The Silberman-Robb report lays the blame primarily on the CIA for "poor tradecraft and poor management" and for presenting Bush with "alarmist" information in his daily briefings.

And it essentially exonerates Bush and Cheney from the charge that they cooked the intelligence. "In no instance did political pressure cause [analysts] to skew or alter any of their analytical judgments," it said.

Never mind that Cheney virtually set up camp at the CIA while they were drawing up those judgments.

How his unprecedented lurkings didn't represent political pressure is just beyond me.

And what about the possibility, or in my mind, the likelihood, that Bush conveyed to CIA Director George Tenet that he go get whatever he could find to help build the case against Iraq?

Does the fact that neither Tenet, whom Bush gave the Medal of Freedom, nor Bush himself admitted this mean that it didn't happen?

Even the commission recognized that the CIA's Presidential Daily Briefings were "selling intelligence in order to keep its customers, or at least the First Customer, interested."

What better way to keep him interested than to provide him with the morsels he so craved?

The commission also acknowledged that "it is hard to deny that intelligence analysts worked in an environment that did not encourage skepticism about the conventional wisdom."

Now why was that?

Could it just possibly be that Bush and Cheney helped create that unskeptical environment?

To believe otherwise is to suspend rationality.

© 2005 The Progressive

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