Monday, January 15, 2007

The Lie Heard Round The World



I keep coming back to why we are in Iraq, what are we doing there, only because everything we have been told was wrong. The Administration bristles at the thought put forth that America was misled into war, but the recently deposed Republican congress refused to look into the matter. Well, they pretty much refused to do any damn thing. Now this story pops up, via AP:
WASHINGTON - A firedCIA employee, who collected prewar intelligence that Iraq was not developing weapons of mass destruction, can continue with a lawsuit challenging his dismissal, a federal judge has ruled.
U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler decided on technical grounds that the lawsuit could not be dismissed. But she did not rule on the covert agent's contention that he was fired because he refused to alter intelligence that contradicted Bush administration policies.

Kessler said in the ruling Friday that the covert agent, identified only as Doe, had the right to argue his firing was based on allegedly false information placed in his personnel file.

The agent said he collected intelligence from several countries in the Near East. "Obviously, Iraq was one of them," said the plaintiff's Washington attorney, Roy Krieger. The lawsuit does not name any of the countries.

[...]

Now the story filed by the AP contends that Bush was never briefed about this agents findings, which apparently contradicted the contention that Iraq had WMD's, effectively shielding President Bush from misleading the country. This is also known as plausible deniability.

But the thing is, I haven't heard of anybody getting fired for the massive intelligence flub, except for this guy, who may have got it right. This brings up a couple of points.

1) The CIA has been punked over this whole deal and have kept pretty mum about it. No defense in their behalf has been offered.

2) This has made the President look pretty foolish yet he has not extracted a pound of flesh from the CIA. In fact, he gave George Tenet a big ol' fat medal for the debacle.

And the cost to America and Iraq has been extraordinary.

The Cheney/Bush team just go full-steam ahead with their "New Way Forward 2.0" (Now with Iranian flavor added)

It looks like the Bush Administration will go out the same way it came in--through the courts.

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