29th Street Ballroom
Clarification Needed
RECEIVED Fri., May 22, 2015
Dear Editor,
I always enjoy "This Modern World” by Tom Tomorrow and its great satirical voice. Last week's cartoon [Comics, May 22], though, needs some clarification. In it, the disembodied "intelligence" is advising Bush about WMDs in Iraq and the need to invade.
This concept that Bush acted on the best intelligence available, but the intelligence got it wrong, is false. That's not what happened.
A few examples: Bush/Cheney told us there were reports of meetings between higher-ups of Iraq and al-Qaida, but didn't tell us that the CIA did not believe the reports were true. They told us Iraq attempted to buy uranium in Niger, but the CIA did not believe that was true. They implied the aluminum tubes were for refining uranium for a bomb, when analysts at the Dept. of Energy had told them the tubes could not possibly be used for that.
There were many such instances of Bush/Cheney misleading, distorting, and concocting a threat that had not been found by the CIA and other intelligence analysts. This is all reported in detail in the book Hubris by Michael Isikoff and David Corn. It's difficult to accept, but it is important that we all understand that, yes, the Bush administration really did purposely mislead us all in order to get their war to topple Saddam Hussein.
I always enjoy "This Modern World” by Tom Tomorrow and its great satirical voice. Last week's cartoon [Comics, May 22], though, needs some clarification. In it, the disembodied "intelligence" is advising Bush about WMDs in Iraq and the need to invade.
This concept that Bush acted on the best intelligence available, but the intelligence got it wrong, is false. That's not what happened.
A few examples: Bush/Cheney told us there were reports of meetings between higher-ups of Iraq and al-Qaida, but didn't tell us that the CIA did not believe the reports were true. They told us Iraq attempted to buy uranium in Niger, but the CIA did not believe that was true. They implied the aluminum tubes were for refining uranium for a bomb, when analysts at the Dept. of Energy had told them the tubes could not possibly be used for that.
There were many such instances of Bush/Cheney misleading, distorting, and concocting a threat that had not been found by the CIA and other intelligence analysts. This is all reported in detail in the book Hubris by Michael Isikoff and David Corn. It's difficult to accept, but it is important that we all understand that, yes, the Bush administration really did purposely mislead us all in order to get their war to topple Saddam Hussein.
John Silberberg