IG Report

Heard the news today about the Pentagon's Inspector General report on pre-war intelligence. They slammed an office run by a guy named David Feith, who was then the Pentagon's policy director, saying that he "took 'inappropriate' actions in advancing conclusions on al Qaeda connections not backed up by the nation's intelligence agencies" (quote from CNN). In other words, he distorted intelligence reports to make 'em say things they were never meant to say. Like that there was a link between al Qaeda and the Iraqi government.

I've been saying since day one that there was no link. I was a Navy cryptologic officer until late 1999, and I read the intel boards every day. And it was clear even then that there was no love lost between Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. Bin Laden was (is) a religious zealot intent on destroying everything that conflicts with his version of reality. And Hussein was just a thug, a Tony Soprano in charge of a whole country. Aside from the fact that they both lived in the same general area of the world, and they both were in conflict with us, there wasn't anything - any thing - to bring 'em together.

So it was clear to me that Bush and his cronies were either listening only to the neocon wackos like Feith, or they were neocon wackos themselves, and in either case, the truth about Iraq was getting trashed in order to rush this nation to war. The Republican-led Congress couldn't beat the drums loudly enough and the right wing in general couldn't call dissenters "traitors" fast enough. And when it was clear that the whole Iraq war was a sham built on shams, they sat on their asses and did nothing but cover it up. And cover up their own culpability.

Thank God that's changing. We need more investigations into how this great nation was royally screwed by Bush & Co. Those who were responsible for key screwups need to be held accountable. Like Scooter Libby, who's about to get prison time for his role in covering up his role in outing an undercover CIA officer. There are a lot of others who should be in line right behind him.

The point isn't vengeance. The point is to remind those in power, and those who put them there, that with power comes the responsibility to use it WISELY, not in pursuit of a radical ideology. It's this blind pursuit of the radical neocon pipe dream that has killed so many of our soldiers, spent so much of our capital, and split our nation.