Iraq and Intelligence
It seems the Bush administration is finally pushing back against the meme that it lied/misrepresented/exaggerated the pre Iraq war intelligence in order to justify action against Saddam. I had a quick post about this earlier, highlighting an article by Norman Podhoretz. Reread Norman's articles and then read these articles on Fox, by Democrat Martin Frost, and on Reuters. It seems that Martin Frost is continuing with the 'exaggeration' claim, even though bipartisan investigations found no such thing. He is clearly putting politics over truth, as Bush stated, especially as he ignores how the previous clinton administration had the same conclusions about Iraq and WMD. Navy Seal, Froggy on his blog complains about this very behaviour and draws a specific distinction between dissent and being unpatriotic behaviour

Dissenting IN GOOD FAITH is patriotic. All Americans are duty bound to speak up against the actions of our countrymen when we feel they are acting in error. But repeating lies every day to get back at the President that beat you doesn't make them true; it makes you a traitor to this country and disloyal to the troops who are on this day protecting you.

Froggy has a whole lot more links to show how dishonest and political many democrats and liberals are being.

The National Review also gets in on the act, noting that Democratic Senator Jay Rockefeller, gave intelligence to the enemies of the US in the lead up to the Iraq war.

Christophe Hitchens also weighs in with what people are really suggesting when they say that Bush conspired to launch a lie based war.

By the same alchemy and hypnotism, the INC was able to manipulate the combined intelligence services of Britain, France, Germany, and Italy, as well as the CIA, the DIA, and the NSA, who between them employ perhaps 1.4 million people, and who in the American case dispose of an intelligence budget of $44 billion, with only a handful of Iraqi defectors and an operating budget of $320,000 per month. That's what you have to believe.

Indeed. When will people start to value truth again? Has it got so bad they think the average joe public has no ability to do basic fact checking or reason for themselves that anyone thinks they can get away with absurdities?
- posted by Alan Grey @ Tuesday, November 15, 2005