The Intelligence That Wasn't: 'Cooking the Books' in the White House

Some of George W. Bush's reasoning, at face value, seems to make sense. He has accused John Kerry of not living up to his original vote to approve the use of force in Iraq if Saddam Hussein didn't comply with weapons inspections when Kerry voted against an 87 billion supplementary. This accusation makes sense at perhaps the most superficial of glances, but falls apart at any deeper questioning. First, just to look at the argument logically: if a congressman simply votes against extra spending, one of Bush's favorite things to demonize, this isn't necessarily a flight from his original position but can be a disagreement with how the money will be spent. This is pretty basic. Furthermore, Kerry's vote in Iraq has conformed to his position towards it in the past, which is that it has been necessary to wave the use of force as a possibility so Saddam will comply with WMD inspections, but it has not been necessary to make use of force the policy of first resort that the Bush administration ended up taking.

Furthermore, when Bush accused Kerry of seeing the same intelligence that Bush had, again, this seems to make sense at face value. In fact, it has been unrelentingly revealed since the Bush administration tried to invade Iraq on the grounds of the intelligence that Colin Powell presented to the UN and that Tony Blair presented in a televised address and the intelligence that Bush alluded to in his 2003 State of the Union Address that much of this intelligence was either doctored or patently wrong. A good, short article about this in Salon.