THE WAR -- The Money [Part 26]

This is about The Money we didn't have to spend on a useless, deadly and debilitating war in Iraq. Some think it is unnecessary to find out what happened to thrust us into this five years and counting mess. Are we all Chicago Cub fans? What's happened in the past can't be recalled, replayed, re-voted on, so Go You Cubs. That's why baseball is a game and war is serious. That's why stammering cries of "We're winning." and hollow declarations about "Victory" are meaningless. We were lied to, we believed the lies, we're paying the price. There's no, "Wait till next year."

After long delays by the Republicans in the Senate, comes the dropping of the second shoe "of investigations by the Senate Intelligence Committee into the use, abuse and faulty assessments of intelligence leading up to the invasion of Iraq in March 2003." You may remember (most do not) the first part which demonstrated the failures of the CIA. Part 2 is about Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and that whole gang and their 2002-03 pre-war "exaggerations," or what most of us would call lies. Playing up and accentuating a climate of fear, massaging and misrepresenting the intelligence they collected, counting on Americans' deep well of too often blind patriotism, and threatening the timid in Congress with defeat at the polls, these liars led us into a war without a justifiable purpose.

We've been paying big time ever since.


The New York Times
June 5, 2008
Senate Panel Accuses Bush of Iraq Exaggerations
By MARK MAZZETTI and SCOTT SHANE

WASHINGTON — A long-delayed Senate report endorsed by Democrats and some Republicans has concluded that President Bush and his aides built the public case for war against Iraq by exaggerating available intelligence and by ignoring disagreements among spy agencies about Iraq’s weapons programs and Saddam Hussein’s links to Al Qaeda.

The report was released Thursday after years of partisan squabbling, and it marks the close of five years of investigations by the Senate Intelligence Committee into the use, abuse and faulty assessments of intelligence leading up to the invasion of Iraq in March 2003. . . .

The 170-page report accuses Mr. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and other top officials of repeatedly overstating the Iraqi threat in the emotional aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks. Its findings were endorsed by all eight committee Democrats and two Republicans, Senators Olympia Snowe of Maine and Chuck Hagel of Nebraska. . . .

For full story and link to the Senate Intelligence Report go to:

Senate Investigation