SMOKING GUN

Flawed intelligence? Bullshit.

CIA Director George Tenet is taking the blame for Bush's "mistake" in the January State of the Union Address concerning Iraq's supposed attempts to buy enriched uranium from Niger. So what? Tenet is saying that it was his responsibility to keep the line (or lie, if you prefer) out of the speech, but what was he going to do? Tackle the President to the floor? From MSNBC via Eschaton:

...U.S. officials told NBC News’ Andrea Mitchell that Tenet himself advised Rice’s top deputy, Steven Hadley, to remove a reference to the uranium report from a speech Bush delivered Oct. 7 in Cincinnati, establishing that the nation’s top intelligence officials suspected that the allegation was false more than three months before they approved Bush’s repeating it in his nationally televised address on Jan. 28.

Click here for the full story.

Combine this story with the with the CBS story I linked to yesterday, and there is only one conclusion that a rational person can make: Bush lied to the American people; thousands have died as a result. Now he's trying to cover it up.

I must admit that the news media and politician dogpile that was going on all day Friday put me into quite a good mood. This is really the first major political hit that the Bush administration has suffered. I'm relishing it. I still think it's a bit too early to be hoping for impeachment, but as the old adage goes, "it's not the crime, but the cover-up..." Presidential candidate Howard Dean makes this observation on CNN.com:

"It's beginning to sound a little like Watergate...It's very clear that it may be George Tenet's responsibility, but that information also existed in the State Department and it also existed in the vice president's office, so they will not get away with simply throwing George Tenet over the side."

I really do hope that this goes Watergate, but the ball is now in the media's court, and they don't have a good track record criticizing Bush these past few years. But who knows? The Democrats seem to have grown some balls lately; if they keep pounding away at this, the media really have no choice but to report it--these things can snowball sometimes; remember the Clinton impeachment? And Bush's approval ratings continue to slip. Maybe this will turn into something big.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed...

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