Senate Intelligence Committee confirms what I proved BEFORE the war: Bush team not only was erroneous; in many instances it was deceitful

Here’s a portion of a story in the June 6 Washington Post:

"In making the case for war, the administration repeatedly presented intelligence as fact when it was unsubstantiated, contradicted or even nonexistent," Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), the committee chairman, said at a news conference. "As a result, the American people were led to believe that the threat from Iraq was much greater than actually existed."

The report, the last and most contentious of a series of Senate reviews of prewar intelligence, sought to compare the administration's public claims about Iraq with the intelligence reports available to them at the time. While many of the White House's statements -- such as Bush's warnings about a secret Iraqi nuclear program -- were amply supported by intelligence files at the time, the report said, others were not.

Bush and other administration officials strayed far from official intelligence reports when it came to describing alleged ties between al-Qaeda and Hussein, the report said. It cited repeated statements by Bush, including his Oct. 7, 2002, Cincinnati speech in which he alleged that Iraq had "trained al-Qaeda members in bomb-making" and had maintained "high-level contacts that go back a decade."

The report said that "statements and indications by the president and secretary of state suggesting that Iraq and al-Qaeda had a partnership, or that Iraq had provided al-Qaeda with weapons training, were not substantiated by the intelligence."
Approved by eight Democrats and two Republicans on the 15-member committee, the report also highlights an October 2002 claim by then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld that Iraq had concealed its stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction in underground bunkers too deep to be destroyed by air power alone. Rumsfeld, in testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee, had told senators that U.S. officials did "know where a fraction" of Hussein's banned weapons were, adding that a "good many are underground and deeply buried," suggesting that ground forces were required to destroy them. His statement contradicted intelligence at the time that no such facilities were known to exist, the report states.

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), a committee member, called for a separate investigation of Rumsfeld's statements, which he said appeared intended to drive support for an invasion. "This is stunning: The secretary of defense, testifying before Congress about whether or not ground forces would be strategically necessary in a war against Iraq, said the executive branch 'knew' something that it did not know," he said.
[end of story excerpt]

Here’s a bit of what I wrote before the war:

Grifter-in-Chief Bush Aided by Media’s Wusses of Mass Credulity (Oct 19, 2002)

Bush Is Racking Up “Frequent Liar Miles” (Jan 18, 2003)

The Evidence Bush is Withholding Weakens, Not Strengthens the Case for War (Jan 28, 2003)

An Open Letter to the U.N. About Colin Powell (Feb 4, 2003 — pre-U.N. presentation)

Lying Us Into War: Exposing Bush and His “Techniques of Deceit” (Feb 10, 2003)

I’m Calling You Out: Marching Orders for Journalists, Officials and Celebrities Who Believe in “Informed Consent of the Governed” (Feb 19, 2003)

Public’s Pro-Inspections Posture Mostly M.I.A. on Talking-Heads TV (Feb 28, 2003)

The Disinformation Age: How George W. Bush and Saint Colin of Powell are lying America into an unnecessary war — and what honest journalists can do about it (March 4, 2003)

How to Deter Bush’s Fibbing and Hoopsters’ Flopping (March 14, 2003)