DUPE

[kskiska]

Now that President Bush, with all the enthusiasm of a dog going to the vet, has been yanked into naming a bipartisan commission to look into intelligence failures in Iraq, I'd like to see yet another commission established. This one would look into the real failure of intelligence -- not the CIA but America's political, social and intellectual leadership. No mere analyst at the CIA caused us to go to war for the wrong reasons.

It's not that I think the CIA and the rest of the intelligence community are blameless. Something clearly went way wrong -- not just with Iraq but with Sept. 11 as well. Two such massive intelligence failures in a single presidential term are something that history, although not necessarily this meek Congress, will hold George W. Bush accountable for.

(snip)

But any truth commission worth its name would have to look beyond the government. It would be instructive to examine the yahoo mood that came over much of the nation once Bush decided to go to war. The decision -- its urgency -- seemed to come out of nowhere. Yet most of America fell into line, and in certain segments of the media, the Murdoch press above all, dissent was ridiculed. On Fox TV, France was called a member of the "axis of weasels" and antiwar demonstrators in Davos were disparaged as "knuckleheads." Colorful stuff, but wrong, irresponsible and craven.

I do not take myself off the hook. The mood got to me, too. And while I kept insisting that the Bush administration was exaggerating the case for war, was in too much of a hurry and was incapable of assembling a true coalition, I nevertheless went along with the program.

There is much cause for concern here. A consensus -- based on false facts, outright lies and exaggerated fears -- took over the nation. We didn't go on a bender, as we did after Pearl Harbor, and incarcerate a particular ethnic group, but we did go to war when we plainly did not have to. More than 500 Americans and thousands of Iraqis have died for a mistake. Peace has not been brought to the Middle East and America is not only no safer than it was, it may well be in even greater danger. This was no mere failure of intelligence. This was a failure of character.

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A7219-2004Feb2.html