President Bush and his national security adviser have answered critics of the Iraq war in recent days with a two-pronged argument: that Congress saw the same intelligence the administration did before the war, and that independent commissions have determined that the administration did not misrepresent the intelligence.
Neither assertion is wholly accurate.
That's a very polite way of putting it.
Bush and his aides had access to much more voluminous intelligence information than did lawmakers, who were dependent on the administration to provide the material. And the commissions cited by officials, though concluding that the administration did not pressure intelligence analysts to change their conclusions, were not authorized to determine whether the administration exaggerated or distorted those conclusions…
The WaPo article is a quick read, and an important one.
Bottom line: Congress didn't really see the "same intelligence" the White House saw. Mister Bush's "independent commission" on WMD wasn't ordered to investigate the administration's use of intelligence, so they didn't. And the Senate investigation was supposed to investigate the intelligence manipulation, but hasn't done so yet.
Bush and Hadley are, as usual, full of it.
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