Little Too Little

by digby

Wow. Stop the presses. Jay Rockefeller finally released the official SSIC’s report on whether the Bush administration lied.

A long-awaited Senate Select Intelligence Committee report made public Thursday concludes that President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney made public statements to promote an invasion of Iraq that they knew at the time were not supported by available intelligence.

A companion report found that a special office set up by then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld undertook “sensitive intelligence activities” that were inappropriate “without the knowledge of the Intelligence Community or the State Department.”

“Before taking the country to war, this administration owed it to the American people to give them a 100 percent accurate picture of the threat we faced. Unfortunately, our Committee has concluded that the administration made significant claims that were not supported by the intelligence,” said committee Chairman John D. Rockefeller IV, D- W. Va.

It’s long been known that the administration’s claims in the runup to the Iraq war, from Saddam Hussein’s alleged ties to al Qaida to whether Iraq had an active nuclear weapons program, were incorrect. But the Senate report is the first official examination of whether the president and vice president knew that their claims were incorrect at the time that they made them.

“There is no question we all relied on flawed intelligence. But, there is a fundamental difference between relying on incorrect intelligence and deliberately painting a picture to the American people that you know is not fully accurate,” Rockefeller said in a statement.

Impressively bold of them to finally release it six months before Bush is out of office.

This information is already well documented, of course. But it would have been very helpful if they’d released it earlier. The press, you see, doesn’t believe anything that doesn’t come from a Republican or an official government document. It’s a little late now.

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