12/16/2005
Feel the Irony
When I was reviewing John Harris's reporting during the 2004 presidential campaign I noted a variety of Republican talking points that Bush would use in his stump speech that Harris would pass on sans fact-checking. For instance:
"See, I thought we were going to find stockpiles," Bush acknowledged at a voter forum in Beaverton, Ore. "So did everybody else, you know. . . . We haven't found them yet, I recognize that."I knew that Congress hadn't seen the same intelligence that the White House had seen. It was frustrating at the time, because serious political editors like Harris were repeating the talking point without asking: "Might the president be pulling our leg?"
But he insisted that Congress acted on the same intelligence he did in giving bipartisan approval to an Iraq war resolution, and that "the world is better off because Saddam Hussein sits in a prison cell."
Senator Feinstein asked the Congressional Research Service to look into the question. And, of course they verified that Congress did not have the same intelligence the White House did. The White House also had access to raw intelligence. As we know now, some of that raw intelligence, parts that were used in presidential speeches that were debunked, came from torturing detainees.
Why these limits on Congressional access? (from the report)
In not providing Congress routine access to source identities, executive branch officials cite the need to protect against "leaks" or unauthorized disclosure of information that the Intelligence Community generally considers to be the most sensitive in its possession.Anyone read that graph to Karl Rove or Scooter Libby?
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