What Bush Was Told About Iraq

Recently I wrote that one of the great mistakes of the neocons was their refusal to believe their own eyes. They also didn't believe their own ears. The National Journal documents many reports to the president and his immediate advisors that dissented from the neocon version of the world. For example, remember those famous aluminum tubes that the president claimed were for nuclear weapons? What he neglected to tell anyone was that other analysts in government sharply disagreed with that analysis and believed the tubes were for conventional bombs. The dissenters were, of course, right.

(In fairness to the president, the wording in the presidential summary, as quoted by the Journal, does make it seem like the balance of opinion was for a nuclear bomb interpretation and the dissent was downweighted. "The one-page October 2002 President's Summary specifically told Bush that although 'most agencies judge' that the use of the aluminum tubes was 'related to a uranium enrichment effort... INR and DOE believe that the tubes more likely are intended for conventional weapons uses.'")

Remember how often the president warned that Iraq was an imminent threat? What he forgot to say was that the intelligence community unanimously disagreed with this conclusion. Why confuse anyone with facts like that?