Bush Knew

There are those who defend President Bush's handling of the lead-up to the Iraq war by saying that he never actively lied. Perhaps the intelligence he got turned out to be wrong, but he never said something he knew to be wrong. Well, according to an article in Salon, the CIA told him specifically that its best sources showed Saddam had no WMDs. George (Bush, not Tenet), however, had already made up his mind. The article quotes a report from two CIA officers who provided the report.

Money quote: "The officers continued to insist on the significance of Sabri's information, but one of Tenet's deputies told them, "You haven't figured this out yet. This isn't about intelligence. It's about regime change."

The CIA officers on the case awaited the report they had submitted on Sabri to be circulated back to them, but they never received it. They learned later that a new report had been written. "It was written by someone in the agency, but unclear who or where, it was so tightly controlled. They knew what would please the White House. They knew what the king wanted," one of the officers told me."