When the information that Bush knew about the NIE before he knew what was in it smells like bullshit right off the bat. Now four former intelligence analysts are coming forward to tell the press that what Bush is trying to spin is completely and utterly ridiculous. Trying to blame this on Mike McConnell or any other CIA worker is, as they say, preposterous.
From The Huffington Post:
McGovern was totally incredulous: "The notion that the head of National Intelligence whispered in Bush's ear 'I've got a surprise for you and it's really important, but I'm not going to tell you about it until we check it out' -- The whole thing is preposterous," he said in an interview with The Huffington Post.
Riedel agreed, saying "the president either chose to ignore what he heard or his director of national intelligence is not doing his job." Riedel said he doubted McConnell failed to "do his part of the bargain."
"To me it is almost mind boggling that the President is told by the DNI that we have new important information on Iran and he doesn't ask 'what is that information?'" said Riedel, who is now a Senior Fellow at the Saban Center For Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution.
He said it wasn't the DNI's responsibility to tell the President to "stop hyperventilating about the Iranian threat."
So Mike McConnell should be out of the picture when it comes to the blame game. The onus is on those that hyped the Iranian threat. So replace the blame for intelligence agents with neo-cons and Bush Administration pukes (types may overlap). Hadley, Bush, Cheney, Condi and many more deserve to be held accountable for exaggerating the capabilities of Iran and trying to provoke yet another war.
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