes, or as I suggested earlier, is he working for the DNC to create this exact situation? Or maybe we just acted on the best information we had, and that information was wrong? Which is it?

Jeff

[HunterGatherer]

Why don't you tell me what they're not hiding? That makes just as much sense.No it doesn't. You asked, and I quote, "What do they have to hide?".

Who says they are hiding anything? You would like us to believe that they are hiding "something", but what if they are just following standard intelligence procedures? Oh! That wouldn't be ominous and foreboding enough. Where, oh where, would be the handwringing in that?

Nah! No matter what the administration gives this commission, it won't be enough. It isn't beneath the fruitcakes running this country to demand that all White House butt-wipe used on the morning of 9/11 be submitted to the Kommisar for his perusal. Just in case Builderburgers deep within the White House were scribbling passenger jet coordinates and flushing them to Al Qaeda scuba death-commandos in the sewers. :rolleyes:


Jeff already outlined what everyone with any common sense knows. If you (or they) haven't figured out what allowed 9/11 to happen by now, then you probably never will.

[igor]

There are some things that have to be above domestic politics. War is one of them.

Puh-leeze. :scrutiny:

[fallingblock]

Is that a cynical response, or what?:)

[Jeff White]

Igor,
We used to have a quaint rule that both parties obeyed. It was that once troops were deployed, debate stopped until the war was over. Politics stop at the waters edge used to be the way we played the game in our country.

Just curious, what kind of location is NE EU? Covers a lot of ground.

Jeff

[Kim]

Grenada was mentioned above. I was in Grenada before the invasion. My boyfriend at the time was checking out the Medical School. I knew nothing of politics until about 5 years ago, so I was stupid to have even been there.There were Cuban soliders everywhere. Outside the radio station they had taken over. Riding around in pick-up truck with Automatic guns in them. That air strip that was being built was hugh. It was Cuban workers building the airport. I went into a shack to get a coke. There were posters on the wall that were hugh large with the picture of Ronald Regan's with "Down with the Imperalist Amercians" We were out on a beach one day---no one else there and a Cuban solider with his automatic rifle walked up to us and asked for money for him and his comrades hidden along the shore "watching out for the Amercian invasion" We had 5.00 to give to the cause. I was eating in resturant one night and a Grenadian whispered in my ear that the man siting at the next table was a Russian. Believe me The communists were there up to something and it wasn't to help the people of Grenada. I got me a machette and kept it under the mattress. I never wished for a firearm so hard in my life.:what:

[Russ]

I am SHOCKED! Do you mean to tell me a President or a candidate for said office is political?

Time to wake up. Abraham Lincoln was one of the most "political" Presidents in history. I'll wager that he is one or two on the top greatest list. You don't get to be President by being non-political.

The idiots who run this "commission" have had plenty of time to analyze 9/11 to death. Let me see, I think that was 2 1/2 years ago now. Apparently the we are in need of more conspiriacy theories out there to go with Kennedy, Waco, Ruby Ridge and even the Lincoln assasination.

[Jeff White]

Kim,
I only used Grenada as a reference because it was conducted (by necessity) without asking congress first. That is not the case with the war in Iraq. The administration went to Congress twice to get authorization to use force. No one in the opposition party has any complaint about the fact we went to war in Iraq. After all they voted to.

The democrats need to come up with a reason for the public to support their agenda. I'm quite sick of this continual whining about a foreign policy they voted to conduct.

The fact of the matter is; they saw the same intelligence the administraion did. Maybe not the entire delegations, but the heads of the intelligence committees did. If they felt so strongly about it they could have voted as a block not to go to war or they could have fillibustered in the Sentate to stop the vote.

As for who is responsible for 9-11, we haven't had an administration that had an antiterrorism policy that was worth anything since the Reagan administration bombed Libya in 1986.

If we really want to cast stones at political parties over terrorism, the democrats need to be careful about breaking their own windows. Perhaps they could have figured out that al-Queada was up to no good after they tried to blow up the World Trade Center the first time. If there was ever a plainer warning, I sure don't know what it was.

Of course the democrats are counting on the fact that most people won't even remember that these same people tried the same thing way back in 1993 on Clinton's watch. It certainly wasn't better intelligence and police work that saved us from a potentially bigger disaster back in 1993, it was poor engineering and design on al-Queada's part. Loss of life was potentially much greater in that attack because if AQ had had their act together they would have dropped a tower that no one would have gotten out of. The arguement can always be made that 9-11 happened because the Clinton administration was a. Too ignorant of the real world to see AQ as a threat after the first WTC attack. b. Made the gross error in judgement of treating the first WTC attack as a criminal matter instead of an act of war.

No there is plenty of blame on both sides of the aisle. Personally I'm sick of all this posturing.

Jeff

[Art Eatman]

Malone, Jeff has done an excellent job of explaining the political posturings of the issue. I stand by my post.

IMO, Malone, you are the one who's falling in line with a certain faction of spinmeisters on this issue.

Aside from the unanimity of *both* parties about WMDs, during this last ten or so years, there is one thing that hasn't been brought out in detail; only alluded to by Jeff: Beginning in the Carter era, the CIA had less and less input from human intelligence (HumInt) and more and more from electronic intellingence (ELint). Elint is good, but is often too remote for final verification of things like WMD.

And I note that in today's news there is finally info that some WMDs were moved from Iraq to Syria during late 2002 and early 2003. While this is not fully verified (ELint, again), it certainly is supportive of what many of us--and others--have believed since before the invasion of Iraq.

Malone, why would you get all exercised about Bush' comments about WMDs, and ignore the same commentary from various Democrat leaders? Why would Bush not believe Hillary or Kennedy when they accused Saddam of having WMDs?

Art

[igor]

Jeff,

it would seem that that quaint rule saw its days end a while ago. IMHO there's no way to separate foreign and domestic politics, especially with the short presidential terms of the US. Elections dictate policy and the people will vote according to what they see on TV.

My location is Finland.

[Cool Hand Luke 22:36]

What do they have to hide?


Intel sources and methods maybe


Knowing George Tenet and the CIA it's much more likely that they want to cover up more blistering examples of incompetence and derilection of duty.

Bush deserves a lot of blame for 9/11 if for no other reason than for his failure to fire DCI Tenet his first day in office.

[Waitone]

Let me say this about that (for you young whipper snappers out there, Nixon coined the phrase). Tenet and Meuller should have both been canned with extreme prejudice from the first day of Bush's reign.

Having said that about this, I will take up for Tenet and Meuller for the simple reason congress (both parties) in reaction to the Watergate mess began a long term process of evicerating the US intelligence capability. The most damaging work was done by Admiral Stansfield Turner, CIA, etc. director for President Jimmuh Carter. It was Turner who made two decisions early on that eventually bit Jimmuh in the butt. First, Turner assumed technical intelligence would produce better results than human intelligence, and second since the first was valid, the US no longer needed human spooks. So he promptly fired 300+ CIA operators around the world. In very short order US human intel went black. It fairly quickly bit Jimmuh in the butt with the takeover of the US embassy in Tehran. NO one, but NO ONE knew the players on the Iranian side. When the US mounted the failed raid to rescue the prisoners, the US had no assets on the ground. We were blind.

Since those years congress (both parties) have help the situation by putting restrictions on the spooks culminating in the Toracelli amendment which prohibited US intelligence from dealing with foreign nationals who may have human rights violations in their background. They call it the human rights scrub. It really killed any human intelligence during the balance of Clinton's reign. Clinton's rules and regulations bit both he and Bush in the butt on 9-11.

So if we want to investigate intelligence failures related to our actions in Iraq I think both parties will end up dirty. We still had a love of technical intel but we were trying to rebuild in a matter of months what congress destroyed at its leasure over the last 30 years.

I want a vigorous investigation of all parties including congress. No whitewash there. If CIA was obeying the law then they had better ID the law and those who passed it.

[Malone LaVeigh]

Where to begin...

The CIA was reigned in in the mid '70s because they were becoming an embarrassment with their abuses of power against US citizens. And strong evidence that they were involved with such activities as drug smuggling and overthrowing sovereign nations.

All of this might be why we had such lousy intelligence prior to 9/11 and regarding WMDs prior to the Iraq blunder. Jeff says maybe that was the best intelligence we had. I'm not disagreeing. But it was manifestly wrong, and I'd like to know why.

I think we would all like to know, if we care about our country and aren't a bunch of boot-licking sheep.

Hey! I've got a good idea. Let's have an independent investigation into both.

But both the existing investigation into 9/11 and the proposed investigation into intelligence failures around Iraq have been and are being obstructed by the person who's #1 constitutional job is to protect the country.

I think we have a right to ask why. Anyone who isn't a partisan sycophant would ask why.

[Jeff White]

I don't think anyone will disagree that we need a complete investigation. What we don't need is the partisan spinning. As I said earlier, there is plenty of blame on both sides of the aisle.

As for smuggling drugs and overthrowing sovereign nations...what do you think we pay them to do? :neener: Sorry couldn't resist teasing a little to lighten things up.

I'd like to recommend Charlie Wilson's War by George Crile to you. It's the story of the operation to aid the Afghan resistance in the 80s. It pretty much outlines how a wildman liberal democratic congressman from Texas funded the cause in congress. I've picked up a lot of insight into our current problems in the middle east. It seems we never learn from anything.

You're right that both investigations are being obstructed. And they are being obstructed because it's an election year and neither side is going to agree not to try to burn the other with leaks and exaggerations and out and out lies in the search for the perfect soundbite. When we call for bipartisanship, we don't mean one side agreeing with the other, we mean putting politics aside and fixing serious problems with national security. Will either side agree to that? No, which is exactly why we never get anything fixed.

We need to take the cuffs off of the CIA. We need to accept that intelligence is often dirty work that will require us to deal with many of the lowest forms of human life in the world. We're going to have to travel in circles that aren't nice, we may need to make deals to turn a blind eye to an arms shipment here or help get the poppies in for a warlord somewhere. It's not that we like doing these things, but that's the way of the world. And we are going to have to do things like hire other terrorists through proxies and cutouts to go places and do things our capable special operations forces can't. The people we are going after aren't like us. And if we insist they are, then we'll stumble around blind like we are now.

We need to amend the Torricelli amendment so Congress can't associate with lowlifes, but we need to let our intelligence agents do what they have to do.

Jeff

[Jeff White]

Well it looks like the intelligence was flawed. Even the Washington Post is claiming the CIA didn't roll over to political pressure. Of course we have to get the political posturing in. The article admits that the intelligence provided to the administration was the best we had, but then goes on to say the inquiry doesn't address allegations the Bush administration misued intelligence and exaggerated the threat. How in blue blazes do you misuse the intelligence and exaggerate the threat if you belive the intelligence to be correct? See what I mean, it's all politics and it's getting in the way of fixing the problem. I guess we're supposed to believe the administration somehow knew the CIA was wrong, but went ahead and invaded Iraq anyway? How were they supposed to know that? Looks to me like it was action taken on the best information that was available.

Jeff

Inquiries find no evidence CIA bowed to pressure on Iraq data
By WASHINGTON POST
01/31/2004

WASHINGTON - Congressional and CIA investigations into the prewar intelligence on Iraq's weapons and links to terrorism have found no evidence that CIA analysts colored their judgment because of perceived or actual political pressure from White House officials, according to intelligence and congressional officials.

Richard Kerr, a former deputy CIA director who is leading the agency's review of its prewar Iraq assessment, said an examination of the secret work done by CIA analysts showed that it remained consistent over many years.

"There was pressure and a lot of debate, and people should have a lot of debate, that's quite legitimate," Kerr said. "But the bottom line is, over a period of several years," the analysts' assessments "were very consistent. They didn't change their views."

Kerr's findings mirror those of investigations being conducted separately by the House and Senate intelligence committees, which have interviewed, under oath, every analyst involved in assessing Iraq's weapons programs and terrorist ties.

The panel chairmen, Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., and Rep. Porter J. Goss, R-Fla., and other congressional officials said in recent interviews that they found no evidence that analysts shaded their findings to more closely fit the White House's known desire to create the strongest, most urgent case for war with Iraq.

The conclusion that analysts didn't buckle under political pressure doesn't answer the question of why the intelligence reports were so flawed. Nor does it address allegations - made by Democrats in Congress and Democratic presidential candidates - that top officials in President George W. Bush's administration misused intelligence and exaggerated the threat posed by Iraq.

On Wednesday, former chief U.S. weapons inspector David Kay told a Senate committee that he no longer believed Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction in the months leading up to the war. And he called for an independent inquiry into why U.S. intelligence agencies believed the opposite.

There have been instances in which intelligence analysts said they sensed pressure to reach certain conclusions, but the House and Senate investigators said there was no indication they bowed to such wishes.

Last year, for example, some analysts at the CIA complained to senior officials when Vice President Dick Cheney made multiple trips to CIA headquarters to question their studies of Iraq's weapons programs and alleged links to al-Qaida.

And analysts at the Defense Intelligence Agency told investigators they sensed pressure when civilian Defense Department leaders constantly questioned why their analysis had found only tentative links between al-Qaida and Iraq.

Neither the CIA inspector general nor the agency's ombudsmen received any complaints about outside meddling, a senior intelligence official said.

The CIA maintains that it is still too early to say that its assessment was wrong because the search for weapons is not over.

[Waitone]

I think two factoids will inhibit any realistic investigation. First, in my view the very people responsible for the fiasco are true stakeholders and referees. . . . .congress. No blue ribbon, bi-partisan commission will ever be able to report the truth simply because the same goobers who created the problem are the ones who award contracts and shuffle money around. Any realy hope of figuring out what happened will fall on the shoulders of true, honest to goodness investigative journalists, and I'm not talking about the hacks who write for media organs. I refer to ink stained wretches who honestly believe truth does exist and it can be discerned.

Second, the story of WMD in Iraq is not over. Itn't it curious that while the US is building scaffolds for Bush, et al over the lack of WMD's, the Brits are not backing down one inch. It is also curious Cheney hasn't changed his tune. Lastly, in recent days stories originally posted about the shipment of WMD's out of Iraq and getting replayed. During the war there surfaced stories of convoys of trucks headed for the Baqua Valley in Syria. The US had overhead imagery and ground intel indicating a lot of the bad stuff left Iraq before the war started. Second is story of the 3 mystery ships which departed Iraq and which was steaming in circles in the Indian Ocean. Both stories showed up then quickly disappeared.

Regardless, Bush's doctrine of preemption is dead until a credible excuse is delivered. It's unfortunate because preemption is what has raised the pucker factor to new levels for islamofascist terrormongers. Syria may well have Iraq's WMD but Bush will catch all kinds of hell if he strikes without explaining why the intel apparently blew.