George and George

From State of War by James Risen, p. 112-114:

As the invasion of Iraq drew closer, an attitude took hold among many senior CIA officials that war was inevitable—and so the quality of the intelligence on weapons of mass destruction didn't really matter. This attitude led CIA management to cut corners and accept shoddy intelligence, other CIA officials believe...This acceptance of weak intelligence among senior CIA officials appears to be the backstory to the famous so-called Downing Street Memo.

According to a former senior CIA official, the memo — the leaked British government document from July 2002 that provided a British assessment of the Bush administration's plans for Iraq — was written immediately after a secret conference in Washington between top officials of the CIA and British intelligence. The memo, dated July 23, 2002, reported that "there was a perceptible shift in attitude" in Washington about Iraq. The memo went on to say that "military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."

(CIA Director George) Tenet and (Sir Richard) Dearlove (head of British intelligence) left a larger meeting (held on July 20, 2002) and went off by themselves for about an hour and a half...Dearlove's overall assessment was reflected in the Downing Street Memo: the CIA chief and other CIA officials didn't believe that the WMD intelligence mattered, because war was coming one way or another.

Further proof that just ten months after 9/11 the Bush administration was focusing their sites on Iraq while Osama bin Laden and his al-Quaida goons were roaming the mountains of Afghanastan.

Why the American people continue to let something like this slide is beyond me. Had President Clinton taken his eye off the ball to drag the country into a mismanaged war there would have been congressional cries of incompetence and impeachment hearings.

(Hat tip: Jonathan Schwarz)