Daddy's Boys: "let's keep in mind what we learned from former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill the other week. In this administration's first National Security Council meetings in February 2001, the subject of al Qaeda wasn't even on the table, but the taking down of Saddam Hussein and war in Iraq was. From the beginning, the issue was never 'intelligence.'
... In the "intelligence community," significant figures questioned everything. Take, for instance, Greg Thielmann, before the war director of the Office of Strategic Proliferation and Military Affairs in the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research who recently commented (Charles M. Sennott and Farah Stockman, 'Drawing their own picture', the Boston Globe):
"'[David A.] Kay says we all got it wrong. Well, that's not the case…The White House was not interested in information other than that which substantiated its case.' After 25 years in government service, Thielmann, 53, said he chose early retirement last fall, in part because of his frustration with the Bush administration. 'They took every piece of information, and all the way up the line, it was made less qualified and more alarming. That is why the American people were so misled about the nature of the Iraqi threat.'""
- posted by geoff @ #