Faulty intelligence was evident early on

Jerry Bitts, Las Vegas

Thursday, June 26, 2008 | 2:04 a.m.

In his letter published Monday, Lee S Glidden Jr. says President Bush is not responsible for the faulty intelligence that lent justification to the invasion of Iraq.

Mr. Glidden supports this idea with references to speeches made by many prominent Democrats who also seemed convinced that Saddam Hussein was a threat. Glidden ignores the fact that the faulty intelligence was gathered under the direction of the Bush administration through coercion and that if someone told the truth, there would be consequences, as was evident in the case of Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame.

Then Mr. Glidden takes this same faulty intelligence to support his belief that Saddam would have given the weapons of mass destruction he did not have to such people as Osama bin Laden, whom Saddam hated. In fact, there was never any evidence of WMD in 2002-03 or ties to the 9/11 attacks or to terrorists. The “awkward truth,” as Glidden calls it, is that the Bush administration invaded a country that was not a threat to us to gain control of its oil reserves.

It would be easy for me to conclude that the Democrats were fooled by the phony intelligence, but by at least the fall of 2002 I was convinced that Saddam was no threat and that this was to be a war of aggression. Now I am no political genius and it is clear that Mr. Glidden is not, but one would expect the loyal opposition of the Democratic Party to know as much as I did. The problem is that I suspect they did know but caved in because there was another election coming up.