The Politicization of Iraq Intelligence: Yet Another Insider's Account ...

"In the wake of the Iraq war, it has become clear that official intelligence analysis was not relied on in making even the most significant national security decisions, that intelligence was misused publicly to justify decisions already made, that damaging ill will developed between policymakers and intelligence officers, and that the intelligence community's own work was politicized...'

'The administration used intelligence not to inform decision-making, but to justify a decision already made. It went to war without requesting -- and evidently without being influenced by -- any strategic-level intelligence assessments on any aspect of Iraq...'

'If the entire body of official intelligence analysis on Iraq had a policy implication, it was to avoid war -- or, if war was going to be launched, to prepare for a messy aftermath. What is most remarkable about prewar U.S. intelligence on Iraq is not that it got things wrong and thereby misled policymakers; it is that it played so small a role in one of the most important U.S. policy decisions in recent decades."

 -Former National Intelligence Officer for the Near East and South Asia Paul Pillar, in "Intelligence, Policy, and the War in Iraq", in the March/April issue of Foreign Affairs

Presidential Overreaching

Surprising signs that U.S. liberals and conservatives may agree about the limits of presidential power:

Conservative pundit George Will argues that the Administration's assertion of broad, unchecked presidential power over foreign affairs "is refuted by the Constitution's plain language" about Congress' authority in this sphere. Nor is Will impressed by the Administration's claim to derive authority from "unexpressed congressional intent" between the lines of the 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force; as Will drily observes, this sounds particularly opportunistic coming from White House that "famously oppposes those who discover unstated meanings in the Constitution's text and do not strictly construe the language of statutes." 

Speaking as an unabashed liberal with strong feelings about the dangers of an unchecked executive, I couldn't have said it better myself.

And Will is far from the only conservative critic of Bush's overreaching: former Republican U.S. Rep. Bob Barr, veteran conservative organizer Paul Weyrich, and even Grover "Starve-the-Beast" Norquist have recently sounded warnings about the long-term consequences of this Administration's efforts to broaden executive power.

Given the divisiveness of the past few years, I find myself amazed that people on the left and right--at least, some of them--can still derive the same meaning from "the Constitution's plain language"--despite the Administration's dogged attempts to obfuscate the issue.

Conservatives Want to "Cut & Run" from Iraq...?

Iraq's escalating sectarian violence has apparently persuaded conservative mandarin William F. Buckley to pronounce the U.S. effort to reshape that country a failure.  

In fact, the sad spectacle currently unfolding in Iraq seems to have shaken even Bill O'Reilly's nerves: a man who once likened advocates of a U.S. withdrawal to Nazi appeasers now says it's time for the U.S. to cut its losses and "hand everything over to the Iraqis as fast as humanly possible."  

The reason?  O'Reilly has recently been convinced that Iraq is full of "crazies" that the U.S. is never going to be able to "control."