"We don't seem to be making much progress pulling together intelligence on links between Iraq and al Qaeda," Wolfowitz wrote in the Jan. 22, 2002, memo to Douglas Feith, the department's No. 3 official.
Using Pentagon jargon for Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, he added: "We owe SecDef some analysis of this subject. Please give me a recommendation on how best to proceed. Appreciate the short turn-around."
LA Times/SF Chronicle
Well, the report to which we were treated to a synopsis in February has now been released in full (with the standard obscuring of classified material of course).
Senator Carl Levin asked that this report be made public, and here it is... several people have diaried about Cheney's delusional reaction to this release, but I wanted to feature the report itself and provide links to get copies yourself.
There are many people who think "rehashing the past" is a fruitless exercise when there are so many current disasters to deal with... but I think that the particular past event--fixing the intelligence in the runup to the Iraq War--is essential to investigate (and prosecute if possible) for several reasons, two which I list here: First, the debacle that is the US occupation of Iraq is one of the base reasons for so much of the current mess our nation is in; second, we must ferret out and bring into the sunshine just how this mess came to be... in the interest of preventing a repeat performance in the future (Iran, anyone?), and only further jeopardizing our national security.
...Even as the report came out, Vice President Cheney was insisting that a U.S. pullout from Iraq "would play right into the hands of al Qaeda."
By getting into a war that we can't seem to win or let go of, we may already have played into the hands of al Qaeda.
--from The Intelligence That Wasn't, an editorial from Scripps News Service
The administration can only dig themselves deeper into the muck in trying to address the findings outlined in this report, hopefully dragging down their credibility even further in the public's view, especially now that the public is moving farther towards wanting to get out of Iraq.
I trust smintheus will write a more coherent diary including analysis of the contents themselves soon, but until then, let this be an invitation to look at this yourself... especially the copies of the slide show Feith used in selling the neocon viewpoint. You can't get any more ridiculous than this... see, in bulleted form, the talking points these holy warriors believed so fervently... it boggles the mind... and brings tears to your eyes with every new death in Iraq.
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Senator Carl Levin's statement on the release of this report...
Oh yeah, and proud member of the DowningStreetMemo.com team!