Villainous Company

Unfortunately for you, there are records of his words and we have since accomplished most of what Mr. Bush said he would do.

Saddam has been removed. Elections have been held and the Constitution is almost complete. WMDs were not found, that is true. However two official inquiries have determined that though the intelligence was flawed, that was what we had available at the the time. Rewriting history, based on future knowledge unavailable back then to suit your political agenda doesn't cut it.

The American people took the warnings that the administration sounded seriously-warnings that were echoed at the United Nations and here in Congress as we voted to give the president the authority to go to war. For the sake of our democracy and our future national security, the public must know whether such warnings were driven by facts and responsible intelligence, or by political calculation.

As I mentioned, two inquiries already examined that question. Why are you determined to re-examine it? The intel was flawed. We have since learned better. Is it your contention that the President of the United States should have gone into the field as a spy and personally gathered better HUMINT? Perhaps on his lunch hour?

These issues need to be addressed with urgency.

Yes. The 2006 elections arejust around the corner, aren't they? Let's pretend for just one second that there IS something here. What will you have accomplished for your country? What will change?

We will still be in Iraq, and it will still not be a good (or honorable) thing to pull out now. American credibility will be irreversibly damaged. The trust of our allies - our true allies - will also be damaged beyond repair, but you've already called them names and belittled them for sticking by us in our time of need while sucking up to nations like France who continue to stab us in the back, so perhaps that doesn't bother you.

You will either put the country through the hell of unproductive impeachment hearings during wartime, or you will manage to get Bush impeached and put Cheney in office. He will choose a viable candidate for 2008 as Vice President and the RNC will now have an heir apparent all lined up for the upcoming Presidential election. Nice work, smart guy.

This remains a dangerous world, with American forces engaged in Iraq and Afghanistan, and other challenges looming in Iran and North Korea.

And the same folks who were reluctant to go to war after 12 years of violated UN sanctions and with a trumped-up, so-called coalition of the bribed, the coerced, the bought, and the extorted international coalition at our sides are suddenly going to approve going to war against North Korea or Iran when neither of those conditions are present? Interesting premise. Let's do lunch and talk some more.

In this environment, the American public should have the highest confidence that policy makers are using intelligence objectively-never manipulating it to justify war, but always to protect the United States. The contents of the Downing Street Memo undermine this faith and only rigorous Congressional oversight can determine the truth.

Yes, by all means Senator Kerry. Please do explain to the American public just why you are making such a big fuss over "questions" raised by:

...unverifiable thirdhand, uncorroborated hearsay regarding meetings with unnamed sources, quoting the [contradictory in places] speculation of other unamed sources about what George Bush may or may not have been planning, contained in retyped documents whose originals have been destroyed.

We remain especially interested in your answers since both the British Butler Report and the Senate Select Intelligence Committee Report, both of which are freely available to anyone with access to Google, examined the intelligence available to the administration and concluded that though it proved to be flawed, there was no way the administration could have known that, and furthermore that there was no evidence that it was manipulated by the administration nor that there was any pressure applied by the White House to skew the findings.

Given these facts, why do you prefer unattributed quotes from an unverifiable, unofficial document whose original has been destroyed to the results of two government inquiries? It almost begins to seem that you are determined to create trouble.

We urge the committee to complete the second phase of its investigation with the maximum speed and transparency possible, producing, as it did at the end of Phase I, a comprehensive, unclassified report from which the American people can benefit directly.

Interesting that you don't quote any of the results from Phase I. Allow me to do so here:

The Intelligence Community did not accurately or adequately explain to policymakers the uncertainties behind the judgments in the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate.

In the cases in the NTE where the IC did express uncertainty about its assessments concerning Iraq's WMD capabilities, those explanations suggested, in some cases, that Iraq's capabilities were even greater than the NIE judged. For example, the key judgments of the NIE said "we judge that we are seeing only a portion of Iraq's WMD efforts, owing to Baghdad's vigorous denial and deception efforts. Revelations after the Gulf War starkly demonstrate the extensive efforts undertaken by Iraq to deny information.

The Committee found that none of the analysts or other people interviewed by the Committee said that they were pressured to change their conclusions related to Iraq's links to terrorism. After 9/11, however, analysts were under tremendous pressure to make correct assessments, to avoid missing a credible threat, and to avoid an intelligence failure on the scale of 9/11. As a result, the Intelligence Community's assessments were bold and assertive in pointing out potential terrorist links. For instance, the June 2002 Central Intelligence Agency assessment Iraq and al-Qaida: Interpreting a Murky Relationship was, according to its Scope Note, "purposefully aggressive" in drawing connections between Iraq and al-Qaida in an effort to inform policymakers of the potential that such a relationship existed.

Some would call this intelligent pessimism in the face of incomplete information. Of course hindsight sees it differently, but hindsight was not an option back then, was it? Except for critics of the administration.

The information provided by the Central Intelligence Agency for the terrorism portion of Secretary Powell's speech was carefully vetted by both terrorism and regional analysts.

None of the portrayals of the intelligence reporting included in Secretary Powell's speech differed in any significant way from earlier assessments published by the Central Intelligence Agency.

And let's look at the yellowcake uranium claim, upheld by the Butler report:

...on the basis of the intelligence assessments at the time, covering both Niger and the Democratic Republic of Congo, the statements on Iraqi attempts to buy uranium from Africa in the Government's dossier, and by the Prime Minister in the House of Commons, were well-founded. By extension, we conclude also that the statement in President Bush's State of the Union Address of 28 January 2003 that: The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa was well-founded.

There has been a notable lack of enthusiasm in your party for persuing this line of inquiry. Could it be that they remember the conclusions of the Senate Select Intelligence Committee Report?

Could it be that, unlike you, they did not miss 86% of the Senate votes last year?

That would explain a lot, wouldn't it?