idiot at the gates
The NYT reports that Bush is refusing to hand over to Congress the 1-page "President's Summary" of the CIA's 2002 National Intelligence Estimate regarding Iraqi WMDs. This summary contained the sum total of information Bush received from the CIA, and here Fred Kaplan nails the issue:
The "President's Summary" was one page? This CIA estimate was a 93-page document, filled with caveats, qualifiers, and footnotes of interagency dissent on several key points.
Some of this is a moot point in light of the evidence that Bush was planning on attacking Iraq *before* 9/11, but on other levels there are some important things to note:
I've seen so many flags flying these past few years that I'm going colorblind, but people seem to have forgotten that those colors once stood for something, something very different from what the country is now. And because we've forgotten, this administration gets away with, well, murder, among other things. If that doesn't bug people, and the fact that this administration has destroyed some of the central pillars of our national ideology doesn't bug people, then sadly this is the government we deserve.
I never thought I'd find myself hoping that all good Republicans would get out to the polls and vote their consciences, but in this election it might be the only chance the country has. If they blindly fall in line behind Bush, I suspect we're fucked for good.
[links via SixDifferentWays, but the rant is all mine. I figure I should stick to what I am good at.]
The "President's Summary" was one page? This CIA estimate was a 93-page document, filled with caveats, qualifiers, and footnotes of interagency dissent on several key points.
Some of this is a moot point in light of the evidence that Bush was planning on attacking Iraq *before* 9/11, but on other levels there are some important things to note:
- our pResident is either willfully ignorant, misinformed, or not adequately informed (from here it looks like all three)
- the bureaucracy has clearly gotten out of hand... it's like when the shuttle blew up and the engineer's reports said there was one chance in ten of such a thing happening, while senior management's reports said the chance was 1 in 300,000
- and most importantly for me: all those hours I spent in civics class as a kid, studying things like "separation of powers", "checks and balances", and "congressional oversight"? I want those goddam hours back, as they obviously no longer apply if the administration just tells Congress to go fuck themselves when they ask for information
I've seen so many flags flying these past few years that I'm going colorblind, but people seem to have forgotten that those colors once stood for something, something very different from what the country is now. And because we've forgotten, this administration gets away with, well, murder, among other things. If that doesn't bug people, and the fact that this administration has destroyed some of the central pillars of our national ideology doesn't bug people, then sadly this is the government we deserve.
I never thought I'd find myself hoping that all good Republicans would get out to the polls and vote their consciences, but in this election it might be the only chance the country has. If they blindly fall in line behind Bush, I suspect we're fucked for good.
[links via SixDifferentWays, but the rant is all mine. I figure I should stick to what I am good at.]
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