moe lane:
BOOM goes the dynamite: “A group of intelligence analysts have provided investigators with documents they say show that senior military officers manipulated the conclusions of reports on the war against the Islamic State, according to several government officials, as lawmakers from both parties voiced growing anger that they may have received a distorted picture about the military campaign’s progress.” Government inspectors specifically looking at CENTCOM (United States Central Command), which of course was the subject of a potentially devastating Daily Beast report from last week that alleged that precisely this was going on. Naturally, the New York Times doesn’t want to admit that the original problem arose largely because this administration hates being told things that it doesn’t like to hear, but at least the Times is taking the situation seriously, right?
The real question is whether the Democrats will, or whether they’re going to try to scapegoat. I’m guessing ‘scapegoat:’
“We do take seriously any allegations of the mishandling or manipulation of intelligence information for purposes other than getting to ground truth,” Representative Adam Schiff of California, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said Tuesday. “In the wake of the flawed intelligence prior to the Iraq war, we must make sure that all voices are appropriately considered and that assessments are never again politicized.”
And this is why you can’t take Adam Schiff – or any other Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee (or anywhere else) – seriously. ‘Flawed intelligence,’ in this case, is a Democratic code phrase for ‘You need to pretend to be upset over this particular mistake:’ contra the fever dreams of the antiwar movement at the time, the Bush administration was a good deal more cautious about defining the knowns, unknowns, and known unknowns than said movement credited said administration at the time. Besides, there’s a marked difference between providing analyses that are inherently pessimistic and ones that are inherently optimistic.
Damned right-wing rag.
We have to know specifically who did it, and specifically what their motive was.
The right’s reflexive assertion that the Obama administration was being served classified intelligence reports cooked to its own specifications isn’t the point where this should be allowed to stop. That is what is known as an assumption, and one that could be used as a political weapon.
No one is above suspicion in such a situation. No motive should be automatically discounted.
@Greg: Well, gosh, Greg, I have NO inside information sources in the intelligence community and yet I could tell definitively that what the administration was describing was not the case with ISIS. We have discussed that very thing right here… that ISIS is running roughshod over the region and growing stronger and more dangerous while Obama states that his 10 sorties a day was seriously degrading them. I would have to wonder why the hell, if Obama was not influencing the whitewashing of the intel, he did not suspect they were not accurate.
But that’s just me.
There’s a faction within the intelligence community that’s extremely hostile to the Obama administration. There’s also a conservative/right-wing narrative concerning just about everything that more closely resembles an alternate reality than a difference of opinion. So, I take nothing the right says at face value. I want to hear the specifics and see the evidence. Until then, it’s just one more fabrication on a wagon-load of right-wing bullshit that they’re heaping as full as possible before the next election. They don’t give a damn whether stories are true or not. Proof or lack thereof doesn’t matter. They only care about a story’s political usefulness. So far as I know, the people telling the stories are the cancer.
What do you imagine happened to the intelligence community factions that facilitated and supported the Bush Administration’s launch of the War in Iraq? Do you think they all left following Obama’s election? How did an known liar like Curveball get turned into a credible source of information? Should we automatically believe something to be true without evidence, just because someone within the CIA says its so?
Show me the evidence. Show me the evidence of any of the endless accusations the right is making.
@Greg:
Blockquoted in the article link:
🙂
Greg,
Kenneth Timmerman wrote a book called “Shadow Warriors” which you might be interested in. It talks about some of the politically partisan CIA officials like Tyler Drumheller and Paul Pillar who allowed their politics to color their work. Also at State Dept:
@Greg:
Once again, your comparative analysis on which you base your opinion is flawed…. it suspends reality.
The intelligence showing Hussein possessed WMD’s and posed a serious threat to the region and support of terror extended back into the 90’s… well before Bush considered war in Iraq “do defend his daddy” or “to make money” or “for oil” or whatever accusation de jour you leftists favor today. Further, long before 9/11, many Democrats favored securing those WMD’s and taking Hussein out. So, who influenced this and why?
After 9/11, Bush didn’t simply view this as a really good excuse to attack Hussein. I am sure they went back to find other threats and, if you ever paid attention to any of the statements made by both Clinton’s, Kerry, Gore, etc, etc, you will realize (if such a thing is possible) that prior to 9/11, this was considered a critical threat; it was not just invented on the fly so we could finally fulfill our dream of attacking Iraq.
So, half of your premise fails. Now, no doubt much of the intelligence community dislikes Obama; why wouldn’t they? He hates them, calls them torturers and states that they do not provide the intelligence we need and has blamed them for lack of preparation for attacks. So, what needs to be done is a thorough investigation of the charges in order to find out who is lying. Would you agree?
@Wordsmith: As with absolutely every other case, all the hate and vitriol heaped upon Bush is either ignored, forgotten or denied. Disloyalty to Bush is OK because, well, he’s Bush… but disloyalty to Obama? OFF WITH THEIR HEADS!! It matters not how much Obama may attack his opponents or how much of his dishonesty is revealed, he must be obeyed and worshiped.