Josh Marshall scrutinizes the blame game

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[T]he Senate Select Committee on Intelligence is set to issue a blistering report on the CIA’s (and the broader intelligence community’s) pre-war Iraq intelligence. It was hastily prepared, the report will say.

..."The executive was ill-served by the intelligence community," Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan), the lockstep Committee Chairman told the Washington Post.

...This NIE [National Intelligence Estimate which was assembled in the fall of 2002] was done after the White House had already chosen its policy. And it wasn’t even the White House that called for it, but rather Senate Democrats who were miffed that the administration had never requested an NIE.

In fact, the White House specifically resisted requesting an NIE because it didn’t want the findings getting in the way of its policy.

So Roberts' claim that the White House was “ill-served” fails on chronology and simple logic. The NIE could not have failed the White House, because the White House didn’t use it. Simple as that.

(The point of this NIE was not to frame policy but to sway votes in the Senate. And on that count, if one wanted to be cheeky, one would say the administration was served rather well.)

...George Tenet deserves censure for allowing himself to become complicit in the politicization and manipulation of intelligence on an almost unprecedented scale. Other top officials at the Agency do as well. (And there are certainly many other issues on which the Agency itself deserves to be taken to task.)

But this fish is rotting from the head down. And the head’s not George Tenet. It’s a many-headed monster. And they’re all at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and the OSD.

...Who will say, 'Enough. No more!'

You got me, Josh. I'm not holding my breath.

....but hey, you do what you want....you will anyway.