{"id":6082,"date":"2005-12-14T12:33:42","date_gmt":"2005-12-14T17:33:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/?p=6082"},"modified":"2005-12-14T12:33:42","modified_gmt":"2005-12-14T17:33:42","slug":"intelligence-schmintelligence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/intelligence-schmintelligence\/","title":{"rendered":"Intelligence, schmintelligence"},"content":{"rendered":"

Several alert readers have brought my attention to this report<\/a> on Bush’s speech on Iraq this morning, but I’m not sure that it really breaks new ground.<\/p>\n

Bush also accepted responsibility for invading Iraq based on faulty intelligence.<\/p>\n

“It is true that much of the intelligence turned out to be wrong. As president I am responsible for the decision to go into Iraq,” Bush said. “And I’m also responsible for fixing what went wrong by reforming our intelligence capabilities. And we’re doing just that.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This isn’t exactly a concession that we went to war under false pretenses; Bush has acknowledged the problems with pre-war intelligence many times before. It’s always a treat to hear the president use the “I am responsible” phrase, but the comments appear to be little more than the same buck-passing the White House has always embraced.<\/p>\n

Indeed, the bigger issue is not that Bush has publicly conceded that “much of the intelligence turned out to be wrong,” but rather that he doesn’t much care<\/a> whether it was right or not. From Monday’s speech:<\/p>\n

“[K]nowing what I know today, I’d make the decision again. Removing Saddam Hussein makes this world a better place and America a safer country.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This isn’t exactly a radical shift either, but it’s nevertheless telling, particularly in light of this morning’s remarks. Bush effectively admitted that whether the intelligence about the Iraqi “threat” was correct is largely irrelevant<\/em>. He said it himself: if he knew at the time that there were no WMDs, no nuclear program, no unmanned drones, etc., he’d still “make the decision again.” There’s no other way to interpret this, other than to conclude the president doesn’t much care whether the intelligence was faulty or reliable.<\/p>\n

When he accepts responsibility for that<\/i>, then it’ll be newsworthy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Several alert readers have brought my attention to this report on Bush’s speech on Iraq this morning, but I’m not sure that it really breaks new ground. Bush also accepted responsibility for invading Iraq based on faulty intelligence. “It is true that much of the intelligence turned out to be wrong. As president I am […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6082","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6082","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6082"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6082\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6082"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6082"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6082"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}