WMD READING LIST

Today's sentence preface: "The way things are looking"

As in, "The way things are looking, Bush and Blair sure have a lot of explaining to do about those missing WMD".

I don't have time to speak at length right now about my opinion of the apparent lack of WMD in Iraq despite whatever intel Bush/Blair claim to have had. In short: If he is proven to have lied, impeach.

But in the meantime, here are three things for you to read.

1. Former presidential counsel John Dean gives us some historical perspective on presidents who lie, probably possibly including this one.

In the three decades since Watergate, this is the first potential scandal I have seen that could make Watergate pale by comparison. If the Bush Administration intentionally manipulated or misrepresented intelligence to get Congress to authorize, and the public to support, military action to take control of Iraq, then that would be a monstrous misdeed...

...To put it bluntly, if Bush has taken Congress and the nation into war based on bogus information, he is cooked. Manipulation or deliberate misuse of national security intelligence data, if proven, could be "a high crime" under the Constitution's impeachment clause. It would also be a violation of federal criminal law, including the broad federal anti-conspiracy statute, which renders it a felony "to defraud the United States, or any agency thereof in any manner or for any purpose."

2. The account of a former State Dept official, about how the administration "distorted intelligence and presented conjecture as evidence" in the lead-up to war.

3. This post by Steve Gilliard at Daily Kos, on the best, best, best-case scenario the way things are looking, for Bush: He was duped by Chalabi. Perhaps not flat-out lying, but certainly grossly incompetent. And even to believe this, in my opinion, requires a number of leaps to accept that what the Bushies were telling us in the lead-up wasn't a carefully calculated effort of exaggeration and distortion.

And a good evening to you!