IN THE NEWS
Two from Eschaton

First, a freshly dug up nugget, embedded in a Washington Post report from a couple of weeks ago on the White House under fire, about the destroyed microfilm containing records of Bush's National Guard service in the early 1970s:

White House Briefing: Testy, Testy, Testy

From the argument: "A significant controversy has arisen in the ongoing campaign over the President's military service during the Vietnam War, and specifically whether he performed his required days of service during a period between May 1972 and May 1973. Allegations have been made that the military personnel file for George W. Bush released to the press earlier this year is not complete. The public has an intense and legitimate interest in knowing the validity of these claims, which may well be answered by reviewing the microfilm copy of the personnel file in the Texas archives."

Associated Press Assistant General Counsel Dave Tomlin told me yesterday that AP reporters began trying to get the documents back in February, but hit roadblock after roadblock.

Tomlin said the AP has been informed that the microfilm in question does indeed exist. Tomlin said that because paper records can vanish and be tampered with, the microfilm "would erase any questions."

Click here for the rest (which deals with the overall ongoing criticism of the Bush administration; it's a good read).

So, as of June 25th, this microfilm supposedly existed, instead of being destroyed in the mid 90s as the Pentagon has asserted. Gosh! I don't know who to believe!

(I'm being sarcastic again.)

Next, from the London Guardian, some background that you may not have heard from the Senate Intelligence report blaming the CIA for the Iraqi WMD fiasco:

Iraq errors were CIA's fault, says Senate

"There were a number of situations where unreasonable conclusions were reached," Mr Chambliss told the Knight Ridder news agency. His office said yesterday he stood by his remarks, in which he argued the White House could not be blamed for believing intelligence it received from the CIA.

"I would say it's a total vindication of any allegations that might ever have been made about what the administration did with the information."

But the administration's critics yesterday described the report as incomplete. Carl Levin, a Democratic senator on the intelligence committee, said it was "only half the picture" because of the insistence by Republicans on the panel that examination of the White House's role be dealt with in a separate report, to be published after the election.

And

Vincent Cannistraro, a former chief of operations in the CIA's counter-terrorist unit, said Mr Chambliss's conclusion was not supported by the facts. "People would have to forget an awful lot of history to make that wash. It ignores the fact that [the Bush administration] had already taken a strategic decision to go to war, before they asked for the intelligence."

He said repeated questioning of reports downplaying Iraq's arsenal and links with al-Qaida by Mr Cheney and other senior officials led to an atmosphere in which the CIA leadership and analysts "bent over backwards" to find evidence that conformed to the administration's views.

Click here for the rest.

The reality is that the White House, in spite of this Republican dominated Senate report, had been informed by the CIA on several occasions that there was not enough evidence to show that Iraq had WMDs, but that wasn't good enough for Bush and Dick. In addition to pressuring the CIA to produce the goods on Saddam Hussein, the Oval Office also established its own intelligence gathering services, which included the infamous Pentagon Office of Special Plans and other groups, for the express purpose of constructing a rationale for invading Iraq. At this point, such an observation is a matter of public record. I've even written about it here at Real Art, but at the moment I'm too lazy to dig through the archives to find it.

Maybe tomorrow.

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