June 18, 2003
Top British Officials say Intelligence was used "Selectively"
Both Robin Cook, former foreign secretary and leader of the House of Commons, as well as Clare Short former secretary for international development have come forward saying that Britain had made selective use of intelligence in its case for weapons of mass destruction to justify going to war.
So what we have here are two high ranking British officials, who resigned over their stance on a war with Iraq, admitting what we have all feared might be true.
"I think that is where the falsity lies, the exaggeration of immediacy," Short told the House of Commons foreign affairs committee.
Cook said that his experience convinced him that "instead of using intelligence as evidence on which to base a decision about policy, we used intelligence as the basis on which to justify a policy on which we had already settled."
The possibilities that our closest ally in the "War on Terror" misused intelligence means that the same possibility exists within our country. As much as I find the thought that we went to war based on shoddy intelligence horrifying I find the idea that our nation's leaders "fudged" intelligence to get the public to agree to a war is a major abuse of power and would be sufficient in this American's mind to justify impeachment.
By the way, I'd have the same sentiments even if this was Bill "Big Dog" Clinton himself. Let's face it; leading a nation into war on false pretense is a hell of a lot worse than a blow job.
Posted by joestump at June 18, 2003 08:08 AMAs Howard Dean said in the AP yesterday:
“It appears to me that what the president did was make a decision to go into Iraq sometime in early 2002, or maybe even late 2001, and then try to get the justification afterward.”
They wanted war and everything we heard about WMD, etc was just them trying to sell it to us. Wolfowitz has said exactly that. “For bureaucratic reasons we settled on one issue – weapons of mass destruction – because it was the one reason everyone could agree on.”
None of this changes the fact that the war was the right thing to do.
Posted by: John at June 19, 2003 04:54 AM
