WASHINGTON (AP) - A new Senate report gives a fresh shot of adrenaline to the election-year debate over the Iraq war. President Bush and his top officials deliberately misrepresented secret intelligence to make the case to invade Iraq, according to the Senate Intelligence Committee.

The panel put a new spin on old charges, comparing claims made in five speeches by top Bush administration officials with intelligence reports. The committee says officials wrongly linked Saddam Hussein to the Sept. 11 attacks and al-Qaida; claimed Iraq would give terrorist groups chemical, biological or nuclear weapons, and said Iraq was developing drone aircraft to spread chemical or biological agents over the United States.

None was borne out by intelligence.

The presumptive Democratic nominee for president, Sen. Barack Obama, has staked his campaign on his consistent opposition to the Iraq war. The presumptive Republican nominee, Sen. John McCain, has trumpeted his unflagging support for the war, if not how it was waged.

The report released Thursday follows, by years, an earlier committee effort that assessed the quality of pre-war intelligence on Iraq and found it severely lacking. This report is known as “phase II” and spawned a nasty partisan fight in the committee. It plows well-tread political ground by contrasting what Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, then-Secretary of State Colin Powell and then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said between October 2002 and March 2003, when the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq began, with intelligence reports that since have been released.

“These reports are about holding the government accountable and making sure these mistakes never happen again,” said the committee’s chairman, Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va.

According to Rockefeller, the problem was the Bush administration concealed information that would have undermined the case for war. “We might have avoided this catastrophe,” he said.

I, and many other Conservative bloggers have tried, repeatedly, to make people aware of this, the FACT that Iraq was NOT the place to go, we pointed out on numerous occasions that there were no WMDs left in Iraq, Saddam was no part of 9-11 and had no direct ties to the attackers of 9-11, no more direct ties than the USA itself had, think about that one for a minute or 2…

Congressional, Senate and DoD reports have been published stating the above as a factual and accurate assessment, but no one listened, the Bush Bots screamed that we were denigrating their hero, that the only reason we said those things was because we didn’t like Bush, they sounded a lot like the Dems when we criticize Obama and get called racists simply because we tell the truth, and telling the truth was exactly what I and many others did, and the Bush Bots were beside themselves, bordering on terminal apoplexy…

Iraq has all but bankrupt this nation, financially and morally, we have spent 5 years doing the bidding of a MORON as our military settled a personal vendetta for George Bush, there was no other reason for going to Iraq, Bush and Company can plead ‘bad intel’ all they want, they had good Intel, and plenty of it, they had many warfighting experts trying every way they could to convince Bush that this was a very bad and completely unnecessary move, but The Decider had made up his mind, and right or wrong, nothing was going to stop him from settling a personal grudge with Saddam Hussein…

Bush’s press secretary, Dana Perino, said the problem was flawed intelligence heading into the war. “We had the intelligence that we had, fully vetted, but it was wrong. And we certainly regret that,” she said.

“And we certainly regret that“, I’ll just bet you do, but you’ve got to wonder, how much regret do the families of the over 4,000 DEAD U.S. troops feel about their loved ones death having been in vain, all for a mistake, an action that never should have happened??

I know, al-Qaida came to Iraq to fight the U.S. troops, AFTER we were there, after we had decimated Saddam’s Republican Guard and deposed Saddam himself, I understand that we have been battling al-Qaida in Iraq and killing them, and hopefully wiping them out, but the fact remains, we were fully on the right track when we went to Afghanistan, that was where the REAL battle was, and al-Qaida would have come there too, they aren’t picky, they’ll go anywhere they have to in their effort to kill American troops, but that isn’t the point of this story, the point is, we went to Iraq on ‘faulty intel reports’ and it is my firm belief that Bush KNEW they were faulty and deliberately disregarded them in favor of the advice from commanders that were kissing his ass and telling him what he wanted to hear in hopes of securing another star…

A soldier goes where he is sent, does the job he is told to do and he follows orders, he has no choice, that’s the job and all soldiers know it, but for a morally bankrupt CiC to order those troops into combat knowing that his Intel was less than accurate, knowing full well that the intended target didn’t need to be ON the target list, when a United States President gives those orders and they come back to bite him as these have, that President should be brought up on charges, and this flippant bitch Dana Perino needs to be horse whipped for the “We had the intelligence that we had, fully vetted, but it was wrong. And we certainly regret that,” remark, is that supposed to serve as some sort of an apology to the families of the troops??

This isn’t about winning or losing the war in Iraq, if the USA can’t take on a nation the size of Texas and WIN, then there’s something desperately wrong with our command structure, from the top right on down thru Flag Officers, winning was NEVER the gripe for me, I’m not a Harry Reid, I didn’t say the surge wouldn’t work, I DID make fun of it for having to be implemented, had Bush left the war to the war fighters and not tried to play ‘Little General’, this would not have had to take place, if you can give me a good reason to fight, it’s game on, but there were NO legitimate reasons for going to war in Iraq, NONE…

Is there not one shred of human decency left in the Bush White House and the Bush Bots themselves??

Full Story Here:
Report accuses Bush of misrepresenting Iraq intel