CoastalRat wrote:Joe, maybe I misunderstand, but I think this is basically what Factcheck is stating.
The intel community believed, based on their best intel, that Saddam was a threat. Their intel was summarized in this 92-page document, which did indeed raise doubts that Saddam would readily sell his weapons to terrorists. This document was made available to congress, whose members may or may not have read it prior to the vote to authorize the use of force by Bush. Per Factcheck, the data contained in this report was not manipulated by the President. It is an accurate reflection of what the intel community believed based on the facts currently available.
Read the
site again. Here is the header:
Iraq: What Did Congress Know, And When? Bush says Congress had the same (faulty) intelligence he did. Howard Dean says intelligence was "corrupted." We give facts.
FactCheck, in part, investigated whether there had been any manipulation of the intelligence.
I did not comment on that part of FactCheck's investigation. The other part dealt with whether or not Bush's claim that congress "had the same (faulty) intelligence he did" was correct. That part, I contend, is seriously flawed, because it assumes that the 92-page NIE that congress received was the
same information that Bush had. That clearly cannot be the case.
CoastalRat wrote:So, unless you have verifiable facts that factcheck does not have (doubtful), then claiming that factcheck is wrong at this point is pure partisanship blindness on your part. Further facts may be forthcoming that will change the conclusion Factcheck has come to, but until that time, I will go with factcheck over your opinion every time.
I don't have verifiable information, but then neither did FactCheck. The NIE is still classified -- FactCheck only saw portions of it. But it defies belief that
all the information that Bush had was contained in a 92-page document. If you believe otherwise, then I think that would indicate a certain degree of blind partisanship on
your part.
