Bolton and Downing Street Memo

Was John R. Bolton one of Bush's primary "fixers", that is, of intelligence and facts, around the policy of invading Iraq?

Bolton The Fixer

The evidence shows that Bolton at the State Department acted in parallel with the Office of Vice President Richard Cheney at the White House and with the Office of Special Plans at the Pentagon—the unit created by Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas J. Feith. The combination of their efforts had a chilling effect on the U.S. intelligence community, particularly that unit of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) that would be responsible for actually crafting the top level report, called a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), on Iraq.

Over the months culminating in July 2002 Bolton tried to have two different analysts fired for refusing to accede to intelligence claims he wanted to make in behalf of the administration.

Two remarks:

1. That seems rather par for the course with what we know about Bolton's behavior, doesn't it, since at about the same time he was trying to shoot down Bustani.
2. Sure sounds like if intelligence was being fixed, and Bolton was a "fixer", Cheney and Feith probably were, too, with that special intelligence unit.

That's not a few bad apples that can be ignored because "we're already at war", it's a systemic, real problem that needs to be corrected, and the proper way to begin that is with a congressional inquiry.

BBA | After Downing Street