Lies Unredacted

Senator Karl Levin (our hero), from the great state of Michigan, and Chairman of the Senate Armed Forces Committee (election 2004 be praised,) released the declassified version of the Inspector General of the Pentagon’s report about Douglas Feith’s criminal mis-deeds.

Feith was the Wolfowitz deputy in the Pentagon who created the toxic brew of pro-war propaganda out of sheer assertion, distortion, puffery and selective blinding.

The report, in a passage previously marked secret, said Feith’s office had asserted in a briefing given to Cheney’s chief of staff in September 2002 that the relationship between Iraq and al-Qaeda was “mature” and “symbiotic,” marked by shared interests and evidenced by cooperation across 10 categories, including training, financing and logistics.

Instead, the report said, the CIA had concluded in June 2002 that there were few substantiated contacts between al-Qaeda operatives and Iraqi officials and had said that it lacked evidence of a long-term relationship like the ones Iraq had forged with other terrorist groups.

“Overall, the reporting provides no conclusive signs of cooperation on specific terrorist operations,” that CIA report said, adding that discussions on the issue were “necessarily speculative.”

WashingtonPost report.

San Francisco Chronicle report.

Senator Levin’s press release.

The actual report (pdf.)

Let’s be clear here. Feith’s nefarious work is to be remembered in the ranks of other cloacally extruded matter. The much more serious issue however is how his efforts rose to the stature and importance they had. Despite a certain amount of CIA and DIA disagreement and push back the information, analysis and opinion of a hand full of actors became United States policy. If the structural impediments to such roguery are not enough, and those who disagreed with it are not brave enough to stand up and publically contest it, we are in serious danger as a nation.