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![]() Bill McKee wrote: He posted an article that said they did not have the same intel. He did not provide proof. Do you ever tire of being dumb?: 'Wash Post' Story Rejects Bush Claims on Pre-War Intel By E&P Staff Published: November 12, 2005 11:00 AM ET NEW YORK Washington Post reporters Dana Milbank and Walter Pincus offered today a front-page reply to President Bush's claims on Friday that Democrats in Congress, now critical of the Iraq war, saw the same pre-war intelligence that the White House did. "Bush and his aides had access to much more voluminous intelligence information than did lawmakers, who were dependent on the administration to provide the material," the pair write. They also point to Bush's claim that a congressonal commissions had cleared the White House of manipulation, noting none were authorized "to determine whether the administration exaggerated or distorted those conclusions." The only committee investigating the matter in Congress, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, has not been slow to press its inquiry into whether officials mischaracterized intelligence by omitting caveats and dissenting opinions. Bush, in Pennsylvania yesterday, asserted that "more than 100 Democrats in the House and the Senate, who had access to the same intelligence, voted to support removing Saddam Hussein from power." But Pincus and Milbank write: "Bush does not share his most sensitive intelligence, such as the President's Daily Brief, with lawmakers. Also, the National Intelligence Estimate summarizing the intelligence community's views about the threat from Iraq was given to Congress just days before the vote to authorize the use of force in that country. "In addition, there were doubts within the intelligence community not included in the NIE. And even the doubts expressed in the NIE could not be used publicly by members of Congress because the classified information had not been cleared for release. For example, the NIE view that Hussein would not use weapons of mass destruction against the United States or turn them over to terrorists unless backed into a corner was cleared for public use only a day before the Senate vote." |