Thursday, February 05, 2004

The Blame Game

Watch closely what they do to the investigation of the prewar intelligence about Iraq. They will shift the scope of the investigation until it encompasses so much that the conclusions will come in conveniently after the election and any hint of political interference in the analysis of the data will be lost in all the noise. Or the 9/11 investigation, done by a hand-picked panel and limited in what they could see and report. Of course it won’t find anything embarrassing…

Today, the head of the CIA basically called Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld all liars. He said that the CIA’s analysts never said there was any kind of “imminent threat” from Iraq before the war. So Cheney and Rumsfeld started their own “analysis” unit, the “Office of Special Projects” to cook the data until a rancid stew of fear-mongering and deceit was served to Congress, which promptly authorized Bush to use military force. Which he was all too happy to do, and in so doing achieved what was first proposed in September 2000 - “regime change” in a country via the dubious doctrine of “pre-emptive war”, which is a violation of the UN charter.

Evidently, the CIA isn’t going to be a convenient scapegoat for the administration. So watch - they’ll try to find another, because they don’t have the guts or the honesty to take the blame themselves. Not during an election year, or any other.

- Bob Woods