According to the New York Times’ James Risen, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence has determined that the CIA is primarily at fault for not pressing its case for Iraq’s dismantling of its WMD program. The problem, in Risen’s words, was “the existence of a secret prewar CIA operation to debrief relatives of Iraqi scientists – and the agency’s failure to give their statements to the president and other policymakers.”
Risen goes on to acknowledge that Bob Woodward, in his recent book Plan of Attack, indicated that the CIA was pressured politically by President Bush and his cabinet to produce evidence of Iraqi weapons, and that the Senate Intelligence Committee’s findings disagree with Woodward.
So who is correct? Which version of reality do we give more credit?
Having had a little personal experience with the chairman of the Senate committee in question, the estimable Pat Roberts of Purewater University’s own home state of Kansas, I can attest to the fact that his reputation for honesty and fair dealing and a genuine concern for the truth is wildly over-rated. I can also contest to the fact that he owes much of his power to being a loyal party member, and has a vested interest in his party, which happens to be that of the president, retaining power.
So judge for yourself: on the one hand we have Bob Woodward who, while he does have an interest in selling books, loses no power as an investigative journalist whether or not Bush wins the election; and on the other we have Pat Roberts, who retains his considerable power in the Senate if he blames the CIA and gives the president a pass.
Who would you believe?
From Special Correspondent T.S. deHaviland, the MossyMonkey
A shadowy organization threatens the good ol’ U.S. in these troubled times, an organization that is situated scant miles from the seat of power, the White House, and our gloried halls of Congress.
This is an organization that has brought down governments in Asia, Africa, and South and Central America. It has set up sleeper cells across the globe to gather intimate details of the goings on of friend and foe alike. It has supported Osama bin Laden, our sworn nemesis in the War on Terror beginning in the 1980s. It has given training and arms to insurgent groups, death squads, and all-’round bad dudes. It has even gone so far as to deceive our poor, trusting Commander In Chief, causing him to believe that Iraq was harboring weapons of mass destruction and putting at risk thousands of young American lives.
That’s right, the deceptive, terroristic cadre of wickedness to which I refer goes by the cryptic acronymn of the “C.I.A.”
Its proximity to our Beloved Fearless Leader and his loyal followers in Congress behooves us to declare open war on the C.I.A. as a matter of immediate national security. Our Holy Figurehead has already gone the first step by deposing this agency’s public ruler. But with the remaining command and control structure intact, that does not go far enough.
That this organization provides intelligence to our military may cause a few problems. However, since it is staffed largely by existing agents of the federal government, we have no end of insiders willing to follow orders for the targeting systems of our glorious armed forces’ precision weapons systems.
How can we go wrong? It is, after all, a “slam dunk.”