The headline:
Pentagon says pre-war intel not illegal
The backstory:
Some of the Pentagon’s prewar intelligence work, including a contention that the CIA underplayed the likelihood of al-Qaida connections to Saddam Hussein, was inappropriate but not illegal, a Defense Department investigation has concluded.
[…] [Sen. Carl] Levin [D-Mich.] in September 2005 asked the inspector general to determine whether Feith’s offices’ activities were appropriate. If deemed inappropriate, the inspector general should recommend remedial action, Levin said then. Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., who was chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee at the time, separately asked the inspector general to decide on legality as well as appropriateness.The 2004 report from the Sept. 11 Commission found no evidence of a collaborative relationship between Saddam and Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida terror organization before the U.S. invasion.
The spin:
Levin also said it was a “red herring” to say that he or others in Congress claimed that any of Feith’s activities had been illegal. Feith has said the accusation that he misled Congress was, by definition, a claim that he had acted illegally.
Doug Feith fans will be disappointed to know that he’s full of shit on this. If misleading Congress always means breaking the law then president “16 words” Bush would have cleaned out his office years ago. What happened here is a pretty simple game and worth breaking down for posterity.
Keep in mind that Sen. Roberts set a modern record for partisan hackery, so we can rule out some residual interest in oversight. Investigating Republicans just isn’t in his blood. Roberts and Feith knew what the Inspector General would find the same way Chuck Colson knew what direction the Watergate story was going, so they gamed the outcome by sliding in the extra bit about legality to paper over the more relevant conclusions.
Now the report is ready and, voila!, headlines read pre-war intel not illegal. Of course that wasn’t the question that Pentagon critics were asking. That other stuff about mendaciously gaming the Saddam-9/11 connection is in there, can’t help that. But the tone of the article seems practically reversed.
Great moments in PR.
Pb
Ah, but was it really “not illegal”? From Sen. Jay Rockefeller, via Daily Kos:
Ellison, Ellensburg, Ellers, and Lambchop
Is someone seriously still whining about “The 16 Words?” Lamest. Lefty. Meme. Ever. Bush’s SOTU statement was declared “well-founded” by the Butler Report and “reasonable” by the US Senate Intelligence Committee. There’s absolutely no evidence that Bush was “misleading” anyone, much less a Congress that had been talking about Iraq’s WMD threat (including nukes) since John Kerry in 1997. Or was Bush “misleading” Clinton and the Democrats remotely from the Governor’s Mansion in Austin, Texas — you know, with Karl Rove’s Long Distance Mind-Control Ray®?
But hey — don’t let facts and history get in the way of good old BDS-fueled hackery.
Andrew
The death penalty is too good for Feith.
Therefore, with my new unitary executive powers, I condemn him to a 10 months in confinement with Amanda Marcotte and Anna Nicole Smith’s corpse.
Andrew
The death penalty is too good for Feith.
Therefore, with my new unitary executive powers, I condemn him to a 10 months in confinement with Amanda Marcotte and Anna Nicole Smith’s corpse.
Andrew
The death penalty is too good for Feith.
Therefore, with my new unitary executive powers, I condemn him to a 10 months in confinement with Amanda Marcotte and Anna Nicole Smith’s corpse.
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
You can say that again!
Chuck Butcher
If the idjits in the Senate will just persist in not putting these people under oath, then they’ll get these results.
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
Why don’t we ever hear about the pre-war intelligence Bush DIDN’T lie about?
SPIIDERWEB™
I posted about this earlier here, although from a little different angle.
You’re dead on. The legality has nothing to do with it. It caused many to support the invasion of Iraq and that’s morally repulsive.
Jonathan
And yet I was roundly castigated for presuming to suggest that the MSM was complicit in to helping to propagandize the American people.
Go figure.
jake
I don’t get that. I glanced at the headline and thought “Of COURSE the Pentagon is saying that” [rolls eyes]. As for the tone of the article, I think it is a pretty “straight” piece. Levin said X, Feith says Y and comes across as a bit of a whiny pants. “B-but they said ‘inappropriate’ and thas jest mean!”
Plus there are gems like this:
Huh. Is that like making shit up?
Tim F.
Wow, I had no idea anybody still defended the “16 words” story. How long has it been since most of the White House players admitted that it was an embarrassing mistake? Years. Tragically, Bush Defense Syndrome always takes the mind first.
norbizness
DC reporters never thought that they’d be getting that kind of cash when they were attending the Hollywood Upstairs Stenography Institute.
Punchy
We’re….SO…going to war…with ….Iran…
(sigh)
jake
Same story, different (better?) headline.
Different lede too.
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
True, those 16 words were a lie. But what about the hundreds of other words that WEREN’T lies? How come no one ever talks about them?
Dungheap
This headline is actually an improvement. The original link to the AP story on yahoo read:
When you clicked on the link the headline for the AP story read:
I’m not kidding. They then changed it to “not illegal” and now we have the more accurate “Report says Pentagon manipulated intel.”
All for the same story.
RSA
I find it incredible that the neocons responsible for the war in Iraq still have any influence at all. They’ve had to retreat from “The prewar intel was correct” to “Okay, the prewar intel was incorrect but we were justified in believing it” to “At least the prewar intel wasn’t illegal.” How much farther can their house of sand sink? “The prewar intel may have led to a civil war in Iraq and hundreds of thousands of deaths, but. . .”
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
Well, what was the Democrats’ plan for doctoring pre-war intelligence?
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
Besides, it’s Clinton’s fault. Clinton was way worse! And before Clinton, it was Carter’s fault for letting the Shah get taken out. If Carter hadn’t screwed that up, we wouldn’t have had to make friends with Saddam in the first place.
Zifnab
But is that entirely fair? Isn’t Roosevelt partially responsible for all this?
/Colbert
Andrew
Crap, not only do I have to worry about multiple posts, I should probably take it easy on Marcotte, since she’s now bulletproof and moving to my town.
I OWN THE COFFEE SHOPS, AMANDA. TAKE YOUR BLOGGING BACK TO EDWARDS’ MANSION.
You hear me??!?
tBone
Let’s be honest – if Thomas Jefferson would have taken out Iraq when he had the chance, we wouldn’t be in this mess today. There simply haven’t been enough Republican presidents since then to undo the damage.
And don’t get me started on Iran.
Face
who let the drug-addicted (more than heroin and coke, I hear) coffee-aholic shout out threats on this blog?
Andrew…if you weren’t a hurricane, I’d kick your ass.
Tsulagi
With these retards you’re really surprised?
The “Only 16 words!” defense from the ‘honor and integrity’ grownups always cracked me up. Sort of like a 5-second rule in your kitchen. If you drop some food or silverware on the floor and get it back on your plate in 5 seconds or less, that’s okay. Good to go.
So using that logic, the retards figure if Bush says a lie in 16 words or less, he gets a pass. Of course, just about every
torturedalternatively interrogated sentence out of his mouth is 16 words or less. You do the math.Scruffy McSnufflepuss
Jefferson was a real cut-and-run moonbat coward, wasn’t he? He never followed up the victory against the Barbary Coast pirates by bringing democracy to the people of the Middle East. Neither did his moonbat successor, Madison. If they had, we wouldn’t be having this discussion.
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
He sure is. So is Woodrow Wilson. So is Grover Cleveland. Meddling in Hawaii could only serve to antagonize the mullahs of mayhem in Tehran- but don’t expect your average moonbat to understand the connections.
tBone
They were both moral midgets who were more interested in having sex with slaves than with spreading freedom and democracy to Godless savages in faraway places.
Their modern-day counterpart, William Jefferson Clinton, was much the same, with the exception of the slave stuff. Although we all know that if slavery was still legal, Clinton would totally be hitting that.
The point is, the Jefferson/Madison Middle Eastern containment policy was an abject failure, and now we’re all paying the price.
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
I’m just grateful that even though America was begun by moral midget moonbats, it was finished by a man of vision and strength of character and integrity like George W. Bush. Such is a fitting legacy for our nation, indeed; despite the weaknesses of its early chapters, its final chapters are noteworthy and glorious.
Jake
You don’t need slaves when you gots them ‘ar interns. Sheesh do I hafta tell you hippies everything?
tBone
Indeed. It’s too bad the moonbats will be left alone to despoil the place after the Ratpure.
You make a good point. The unquenchable fires of Clinton’s lust have no doubt enslaved many an intern. Even a sinful temptress like Monica Lewinsky didn’t know what she was getting into.
RSA
Which reminds me of Colbert last night, suggesting to Debra End of Blackness Dickerson that Barack Obama might gain some street cred by becoming a slave for some period of time, perhaps to Jesse Jackson in order to avoid the racism issue. He reached a pinnacle of surreality on that one.
Punchy
I just heard on CNN 2 minutes ago that the CIA has uncovered evidence that Iran was behind Anna Smith’s death. The plot to kill her was WAY more complex than what coke or meth could dream up, and so the spooks have concluded that Iranian agents used a ruthless combination of roofies and bad body odor to snuff her out.
Update at 10. At which time, they’ll reach 26 consecutive hours of ANS coverage. Good for them. Responding to our repeated requests to do more stories on (non-armored?) Hummers and those affected…
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
Not for long. God will kill them all and toss them in a lake of burning fire soon enough. It’s not a retreat, it’s a feigned withdrawal.
You speak as one with knowledge. Knowest thou of this fiery Clintonisma?
NOW can we nuke them?
Jake
Larn to spell why don’t ya. But yes, we should make it clear that while it was Clinton’s fault he besmirched the Oval Office rug, it also wasn’t his fault because he was beguiled by a conniving female.
Zifnab
Yeah, and Edwards needs to give his house to the poor. Then Hillary Clinton needs to… um… stop being a bitch. And Bill Richardson should try to run across the border to Canada. And Al Gore should never use fossil fuels ever again for anything, even indirectly. And Wesley Clark should go be a trigger-puller in Iraq for a year. That’s the only thing that will decrease the scorn I have for the Democratic Candidate I’m not voting for. Anything else and they’re all a bunch of hypocrites. McCain/Lieberman in ’08!
RSA
Living in NC, this is one I hear regularly. Edwards can be dismissed because he’s not letting a hundred homeless people live with him in his mansion (if he owns one; I have no idea). Very Rovian: If someone’s done something admirable (charitable giving, war heroism, whatever), attack him for it, no matter how stupid it sounds. The base will eat it up.
tBone
Not firsthand, no. But surely there are many blue dresses out there that have been sullied by a stray shot of Clintonisma.
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
Hey, maybe some pants, too. I’m just sayin’.
Clinton wears pants, you know.
tBone
Not often enough.
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
You know that, I know that, Osama knows that, and Dinesh D’Souza knows that. Why couldn’t the American people figure it out?
Darrell
Whoops. Per JCole’s correction/post, looks like headlines were cooked alright, but cooked up by a liberal biased press predisposed to discredit republicans.. facts be damned.