Hatch, Bond Roberts psycho watch continues

There is more evidence of psychosis in the "additional views" of Chairman Pat Roberts Joined by Sentator Christopher S. Bond and Senator Orrin Hatch.

Now it is clear that the estemed Senators have a difficult task trying to find some good news for Bush given the facts. However, I think that there are arguments so feeble that it is better to remain silent and hope than to prove that one has no sound arguments.

For example, they acknowledge that in the Niger Uranium dossier "the names and dates were not correct". then they argue absurdly "Of note, the names and dates in the documents that the IAEA found to be incorrect were not names or dates included in the CIA reports." That is, the CIA did not incorrectly inform Bush that Allele Habibou was the Nigerien foreign minister in 2000 (I sudder to imagine what Bush would have done if he had been so misled). However, they did not clearly say that the dossier, which was the basis of their accusations and those of the French and Italians, was an obvious fraud. I apologise to Mr Habibou, but no one cares about him (if he had any doubts the story of the dossier would end them).

It's like someone forged a check with the name Robert Waldman on it and I shouldn't mind because my bank corrected the name to Robert Waldmann before debiting it from my account.

More insanity on "pressure". The committee and the three note that the internal CIA review (report of the Kerr commission) contained the sentence "creating significant pressure on the Intelligence Community to find evidence that supported a connection" in the interoduction to the section on "Iraq's Links to Al-Qaida". Speaking of sping, I read that Kerr had concluded that the analysts were not pressed, when in fact, the Kerr commission clearly concluded that they were. I haven't read the Kerr commission report. I wonder if any journalist has.

Anyway the three conclude that it was just sloppy writing by the Kerro commission since Kerr "told staff that he was actually referring to the questioning experienced by analysts on whether there was a link between Iraq and al-Qaeda". That is, to the three, it is not improper pressure unless say Cheney explicitly says what he wants the analyst to conclude, even though it is obvious given his public statements.

This is totally absurd, in the case of alleged links between Iraq and al-Qaeda the idea that the pressure was neutral, pressure to look harder but to look equally for evidence of such links and evidence against such links. There can't be evidence of no links. The state of play when the non pressure was applied is that there was no evidence that Iraq was supporting al-Qaeda or plotting with al-Qaeda. The CIA said we haven't found anything. The Bush administration said look harder. This is interpreted by the three as meaning that the Bush administration was interested in the truth not in a particular conclusion. I concluded that either the person who wrote the further comments is an idiot or he correctly assumes that only the headline conclusions of the report (or additional views) matters as almost no one will read the arguments and see how absurd they are.