Posted on 02/09/2007 3:03:29 PM PST by Zechariah_8_13
Found out this morning that a National Guard officer who is personally very close to me is being deployed to Baghdad for a year, leaving behind his wife and little kids. Tens of thousands of men and women have had to do the same, but this is as close as the war has gotten to me, and I'm having a tough time dealing with it. N. will be sent there into the middle of a civil war, to implement a policy few in Washington believe will work, and in which two-thirds of the American people disbelieve. Meanwhile, here is the lede from the top story in today's Washington Post:
Intelligence provided by former undersecretary of defense Douglas J. Feith to buttress the White House case for invading Iraq included "reporting of dubious quality or reliability" that supported the political views of senior administration officials rather than the conclusions of the intelligence community, according to a report by the Pentagon's inspector general.
Feith's office "was predisposed to finding a significant relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda," according to portions of the report, released yesterday by Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.). The inspector general described Feith's activities as "an alternative intelligence assessment process."
I remember the words Sen. Jim Webb spoke in his SOTU response:
Like so many other Americans, today and throughout our history, we serve and have served, not for political reasons, but because we love our country. On the political issues - those matters of war and peace, and in some cases of life and death - we trusted the judgment of our national leaders. We hoped that they would be right, that they would measure with accuracy the value of our lives against the enormity of the national interest that might call upon us to go into harm's way.
We owed them our loyalty, as Americans, and we gave it. But they owed us - sound judgment, clear thinking, concern for our welfare, a guarantee that the threat to our country was equal to the price we might be called upon to pay in defending it.
The less I say this morning about the despicable men of whom Sen. Webb so justly condemned, and whose actions condemn them, the better. God bless and keep all our fighting men and women, and their families.
UPDATE: The Washington Post has issued a prominent correction to its article. Here it is:
Correction to This Article A Feb. 9 front-page article about the Pentagon inspector general's report regarding the office of former undersecretary of defense Douglas J. Feith incorrectly attributed quotations to that report. References to Feith's office producing "reporting of dubious quality or reliability" and that the office "was predisposed to finding a significant relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda" were from a report issued by Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) in Oct. 2004. Similarly, the quotes stating that Feith's office drew on "both reliable and unreliable reporting" to produce a link between al-Qaeda and Iraq "that was much stronger than that assessed by the IC [Intelligence Community] and more in accord with the policy views of senior officials in the Administration" were also from Levin's report. The article also stated that the intelligence provided by Feith's office supported the political views of senior administration officials, a conclusion that the inspector general's report did not draw.The two reports employ similar language to characterize the activities of Feith's office: Levin's report refers to an "alternative intelligence assessment process" developed in that office, while the inspector general's report states that the office "developed, produced, and then disseminated alternative intelligence assessments on the Iraq and al Qaida relationship, which included some conclusions that were inconsistent with the consensus of the Intelligence Community, to senior decision-makers." The inspector general's report further states that Feith's briefing to the White House in 2002 "undercuts the Intelligence Community" and "did draw conclusions that were not fully supported by the available intelligence."
This is an important correction, because it reveals that the initial report attributes statements to the IG that were actually Levin's. The IG's executive summary does not draw the harsh conclusions that Levin's did. It's still unclear to me what, exactly, the IG found, other than that Feith's work in this regard was "inappropriate." That doesn't make Levin wrong or right, but the Post made a whopper of a mistake.
I don't believe a word that comes out of Carl Levin's mouth, or any other liberal Democrat politician, all of whom are now deeply invested in America's defeat and humiliation in the middle east.
General FYI:
Rod Dreher is the author of "Crunchy Cons: The New Conservative Counterculture and Its Return to Roots,"
which is an okay book until Dreher starts in with comments like "Global warming is an undeniable fact" and assorted liberal Chicken Little-esq panicking.
Not only the dems but what about the anti-Bush, pro-liberal DBM? The absolute scum of the earth for not reporting fairly, and hiding truth!
After all, the democratic Truman administration imposed full wartime censorship, during the Asian Civil War that was known as the Korean conflict.
Correspondents could not dispatch reports that would demoralize troops; they could not criticize the allied conduct of the war; they could not mention casualties before they were officially published; they were placed under jurisdiction of the military and were subject to courtmartial.
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