Well, duh

And here we are, five years later and 4,085 dead U.S. service members dead:

"The Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, John D. (Jay) Rockefeller IV, and a bipartisan majority of the Committee (10-5), today unveiled the final two sections of its Phase II report on prewar intelligence.

"The Committee’s report cites several conclusions in which the Administration’s public statements were NOT supported by the intelligence. They include:

Ø Statements and implications by the President and Secretary of State suggesting that Iraq and al-Qa’ida had a partnership, or that Iraq had provided al-Qa’ida with weapons training, were not substantiated by the intelligence.

Ø Statements by the President and the Vice President indicating that Saddam Hussein was prepared to give weapons of mass destruction to terrorist groups for attacks against the United States were contradicted by available intelligence information.

Ø Statements by President Bush and Vice President Cheney regarding the postwar situation in Iraq, in terms of the political, security, and economic, did not reflect the concerns and uncertainties expressed in the intelligence products.

Ø Statements by the President and Vice President prior to the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate regarding Iraq’s chemical weapons production capability and activities did not reflect the intelligence community’s uncertainties as to whether such production was ongoing.

Ø The Secretary of Defense’s statement that the Iraqi government operated underground WMD facilities that were not vulnerable to conventional airstrikes because they were underground and deeply buried was not substantiated by available intelligence information.

Ø The Intelligence Community did not confirm that Muhammad Atta met an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague in 2001 as the Vice President repeatedly claimed."

The report in pdf format is here.

NYT still "coming clean" on Iraq

The New York Times is still trying to "come clean" years after I stopped reading it because of Judith Miller's shilling for the administration. They've already apologized for that.

Now, the public editor in her blog asks the question, why didn't the Times and other media write about criticism of media coverage of the Iraq occupation delivered by the general who was in charge of all forces in Iraq at the time of Abu Ghraib. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez delivered the media a rebuke in the same breath he blasted the administration for its "incompetent" management of the war.

Good question. Why not write about his comments on the media? The Times tries to explain it this way: "Sanchez is an important figure in the history of U.S. involvement in Iraq, and if his criticisms of the administration were worth front-page play, his criticisms of the news media were also worth reporting." See the full mea culpa.