Now It's Fact, The Administration Lied About Iraq

"The Senate intel committee's Phase II report on pre-war intelligence on Iraq is just out. " Talking Points Memo has the key points, that the administration (Bush, Cheney, Powell, Rumsfeld) lied about the reasons to go to war with Iraq based on the intelligence they had. It's not that they had incorrect intelligence, it's that they lied about the information they did have.

--Statements and implications by the President and Secretary of State suggesting that Iraq and al-Qa'ida had a partnership, or that Iraq had provided al-Qa'ida with weapons training, were not substantiated by the intelligence.
--Statements by the President and the Vice President indicating that Saddam Hussein was prepared to give weapons of mass destruction to terrorist groups for attacks against the United States were contradicted by available intelligence information.
--Statements by President Bush and Vice President Cheney regarding the postwar situation in Iraq, in terms of the political, security, and economic, did not reflect the concerns and uncertainties expressed in the intelligence products.
--Statements by the President and Vice President prior to the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate regarding Iraq's chemical weapons production capability and activities did not reflect the intelligence community's uncertainties as to whether such production was ongoing.
--The Secretary of Defense's statement that the Iraqi government operated underground WMD facilities that were not vulnerable to conventional airstrikes because they were underground and deeply buried was not substantiated by available intelligence information.
--The Intelligence Community did not confirm that Muhammad Atta met an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague in 2001 as the Vice President repeatedly claimed.

Matthew Yglesias says: "Going forward, I merely urge people to recall that the administration didn't make all this stuff up for fun. They did it because they know that the public is not, in fact, particularly jazzed about preventive war and unilateral militarism. It's a lesson I wish more Democratic politicians would learn." I really don't know what that means.

digby says: "Impressively bold of them to finally release it six months before Bush is out of office. This information is already well documented, of course. But it would have been very helpful if they'd released it earlier".

Brad DeLong says: "These gross violations by Richard Cheney and George W. Bush to take care that the laws be faithfully executed are High Crimes, demanding immediate impeachment and removal from office."

I'm with DeLong, impeach them now; otherwise we let them get away with it.