Hi, I'm BHGlitter, the news and views editor of Buzzsaw Haircut up at Ithaca College.

Just a few random musings:

So, the latest meme from conservative camps and war-supporters is that Democrats who are now raising questions about the use of pre-war intelligence by the administration had access to the same information and most of them came to the same conclusions. The rhetorical theme seems to be that criticism now is hypocrisy and revisionist history combined with cynical political calculation.

This theme was strongly echoed in Bush's Veteran's Day speech at an army depot in Tobyhanna, Pa.

"While it's perfectly legitimate to criticize my decisions or the conduct of the war, it is deeply irresponsible to rewrite the history of how that war began.

Some Democrats and antiwar critics are now claiming we manipulated the intelligence and misled the American people about why we went to war. These critics are fully aware that a bipartisan Senate investigation found no evidence of political pressure to change the intelligence community's judgments related to Iraq's weapons programs. They also know that intelligence agencies from around the world agreed with our assessment of Saddam Hussein. They know the United Nations passed more than a dozen resolutions citing his development and possession of weapons of mass destruction."

Two things I find problematic with the claims in this section of his speech.

First, it is not clear to me that politicians outside of the administration had access to all of the intelligence that the administration had, especially evidence that there was doubt cast on some of the intelligence reports. If I am wrong on that, egg on my chin.

Second, Bush is being dishonest in his reference to the Senate report as an exhoneration of whether or not the he and his crew misused intelligence. This is especially problematic as a way to silence Democratic critics because the Dems are not talking about political pressure shaping the intelligence, but rather dishonesty in the presentation of the intelligence to the American public. That is what the "Phase 2" investigation that the Dems forced with the closing of the Senate is all about. The question is now about how knowledge of Saddam's WMDs were presented with certitude when the intelligence community held more doubt than was translated.



Also, did anyone else find his frequent comparisons of Islamic terrorism and communism a bit odd and rhetorically telling?

"Like the ideology of communism, our new enemy pursues totalitarian aims..."

"Like the ideology of communism, our new enemy is dismissive of free peoples..."

"And Islamic radicalism, like the ideology of communism, contains inherent contradictions that doom it to failure."

Anyone else seen "Good Night, And Good Luck' yet?

Also, hasn't the moral authority to assert "The terrorists are as brutal an enemy as we've ever faced, unconstrained by any notion of our common humanity or by the rules of warfare" a bit undermined by the Bush Administration's aggressive moves to keep legal loopholes for torture open?



Oh, and for once, just for once, I would love for Bush to explain in a speech how he came to "know" what terrorists, radical muslims, or "evil enemy" he is talking about, "believes." Can we have one footnote please? Just one reference to how he "knows" their intentions and their mindsets.