They LIED from the beginning

By now, I am sure you've seen this at many sites in the blogosphere. If not, let me offer up a few choice quotations. The article (which you really must read yourself in its entirety) starts like this:

Ten days after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, President Bush was told in a highly classified briefing that the U.S. intelligence community had no evidence linking the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein to the attacks and that there was scant credible evidence that Iraq had any significant collaborative ties with Al Qaeda, according to government records and current and former officials with firsthand knowledge of the matter.

And then there's this:

The Senate Intelligence Committee has asked the White House for the CIA assessment, the PDB of September 21, 2001, and dozens of other PDBs as part of the committee's ongoing investigation into whether the Bush administration misrepresented intelligence information in the run-up to war with Iraq. The Bush administration has refused to turn over these documents.

But wait. Didn't our glorious leader say that the Senate had the same intelligence that he had? Never mind. Here's some more:

The conclusions drawn in the lengthier CIA assessment-which has also been denied to the committee-were strikingly similar to those provided to President Bush in the September 21 PDB, according to records and sources. In the four years since Bush received the briefing, according to highly placed government officials, little evidence has come to light to contradict the CIA's original conclusion that no collaborative relationship existed between Iraq and Al Qaeda.

"What the President was told on September 21," said one former high-level official, "was consistent with everything he has been told since-that the evidence was just not there."

There you have it. They were told not even two weeks after 911 that there was no evidence that Saddam Hussein had anything to do with the attacks. And yet they continued to tells us he did.

To sum up:
No Iraqi ties to al-Qaeda - and they knew this from the beginning.

Disgusting. Deplorable. Let Bush have his legacy. Let him live a very very long life knowing that his deception brought about the deaths of thousands of his fellow Americans. Americans who'd be enjoying life right now if he'd just told the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.