Or how I learned to love the sound of a broken record. broken record. broken record.
It was deja vu all over again yesterday. Another day, another apparent smoking gun carelessly left behind by the George W. Bush administration. From the April 12 Press Briefing starring Scott McClellan:
Q Scott, there were reports this morning that in late May of 2003 there were questions raised about whether or not the trailers were bio-weapons -- mobile bio-weapons in Iraq. When did the administration come to understand that those trailers were not mobile bio-weapons labs?
MR. McCLELLAN: I don't think that's a new issue. I mean, I saw the report. This is nothing more than rehashing an old issue that was resolved long ago. I cannot count how many times the President has said the intelligence was wrong. The Robb-Silberman Commission, which was the independent bipartisan commission that looked into this intelligence, said that the intelligence community's assessment of Iraq's biological weapons programs was almost entirely wrong.
This is another in a string of old issues that aren't resolved in anyone's mind if they have been following the unfolding tragedy that is the 21st Century Bush administration.
The old issue in question yesterday was resolved by the "Robb-Silberman Commission" in Scott's mind. That is truthiness because the Robb-Silberman Commission was not tasked with determining whether or not the Bush administration intentionally misrepresented what is commonly called 'the truth' amongst the Mythical Little Persons (MLPs) of yore.
Familiar plot, subplot, and actors? Here's the roiling attack by Murray Waas on the truthiness of another divergence from mutually agreed upon reality:
Hadley was particularly concerned that the public might learn of a classified one-page summary of a National Intelligence Estimate, specifically written for Bush in October 2002. The summary said that although "most agencies judge" that the aluminum tubes were "related to a uranium enrichment effort," the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research and the Energy Department's intelligence branch "believe that the tubes more likely are intended for conventional weapons."
Three months after receiving that assessment, the president stated without qualification in his January 28, 2003, State of the Union address: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa. Our intelligence sources tell us that he has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production."
The insight from Murray Waas about the truthiness of the aluminum tubes used to largely justify the current Iraq War seems so last week that the mere mentioning of it is to prove the administration's point that MLPs dwell in a land of reality with a strange fascination with cause and effect, despite the ever present passage of time.
Another deja pour vu - remember the stink those mean ole Democrats made over whether the Bush administration intentionally misrepresented the intelligence which was used to lead the nation into war? The short lived shut down of the Senate caught the attention of the drunken monkey of traditional media for a moment.
Here's some of what Senator Harry Reid emailed to supporters the day of the revolt in the Senate:
Obviously we know now their nuclear claims were wholly inaccurate. But more troubling is the fact that a lot of intelligence experts were telling the Administration then that its claims about Saddam's nuclear capabilities were false.
The situation was very similar with respect to Saddam's links to Al Qaeda. The Vice President told the American people, "We know he's out trying once again to produce nuclear weapons and we know he has a longstanding relationship with various terrorist groups including the Al Qaeda organization.";
The Bush Administration assertions on this score have been totally discredited. But again, the Administration went ahead with these assertions in spite of the fact that the government's top experts did not agree with these claims.
More old news. I'd like to see this sort of defense jump into the reality based community where I live. Can you imagine the lives we could lead if a mortgage broker came a knocking for the money you owed them, and all they had were silly pieces of paper from years ago to lay claim to your hard earned disposable income?
"Get lost Bubba - that was 1999!"
- And tonite I'm gonna party like.. well, like it's the end.
Update - What is Treason?
In law, treason is the crime of disloyalty to one's nation. A person who betrays the nation of their citizenship and/or reneges on an oath of loyalty and in some way willfully cooperates with an enemy, is considered to be a traitor. Oran's Dictionary of the Law (1983) defines treason as: "...[a]...citizen's actions to help a foreign government overthrow, make war against, or seriously injure the [parent nation]."