The credibility gap keeps getting a bit wider

A ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee has offered a bit of a preview of into the preliminary findings from their investigation.

On June 25, during the House debate on the intelligence authorization bill, Harman delivered an informal progress report on her committee's inquiry. Her remarks received, as far as I can tell, little media attention. But they are dramatic in that these comments are the first quasi-findings from an official outlet confirming that Bush deployed dishonest rhetoric in guiding the United States to invasion and occupation in Iraq. This is not an op-ed judgment; this is an evaluation from a member of the intelligence committee who claims to be basing her statements on the investigative work of the committee. Here's what she says:

• On Bush's prewar assertions about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction: "When discussing Iraq's WMD, administration officials rarely included the caveats and qualifiers attached to the intelligence committee's judgments ... . For many Americans, the administration's certainty gave the impression that there was even stronger intelligence about Iraq's possession of and intention to use WMD."
• On the evidence upon which the WMD assertions were based: "The committee is now investigating whether the intelligence case on Iraq's WMD was based on circumstantial evidence rather than hard facts and whether the intelligence community made clear to the policy-makers and Congress that most of its analytic judgments were based on things like aerial photographs and Iraqi defector interviews, not hard facts."
• On the supposed Hussein-al Qaeda connection: "[T]he investigation suggests that the intelligence linking al Qaeda to Iraq, a prominent theme in the administration's statements prior to the war, [was] contrary to what was claimed by the administration."

Now, obviously, unless and until she either choses to make a statement and offer additional support for her contentions or the committee makes a public report containing that support, we can't know for sure what she is basing these statements on - but she's in a position to know what she's talking about. I also think that we would have heard denials or denunciations from others on the committee if she was saying something that cannot be upheld.

Hopefully, there will be a public hearing in Congress on these matters and a public report that will get all of the information out in the open. I think it's important for that to happen - we need to not only know what all questions there are, but what answers the administration is prepared to offer.

Posted by thorswitch at July 17, 2003 10:31 AM | TrackBack