Bush Admin says Congress Saw Same Intelligence before War and that Independent Commissions Cleared Them of Manipulating Pre-War Intel: Both are Lies

President Bush and his national security adviser have answered critics of the Iraq war in recent days with a two-pronged argument: that Congress saw the same intelligence the administration did before the war, and that independent commissions have determined that the administration did not misrepresent the intelligence. Both are lies!

Bush and his aides had access to much more voluminous intelligence information than did lawmakers, who were dependent on the administration to provide the material. And the commissions cited by officials, though concluding that the administration did not pressure intelligence analysts to change their conclusions, were not authorized to determine whether the administration exaggerated or distorted those conclusions.

Bush’s apologists have been busy spreading the lie that the “bipartisan Silberman-Robb commission found no evidence of political manufacture and manipulation of intelligence.” When in fact the Silberman-Robb commission actually said, “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.” Thanks to Josh Marshall for pointing out that lie. In spite of the fact that this is an obvious lie the GOP keeps repeating it and the Lapdog Corporate Media refuses to expose them as the liars they are.

With regard to the minipulation of intelligence as shown here and elsewhere a Senate Report shows that the Bush Administration did distort the NIE (the national intelligence estimate) used to convince Congress and the US that War with Iraq was justified. A more thorough investigation of whether officials misused intelligence was promised a year and a half ago, but Senate Republicans have sat on their asses instead of proceeding with the investigation!