Bush Didn't Lie? If Only It Weren't That Simple.

Next, "estimates." Intelligence community "estimates," such as the key judgments of the 2002 National Intelligence Estimate, are just that: estimates, judgments. A synonym for "judgment" is "opinion". Facts are facts. But judgments may be well or poorly made. The CIA, as we know, made many poor judgments, claims that were not supported by the intelligence.

One might be tempted, then, to blame the CIA, to propagate the myth of "intelligence failure". But this would be fallacious for two reasons. One, statements by members of the Bush administration shouldn't be compared to other opinions, even if they come from the CIA, but to the available evidence. And the fact is that there was no credible evidence to support their statements in Iraq's WMD. At best, then, administration claims matched poor CIA judgments for which there was no credible supporting evidence.

Two, administration statements went beyond parroting poor, unsubstantiated judgments from the CIA. And it went beyond not merely noting "disagreements" within the intelligence community. Take the aluminum tubes, which the administration stated as fact were for use in a nuclear weapons program. As already noted, the nation's top experts on centrifuges had arrived at a different conclusion, and said so in numerous intelligence reports. The State Department agreed with the DOE assessment, which was the same conclusion on the tubes arrived at by the experts at the IAEA. The 2002 NIE noted the fact that the best experts to make a reasonable judgment on the tubes disagreed ("dissented") with the CIA's poor judgment. And yet the administration still stated as fact that which was contradicted by the best intelligence and the most credible estimates available.

Repeating this experiment with statements on chemical and biological weapons produces the same results, but it's superfluous to continue. Given above are clear, solid examples of statements from President Bush which were not supported by any credible evidence.

The SSCI "Phase II" report's conclusions thus contradict its own findings. After all, the report's mandate, as reflected in its title, wasn't to investigate whether administration statements were supported by intelligence community "estimates," but whether their statements "Were Substantiated by Intelligence Information" itself (emphasis added). And in this regard, their statements were, to borrow the report's own caveat, "generally" unsubstantiated. In fact, they were near totally unsubstantiated within this, the proper framework.

The definition of the verb to "lie," according to Webster's dictionary, is "making untrue statements with intent to deceive" or "creating a false or misleading impression." That Bush and others in his administration lied isn't an "article of faith," but a demonstrable fact.

And by the same standard, neither the members of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence nor Fred Hiatt are being too honest, either.

___________________

Fred Hiatt, "'Bush Lied'? If Only It Were That Simple." The Washington Post, June 9, 2008; A17

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/08/AR2008060801687.html?wpisrc=newsletter&wpisrc=newsletter

Report on Whether Public Statements Regarding Iraq by U.S. Government Officials Were Substantiated by Intelligence Information", Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, June 2008

http://intelligence.senate.gov/080605/phase2a.pdf

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