CIA: No WMD in Iraq

Well, looks like the CIA just joined the ranks of organizations professing that there are no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Tell us something we don't know... Coincidentally, I just finished reading the section of Seymour Hersh's book in which he describes how Rumsfeld, Cheney, Wolfowitz, etc. subverted the intelligence gathering and processing flow, such that raw reports were flowing directly to the administration without any of the usual filtering. The administration applied its own filter, getting rid of any intelligence that didn't support going to war in Iraq and stovepiping everything that did support it. In essence, the entire intelligence capability was made to serve the case for war.

The CIA's announcement is almost silly - we already know there are no WMDs in Iraq, and we already know that Saddam didn't send everything to Syria under the cover of darkness. The entire picture is complete. There was no attempt to buy uranium from Niger, there was nothing to suggest a nuclear weapons program had been reconstituted after the first Gulf War. There was nothing to suggest chemical or biological weapons programs either.

The details concerning how our intelligence agencies were prevented from doing their jobs are out there as well. My biggest question is why Rumsfeld, Cheney and others responsible haven't resigned.

For Rumsfeld especially, this is only one of the huge black marks on his record brought about by his "Father Knows Best" attitude toward those reporting to him. Not only did he believe he knew better than our intelligence officials with regard to how to gather information on the Iraqi threat, but he also thought he knew better than many of his military commanders in terms of how to deploy forces during the actual fighting of the war. In both cases, he was proved wrong.

So why is he still around?