The Workday Liberal

Truthout.org has a very interesting article regarding the senate investigation into the use of pre-war intelligence by the administration. The article quotes a senior official from Senator John McCains office who definitely is not towing the administration line regarding this investigation.

When the probe is complete, which aides to Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Senator Carl Levin (D-Mich.) - both of whom are aggressively working to collect pre-war intelligence documents that undercut administration's claims that Iraq posed a grave threat to national security - said will likely be in early 2006, there could be some sort of "public reprimand" brought against lower-level administration officials who work or worked at the Defense Department, the National Security Council, and in the office of Vice President Dick Cheney, for "cherry-picking" questionable intelligence on Iraq and using it to win public support for the war.

Based on the way the probe is starting to shape up, it's clear the administration, particularly [Undersecretary of Defense Douglas] Feith, who resigned earlier this year, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and possibly Cheney will bear the brunt of the blame, because the three of them sidestepped the usual intelligence gathering process that historically was handled by the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency in favor of their own clandestine intelligence gathering operations in which questionable information on the so-called Iraqi threat was collected and used by administration officials to build a case for war but wasn't vetted by career intelligence analysts, said a senior aide to McCain who requested anonymity for fear of angering members of the GOP.

Is it just me or has Senator McCain been out front a lot lately in pushing back against this administration? We know he's a maverick, and before there was swiftboating the Bush team unleashed their sewage campaign on McCain in South Carolina. Maybe this is McCain finally getting a chance to show King George that allies are not just needed when everything is going swimmingly well. One can only wonder if in the back of his crafty little mind, Senator McCain was waiting for the day he could lead the Republican backlash against the crowd he justifiably feels wronged by.

Let me say as an aside here that while I may disagree with McCain on nearly every issue commonly debated in politics (torture of detainees being a notable exception) I have a respect for the man which I don't often bestow to Republicans running the scene in Washington D.C. these days. On some level he's earned this just from his experience in N. Vietnam, and despite my occasionally rolling my eyes at some policy proclamation he rolls forth, I still listen to what he has to say without automatically assuming that the opposing point of view should be my compass.

But I digress. Regarding the gist of the quote from the truthout article, one must wonder what is meant with the talk of reprimanding lower level officials, followed by the discussion of how Rumsfeld and possibly Cheney will bear the brunt of the blame. How far up the ladder in these various offices will the blame be taken? And who would consider the undersecretary of defense to be a lower level administration official? This fellow is a stalwart in the neoconservative movement, and was singled out for a specially venomous attack by Lawrence Wilkerson in his recent cabal speech , where in he called Feith one of the supidest men he had ever met.

"Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith, whom most of you probably know Tommy Franks said was the stupidest blankety, blank man in the world. He was. (Laughter.) Let me testify to that. He was. Seldom in my life have I met a dumber man."

Feith was picked to lead the Office of Special Plans which was a sort of magnet attracting intelligence that supported the image of Iraq as threatening while rejecting intelligence that contradicted those claims in the leadup to the war. Look at the Wikipedia entry for office of special plans to get an idea about the methods used and why Mr. Feith may well have needs to be concerned over the senate and now the pentagon poking into the business of this office in the leadup to the war.

Last month, under pressure from Democrats and some Republicans, [read Senator McCain and maybe others] and with public support for war eroding, the Pentagon's Inspector General agreed to probe Feith's secret spy group, the Office of Special Plans, and whether the operation played a role in manipulating pre-war Iraq intelligence in addition to knowingly passing dubious intelligence from defectors from Ahmad Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress to the White House to convince lawmakers and the American public into backing the war.

The truthout article goes into solid detail regarding how the intelligence leading us into war was twisted and morphed by OSP to fit the administrations goals, but my main focus for this post is to speculate on a very interesting possibility. That the tactics used by Karl Rove and George Bush in the 2000 primary victory over John McCain in South Carolina are now coming around to bite them when they could least use the trouble. It absolutely serves them right. I may not agree with Senator McCain on many issues but I can only wish him well in his goal to make life miserable for this group of white house weasles. It is too bad that he could not have seen fit to do this earlier. I say the same thing about Wilkerson, Scowcroft Powell and who ever else jumps off the neocon ship as well... but we are where we are so let us welcome them aboard the good ship 'Straight Talk express' at this late stage of the game.