CIA Blacked Out Knowledge from NIE Report

In a classified National Intelligence Estimate prepared before the Iraq war, the CIA hedged its judgments about Saddam Hussein and weapons of mass destruction, pointing up the limits of its knowledge.

But in the unclassified version of the NIE — the so-called white paper cited by the Bush administration in making its case for war — those carefully qualified conclusions were turned into blunt assertions of fact, according to the Senate Intelligence Committee's report on prewar intelligence.

In doing a little research for the last entry's comment reply, I re-found this article.

Go read it. The unclassified version of the National Intelligence Estimate referred to in the article was the main basis of reporting on the "threat" from Saddam before we invaded Iraq.

Simply, we were lied to.

Also simply, the Congress was not.

Get your heads around this: Congress was not given the unclassified ("cooked") version of the NIE. That was released to the press for them to disseminate to We The People. Congress got the unclassified version.

Yeah, all along, they knew. They knew there were real doubts about everything the administration (read: Dick Cheney) claimed about Iraq but they voted for war anyway. Oh sure, some voted for the Presidential power to make war and not explicitly for the war (like John Kerry claims). Anyone who tries to split that hair is full of shit.

So those members of Congress who pound the podiums and claim they were duped about Iraq are full of shit too. They knew.

Like the administration, they thought that supporting a slam-dunk war with Iraq would help them win re-election and more power.

So go read the article on the report of the Senate Intelligence Committee findings on the veracity of prewar intelligence. Then ask yourself if we were lied to. Then ask yourself the most important question - above and beyond whether a false case for war was made - ask yourself why no one involved with the lying has yet been investigated or punished.