"Hey, Did We Start A War Last Year? Let's Check On That."

I quickly linked yesterday to the story on Paul Pillar, the former CIA official coordinating U.S. intelligence on the Middle East until last year, who is reiterating that the White House cherry-picked intelligence and who said "It has become clear that official intelligence was not relied on in making even the most significant national security decisions, that intelligence was misused publicly to justify decisions already made, that damaging ill will developed between [Bush] policymakers and intelligence officers, and that the intelligence community's own work was politicized."... Well, Crooks and Liars points out this section, which I missed-

Pillar wrote that the first request he received from a Bush policymaker for an assessment of post-invasion Iraq was "not until a year into the war."

That assessment, completed in August 2004, warned that the insurgency in Iraq could evolve into a guerrilla war or civil war. It was leaked to the media in September in the midst of the presidential campaign, and Bush, who had told voters that the mission in Iraq was going well, described the assessment to reporters as "just guessing."

'Way too late, after the fact post-war assessments? Bring 'em on.' - President Bush