"Graham unwittingly destroys the "Bush lied" argument

Bob Graham former Democratic Senator from Florida and Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) had an op-ed piece in the Sunday Washington Post. He said that Bush's claims that Senate Democrats had the same intelligence as the Whitehouse were "outrageous." He wrote that President Bush has "undermined trust" and is not trustworthy. He dredged up his previous claim that Tommy Franks told him in Feb 2002 that "the war was being compromised as specialized personnel and equipment were being shifted from Afghanistan to prepare for the war in Iraq -- a war more than a year away."

Tommy Franks has previously denied Graham's claim.

Graham claimed that in Sept 2002, he asked George Tenet for a National Intelligence Estimate which he received six weeks later. The gist of the piece was that the Bush administration was intent on invading Iraq even though the "Intelligence" did not support such a distraction from the war in Afghanistan.

Jed Babbin inThe American Spectator makes the case that "Graham unwittingly destroys the "Bush lied" argument more thoroughly than any Republican could." He says that since Graham claimed to know about the "defective intelligence," he and his fellow Democrats on the SSCI had an obligation to let the other Senate Democrat know about it. Babbin writes, "There are only two possibilities that arise from Graham's statements: either Graham and his fellow SSCI Dems didn't try to warn others that the administration's case for the war (and the evidence supporting it) was fallacious, or the other Dems simply didn't believe him. There's no third choice.

Bob Graham was in a position of power and responsibility from which he could have raised objections publicly, and warned both his colleagues and the American people that the case for war was a fraud if that is what he believed. He could have taken detailed classified objections to the president, the secretary of state and the secretary of defense, as well as the director of the CIA. But he didn't. Why? Because he didn't believe the case against the war? Or because he didn't believe then what he conveniently believes now. "