I think Paul Pillar said he best when he remarked that the intelligence community "bent in the wind" to provide the Iraqi intel, or perhaps better said directly by the Brits, the "facts were being fit around the policy".
I've never said Bush lied about Iraq and still believe he felt he was doing what was necessary to protect the American people...that's why he wasn't impeached...Bush's failure was to surround himself by ideologues hell bent on exploiting 9/11 to execute an agenda that politics had to date prevented.
We've discussed the opinions of Congress at length, there's no need to go into great detail there, but it's safe to say that Democratic members didn't support unilateral action and were heavily influenced by a "marketing" effort to support the policy.
The problem here is that the war machine is so big once it gets going there really is no stopping it...
It's interesting that as more info about Benghazi has been revealed the primary attack dogs are backing away. Let the investigation help determine a better security policy so we can prevent another tragedy, but now that the election is over there doesn't seem to be as much need for a scandal as there was a month ago
-spence
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