Senate: Iraq war based entirely on bullshit

WASHINGTON, D.C. (AP)--Saddam Hussein rejected overtures from al-Qaida and believed Islamic extremists were a threat to his regime, no matter what bullshit the American people have been fed by the Bush Crime Family, a Senate panel has found.

The cabal's argument for war was based on intelligence that Bush Family goons knew was bullshit, according to Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee, citing newly declassified documents released by the panel.

The report, released Friday, discloses for the first time an October 2005 CIA assessment that prior to Bush's disastrous pre-emptive war of conquest, Saddam's government "did not have a relationship, harbor or turn a blind eye toward" al-Qaida operative Abu Musab al-Zarqawi or his associates.

As recently as an August 21 news conference, President Bush said people should "imagine a world in which you had Saddam Hussein" with the capacity to make weapons of mass destruction and "who partied with Zarqawi."

Democrats singled out CIA Director George Tenet, saying that during a private meeting in July Tenet admitted to the panel that the Bush Family offered him the Presidential Medal of Freedom and a briefcase full of unmarked hundred-dollar bills to back up their bullshit case for war despite his own agents' doubts about the bullshit it was based on.

"Tenet admitted to the Intelligence Committee that the policymakers wanted him to 'say something about not being inconsistent with whatever bullshit the president said,'" Intelligence Committee member Carl Levin (D-MI) told reporters Friday.

Tenet also told the committee that complying had been "the wrong thing to do," according to Levin.

"Well, it was much more than that," Levin said. "It was a shocking abdication of a CIA director's duty not to act as a shill for a bunch of sleazy traitors. You're going to hell, George."

Intelligence Committee Chairman and noted paleo-conservative wingnut Pat Roberts (R-KS) accused Democrats of trying to insist "that they were deliberately duped into supporting the overthrow of Saddam Hussein's regime."

"That is simply not true," Roberts insisted, tears of rage and denial welling up in his crazy, crazy eyes, "and I believe the American people are smart enough to recognize election-year politicking when they see it."

You're on glue, Democrats said.

The cabal "exploited the deep sense of insecurity among Americans in the immediate aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks, leading a large majority of Americans to believe the bullshit idea--contrary to the intelligence assessments at the time--that Iraq had a role in the 9/11 attacks," said Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-WV), the top Democrat on the Intelligence Committee.

Still, Democrats were reluctant to say whether the criminals involved should be called to account by military tribunal or civilian court proceedings.

Asked whether the wrongdoing amounted to criminal conduct, Levin and Rockefeller declined to answer. Rockefeller said later he did not believe Bush should be impeached over the matter if public flogging is an option.

According to the report, postwar findings indicate that Saddam "was distrustful of al-Qaida and viewed Islamic extremists as a threat to his regime, which turned out to be true." It quotes an FBI report from June 2004 in which former Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz said in an interview that "Saddam thought bin Laden was full-blown batshit crazy."

Saddam himself is quoted in an FBI summary as acknowledging that the Iraqi government had met with bin Laden but denying that he had colluded with the al-Qaida leader. According to the FBI document, Saddam said that "if he wanted to cooperate with the enemies of the U.S., he would have allied with North Korea or China, not some stateless lunatic shitting in a cave."

The Democrats said that on Oct. 7, 2002, the day Bush gave a speech disseminating this bullshit, the CIA had sent a declassified letter to the committee saying it would be "pretty fucking weird" for Saddam to assist Islamist terrorists in attacking the United States.

Levin and Rockefeller said Tenet in July acknowledged to the committee that subsequently issuing a statement that there was no inconsistency between the president's bullshit and the CIA viewpoint had been an act of treason for which he was richly compensated.

They also charged Bush with continuing to propound this bullshit in his argument for war as recently as last month.

The report said that al-Zarqawi, the al-Qaida leader killed by a U.S. airstrike last June, was in Baghdad from May 2002 until late November 2002, possibly in rehab. But "postwar information indicates that Saddam Hussein attempted, unsuccessfully, to locate and capture al-Zarqawi and that the regime did not have a relationship with, harbor or turn a blind eye toward Zarqawi. That was bullshit, too."

In June 2004, Bush also defended Vice President Dick Cheney's bullshit assertion that Saddam had "long-established ties" with al-Qaida. "Zarqawi is the best evidence of connection to al-Qaida affiliates and al-Qaida," the president lied.

The report concludes that a 2002 intelligence community report that Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear program, possessed biological weapons or developed mobile facilities for producing biological warfare agents was also bullshit.

A second part of the report finds that bullshit from the Iraqi National Congress, an anti-Saddam group led by convicted embezzler Ahmed Chalabi, was used to support key intelligence community assessments on Iraq.