Blogger Steve Soto raises some very good questions about Sen. Rick Santorum's (R-PA) "breathless announcement" that we'd found WMD in Iraq (even if they were pre-1991 weapons that weapons inspectors already knew about and had nothing to do with the justification for war):
... Do you wonder like me why Santorum and Hoekstra chose this week to embarrass themselves, at a time when Santorum is heading for a huge drubbing in November? Guess who helped these two roll out this ridiculous claim this week?
Our Director of National Intelligence.
The newly declassified military intelligence report was released Wednesday by National Intelligence Director John Negroponte. Santorum and Hoekstra had urged him to release the report this week during congressional debates on Iraq.
The senior Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee questioned the timing of the report's release. "What worries me is that the intelligence community -- Ambassador Negroponte in particular -- may be playing a partisan role in the 2006 election," California Rep. Jane Harman.
So let me get this straight. Negroponte is now using his position to play a partisan role in the 2006 election? He is politicizing intelligence? Or does this go higher?
Note a few things here. As Jonathan Turley noted to Greg Sargent at the American Prospect, and John at Crooks and Liars picked up on, Little Ricky claimed he was waiving around a classified document on Fox News. Isn't that against the law? And if in fact the document Little Ricky had was the "newly-declassified" summary of the larger document, as the AP noted last night, my recollection is that only Bush and Cheney claim they can suddenly declassify a document, and not Negroponte. So where did the decision come from to perhaps newly declassify a summary of a military intelligence document this week for use in the middle of a political debate?
Manipulation of intelligence for political purposes is certainly not a new concept in this administration. DailyKos suggests that Democrats should echo Rep. Harman's concerns and start asking some of these questions a little louder, and a little more frequently. This administration's abuse of intelligence has gone too far.
A few clarifications must be made. Some people say that these chemical shells are NOT the weapons we were looking for. This is FALSE. Colin Powell's presentation cited 550 artillery shells armed with chemical weapons that were admitted to having been produced by Iraq but never accounted for in disarmament procedures.
Second, yes, these are old weapons, and the ones with sarin in them aren't really useable as terrorist weapons. However, the mustard is a different story, and is dangerous.
Why are college students so brainwashed? I was once like you...but now I see more clearly.
A week ago people could say "No" wmd were found in Iraq. Now they can't say that anymore, because some of these weapon are indeed leathol. Saddam had twelve years to comply with the treaty he signed in 1991. He was supposed to verify to the international community that he had "no" WMD. The burden of proof was on him. So, far we have dug up over 500 of these weapons. Maybe he didn't have an on going wmd program, but it is obvious that he still had WMD not accounted for. So, our being in Iraq is justified because there was little reason a person could trust someone like Saddam in 2003 with these weapons unaccounted for. Should we have just trusted him to be a good boy not know if he was hiding them intentially or what?
Nothing has changed between last week and this week. If you read the post, you would know that these are the same shells discovered by inspectors and discounted by both the inspectors and the administration. This is a memo that someone moved from the bottom to the top of the pile.
Just some food for thought... we didn't end up in Iraq because of WMD's. We went in there because it was the only real starting point for the war against Terrorism in the name of Allah...Saddam was involved in the training and supplying terrorist. He payed the families of body bombers $25,000.00 after the act. Yet he was the designer of a system who smacked them down at the same time. They had already went to war with Iran...We are in a war to survive, even if you are a follower of Allah, to the terrorist you are not Islamic enough...and your next. If you think anything other than that you are just another sheep waiting for the slaughter. As a lifetime "shepard" in law enforcement I have no politics to wave around, I just have come to recognize the wolves, even in sheeps clothing.