Look at the evidence, not the spin.
By Brad Friedman on 9/30/2004, 2:27pm PT  

Bush and the Right love to say how they were mislead by the CIA about WMD's prior to the war. They were not. They are lying. They knew prior to going in that the weapons weren't there as every one of the sites they said they "knew" had WMD's had already been inspected and turned up nothing. As well, large parts of the intelligence community had told them the same thing. They ignored them.

Recently, Bush has been ignoring another National Intelligence Estimate warning of Civil War in Iraq and has referred to it as "just guessing".

But guess what else it turns out they ignored? From a Tom Tomorrow item on a story in yesterday's NY Times:

How many times have we heard that no one could have possibly foreseen the mess in Iraq?

Well, whaddya know:

The same intelligence unit that produced a gloomy report in July about the prospect of growing instability in Iraq warned the Bush administration about the potential costly consequences of an American-led invasion two months before the war began, government officials said Monday.

The estimate came in two classified reports prepared for President Bush in January 2003 by the National Intelligence Council, an independent group that advises the director of central intelligence. The assessments predicted that an American-led invasion of Iraq would increase support for political Islam and would result in a deeply divided Iraqi society prone to violent internal conflict.

One of the reports also warned of a possible insurgency against the new Iraqi government or American-led forces, saying that rogue elements from Saddam Hussein's government could work with existing terrorist groups or act independently to wage guerrilla warfare, the officials said. The assessments also said a war would increase sympathy across the Islamic world for some terrorist objectives, at least in the short run, the officials said.

All right, so maybe someone could have seen it coming. And in fact did.

Can we stop blaming the CIA now and start blaming the folks who deserve the blame?! Including the guy with whom the buck is supposed to stop?

Tomorrow adds one more thought:

But hey, at least they've got schools now, right?

Indeed they do. And according to NBC news tonight, the schools which have been rehabilitated at great expense to the American taxpayer are mostly being run by--yes, you guessed it--hardline Islamic fundamentalists.

Listen to the thunder.

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