IRAQ INTEL INVESTIGATION WHITEWASH

And I don't mean the usual accusations about Congress' obvious attempt to help out the President regarding the lies he used to justify the invasion. No, this is a smoking gun.

From Talking Points Memo, courtesy of Eschaton:

Drumheller's account is pretty probative evidence on the question of whether the White House politicized and cherry-picked the Iraq intelligence.

So why didn't we hear about any of this in the reports of those Iraq intel commissions that have given the White House a clean bill of health on distorting the intel and misleading the country about what we knew about Iraq's alleged WMD programs?

Think about it. It's devastating evidence against their credibility on a slew of levels.

Did you read in any of those reports -- even in a way that would protect sources and methods -- that the CIA had turned a key member of the Iraqi regime, that that guy had said there weren't any active weapons programs, and that the White House lost interest in what he was saying as soon as they realized it didn't help the case for war? What about what he said about the Niger story?

Did the Robb-Silbermann Commission not hear about what Drumheller had to say? What about the Roberts Committee?

I asked Drumheller just those questions when I spoke to him early this evening. He was quite clear. He was interviewed by the Robb-Silbermann Commission. Three times apparently.

Did he tell them everything he revealed on tonight's 60 Minutes segment. Absolutely.

Click here for the rest.

You can see video of the 60 Minutes interview here.

The long and short of this is that a former high ranking CIA officer is sick of the lies and joining the ever expanding chorus of people-who-know speaking out. In the interview, Drumheller relates the tale of how, well before the invasion, the CIA managed to get one of Iraq's people-who-know to switch sides and start talking. Of course, the Iraqi official explained that Iraq had no WMDs. Of course, the White House ignored him. That's no surprise. And really this next bit is no surprise, either: Drumheller told the Congressional committees investigating the Iraq "intelligence failure" the exact same story, and they compeletely ignored him, too. Just to connect the dots a bit, this is a devastating indictment of the investigation. That is, we now know, beyond a doubt, that these so-called investigations were a joke. They didn't clear the President, and can no longer be relied on as narrative for anything at all. The investigation was a coverup, and everybody involved should be under indictment.

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