Last week DeLay blamed Democrats for Congress's recent overkill on deficit spending.
[DeLay] also blamed Democrats [for the budget woes], complaining that they haven't offered any suggestions on how to cut spending. He said they created a congressional budget process that makes it difficult to cut spending.
"We've been operating off a Congress designed by Democrats," he said. source
Now the White House is blaming Democrats for the White House's use of false intelligence on the nonexistent WMDs in Iraq. It seems just a bit desperate to try to pin blame on the out-of-power Democrats for the recent fuck-ups of the in-power Republicans.
Next the White House will be saying:
If only the Democrats had stopped us from fucking up, we wouldn't be in this damn mess. Why didn't they steal the election, seize power, leak the names of CIA agents and lie to the nation in order to take us down? For their failure to stop us from failing, we should ban Democrats from taking any elected offices, so that they won't fail to stop us any longer.
A reminder: The intelligence on Iraq was either wrong or misstated. If it was wrong, the false nature of the intelligence was missed by the administration in power, despite their urgent claim of immediate threats that required an immediate invasion of Iraq.
From the White House briefing yesterday:
Q Can I just do one follow on the intelligence? You said the prewar intelligence was clear. It was also wrong.
MR. HADLEY: Which clear?
Q You said the prewar intelligence was clear.
MR. HADLEY: Right.
Q It was also wrong, wasn't it?
MR. HADLEY: I said it was, I believe, a strong case -- a strong case was what I said in answer to the earlier question. And a lot of it --
Q You said the intelligence was clear.
MR. HADLEY: -- and a lot of it turned out to be wrong.
Q A lot of it turned out to be wrong.
MR. HADLEY: We know that.
A reminder: This White House takes no responsibility for nothing. Therefore the Democrats are to blame for Iraq.
The above line of questioning followed Hadley's remarks to the press yesterday aimed at getting out the newest talking points on failed WMD intelligence for the White House: Many critics of the war were also wrong about the intelligence.
The Washington Post covered the new talking points, reporting:
The White House went on the offensive in the debate over the Iraq war yesterday, insisting that U.S. intelligence had compiled a "very strong case" that Saddam Hussein harbored banned weapons and accusing congressional critics of hypocrisy because many of them voted for force three years ago.
Reuters reports the same spin:
Administration officials have acknowledged the intelligence on Iraqi weapons was faulty, but have said Democrats, Republicans and foreign intelligence agencies had believed Baghdad had deadly weapons before the March 2003 U.S.-led invasion.
And the New York Times:
The White House's effort to stop the erosion is centered on defining the president's critics as Democrats who voted for the war based on the same intelligence Mr. Bush saw but have switched positions, often under pressure from their party's left wing.
This may be amongst the weakest tactics used by the administration to deflect charges of manipulation of intelligence. What they are essentially saying is that (1) the intelligence was bad, and yet we invaded anyways (a problem of its own right) and (2) we spread bad intelligence to everyone, tricking many Democrats into backing the war.
It cannot be forgotten that Democrats in Congress do not have Executive Powers. That means that they rely on the White House, the Executive Branch, for information and intelligence. Congress does not have the CIA, the Pentagon or the National Security Agency at its disposal. And given how secretive and protective of Executive Powers this White House is, its unreasonable to blame Congress for the administration's bad intelligence.
Additionally, the White House would like to present debates about intelligence as being about the past, about history. But the war is taking place now. And as such, it cannot be treated as history. The same bad intelligence that was used to get us into war may be leading us down other wrong paths now.
It makes sense for Congress (and the White House) to change course based on what we've learned about the intelligence since first invading Iraq. Admitting to the intelligence being bad doesn't make the problem go away. And it might even change one's current basis for supporting the war. And regardless if the intelligence were bad, false or spot-on, changing conditions in the battlefield may lead Congress and others to change their minds about the best course for the war now or in the future. Only idiots don't change course based on changed information or conditions.
I believed then, and I believe now, that the White House lied about intelligence. As I watched Powell before the United Nations it was clear to me that he was lying - at least about the urgency and the certainty. Even if the facts that he was relaying were true ("someone" did say this or that, or it was "possible" to think that those were weapons labs), I think we should expect the Secretary of State to apply high standards of analysis before presenting a case for war before the United States and the world. The same goes for Bush's claims of yellowcake. Sure, he simply stated that there were reports from the UK about the yellowcake, but he's the fucking President of the United States. He can't just say "someone" told me this, and not expect the implication to carry. When someone tells him something that will lead us to war, he better be damn sure about the information.
The Bush administration, as well as all Democrats who supported the war, should come to terms with the reality of the war today. First, the war is bad for America because it was so clearly based on falsehoods. This not only removes any moral or just reasons for going there in the first place, but it also makes our continued presence more egregious in the minds of the rest of the world. Second, the war is going badly. Given this, it makes sense to reassess the situation and to change course. Third, the buck stops with the President. If he committed acts of omission or outright lies, or if his intelligence services were just plain stupid, he alone is responsible. It is a cheap political ploy for the White House to claim otherwise.
Cross posted: Political Porn