The whole post is lunacy, but the first paragraph alone is full of astonishing lies and wishful thinking. This is what John Hindrocket says at Powerline:
The Democrats appear to be putting all their eggs in the pre-war intelligence basket, but why? Certainly not because they actually believe it’s a legitimate issue.
We believe it is a legitimate issue. End. of. story.
Several investigations have already concluded that the Bush administration didn’t manipulate pre-war intelligence, and the Democrats, from Bill Clinton on, made all the same claims about Saddam’s weapons, etc., that the Bush administration did.
(1) First of all, NO investigation concluded that. There are only two investigation relating to pre-war intelligence. Phase II of the investigation by Senate Select Committee on Intelligence is supposed to look at how intelligence was used by the Bush Administration, and they have been dragging their feet on the investigation, subpoenaing witnesses, etc. (much less having a conclusion). This is what Reid griped about the other day.
The other investigation relating to pre-war intelligence didn’t even look into the Bush Administration’s use/manipulation of pre-war intelligence. Here’s a passage from the Overview section of the commission’s report, which couldn’t be more clear:
Finally, we emphasize two points about the scope of this Commission’s charter, particularly with respect to the Iraq question. First, we were not asked to determine whether Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. That was the mandate of the Iraq Survey Group; our mission is to investigate the reasons why the Intelligence Community’s pre-war assessments were so different from what the Iraq Survey Group found after the war. Second, we were not authorized to investigate how policymakers used the intelligence assessments they received from the Intelligence Community. Accordingly, while we interviewed a host of current and former policymakers during the course of our investigation, the purpose of those interviews was to learn about how the Intelligence Community reached and communicated its judgments about Iraq’s weapons programs–not to review how policymakers subsequently used that information.
(2) As for what statements by Clinton that were the same as those of Bush, I’ve addressed that here.
Back to Hindrocket’s amazingly stupid paragraph:
Moreover, the whole idea that the administration would use Iraq’s WMDs as a "pretext" for war is stupid. If the administration knew Saddam didn’t have the weapons, then it also knew its "pretext" would be exposed as soon as the invasion was complete.
What morons! Let me explain this (again) in simple terms:
Nobody KNEW for sure whether or not Saddam had weapons. But the Bush Administration, in its statements to the people, said they DID know for sure. And that’s the lie!!! The Bush Administration even hid the fact that, within the Intelligence Community, there was no consensus or agreement.
No one would be dumb enough to go to war on the basis of a claim that was not only wrong, but would quickly be shown to be wrong. So the Democrats aren’t acting in good faith, they’re playing politics.
No one would be dumb enough to not understand the difference between saying something is 100% true, and saying they BELIEVE that something MIGHT be true. In other words, if you don’t know something for sure, and say that you do, then that’s lying!!
Got it? Jeeeez!!