Needless to say, I think this report was nothing shy of a whitewash for Bush and the neocons who pushed for this war. For them to come out and state that there was absolutely no influence on the CIA to shift or conflate evidence to go to war, when we've clearly seen CIA officers come out and state just that, and furthermore when it actually wasn't the duty of this particular part of the report to actually investigate such influences, is nothing shy of absurd. As Froomkin writes about Isikof's column in Newsweek:

quote:

Michael Isikoff writes in Newsweek, reminding readers of a Feb. 4, 2003, e-mail made public by last year's Senate panel on intelligence in which a senior CIA official sharply rebuked an analyst who had expressed skepticism about the reliability of a key informant. "Keep in mind the fact that this war's going to happen regardless of what Curve Ball said or didn't say and that the Powers That Be probably aren't terribly interested in whether Curve Ball knows what he's talking about," the CIA official wrote. So Isikoff asked Silberman why the e-mail wasn't even mentioned in the report, which concluded that "No analytical judgments were changed in response to political pressure." Writes Isikoff: "'What e-mail are you talking about?' Judge Lawrence Silberman, the chairman, testily responded. . . . 'I'm mystified.' Two hours later, after Newsweek supplied the panel with a copy of the e-mail from the Senate report, a commission spokesman explained that the panel was aware of it but chose not to include it because its contents were already known. But its absence from the report raises questions of whether the Silberman panel may have 'cherry-picked' evidence to exclude anything politically embarrassing to the 'Powers That Be.' Not so, says the White House. A senior official says the report lays to rest any notion that the administration lied or falsified intelligence." http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dy...ion/whbriefing/

IOW, the Commission report on WMD is nothing shy of a White House wet dream - blaming everyone and anyone without putting any blame on Bush and his neocon's influence. Hersh's "Stovepipe" article is a must read on this subject:

http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?031027fa_fact

But again, it wasn't the duty of this particular Commission to report on that, nevertheless they somehow felt it necessary to do so without actually examining any evidence (and somehow coming to that very conclusion). Actually that is the duty of Sen. Roberts and the Senate Intelligence Committee to do that, but Roberts deferred the job to this Committee, whom as I just mentioned is NOT examining the White House's role in the matter.

I fucking hate my Kansas Senator. Fucking douchebag.

But what I find most interesting about our reliance on a particular piece of intelligence of interest is this "Curveball" guy, who has such tremendous credibility qualities like being a cousin of Ahmed Chalabi and an alcoholic:

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/inte...1451138,00.html

http://today.reuters.com/news/newsA...URVEBALL-DC.XML


But it is interesting to note how his lies got effectively passed down and taken as gospel through our intelligence, or more specifically through the Office of Special Plans created by Douglas Feith. Again, read Hersh's piece if you haven't already. I might also suggest this good summary:

http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=5423

The timing of this all around the hoopla with Schiavo is a bit interesting. Just got swept right under the rug.....

___________________
Whence September dusk grows crisper still,
with leaves all crimson conquered,
I yearn to shout,
and dance about,
and stick pickles in my honker...