The Senate Intelligence Committee today released the final two sections of the Phase II report on prewar intelligence, and I just want to say...I feel physically ill and personally betrayed.
What emerges is a picture of different areas of the government, all ultimately charged with a sacred duty to the American people, abdicating that responsibility. The Rumsfeld Pentagon was a petty, vindictive place and comes under harsh scrutiny in the report.
Additionally, the Committee issued a report on the Intelligence Activities Relating to Iraq conducted by the Policy Counterterrorism Evaluation Group and the Office of Special Plans within the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy. The report found that the clandestine meetings between Pentagon officials and Iranians in Rome and Paris were inappropriate and mishandled from beginning to end. Deputy National Security Advisor Steve Hadley and Deputy Secretary Paul Wolfowitz failed to keep the Intelligence Community and the State Department appropriately informed about the meetings. The involvement of Manucher Ghobanifer and Michael Ledeen in the meetings was inappropriate. Potentially important information collected during the meetings was withheld from intelligence agencies by Pentagon officials. Finally, senior Defense Department officials cut short internal investigations of the meetings and failed to implement the recommendations of their own counterintelligence experts.In plain English: The Pentagon withheld intelligence from the CIA and DIA, because to Rummy it was all just one big pissing contest and he was going to get his war.
It is all so wrong on so many levels. I can not believe that we haven't arrested and tried some of these war criminals. The one thing that they all, every last one, have in common is an almost sociopathic depraved indifference to others.
The Iraqis who would suffer and die, the American soldiers who would be lost or broken, none of them crossed the minds of any of these fuckers.
And by the way - We have known this all along. The Senate report merely puts in the public record what a hundred intel-savvy left-leaning blogs - this one included - have been saying all along.
We have known all along.
And so did Pat Roberts. He was in a position to do something all along, when he was the Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, but he was blinded by ideology and he did nothing. He withheld the information, at great harm to national security. Where I come from, we call that obstruction, and we have laws against it.
Jim Slattery has a chance of taking Roberts Senate seat. To do that, he needs to seize on this issue and beat Roberts' bald, addled pate bloody with it. Roberts' tenure as committee chairman is deplorable and it has the potential to sink him if Slattery will play hardball with the old prick. I spent a lot of my adult life among Kansans. Some of my best friends are Kansans (honest!) And they are pissed at Roberts right now. They will vote for Slattery if he gives them a reason.
Give them a reason, Jim. Please.
