Why not award them the Presidential Medal of Freedom, too?

Analysts behind faulty Iraq intel rewarded - washingtonpost.com Highlights - MSNBC.com

Washington Post/MSNBC:

Two Army analysts whose work has been cited as part of a key intelligence failure on Iraq — the claim that aluminum tubes sought by the Baghdad government were probably meant for a nuclear weapons program rather than for rockets — have received job performance awards in each of the past three years, officials said.

The civilian analysts, former military men considered experts on foreign and U.S. weaponry, work at the Army's National Ground Intelligence Center (NGIC), one of three U.S. agencies singled out for particular criticism by President Bush's commission that investigated U.S. intelligence.

The Army analysts concluded that it was highly unlikely that the tubes were for use in Iraq's rocket arsenal, a finding that bolstered a CIA contention that they were destined for nuclear centrifuges, which was in turn cited by the Bush administration as proof that Saddam Hussein was reconstituting Iraq's nuclear weapons program.

The problem, according to the commission, which cited the two analysts' work, is that they did not seek or obtain information available from the Energy Department and elsewhere showing that the tubes were indeed the type used for years as rocket-motor cases by Iraq's military. The panel said the finding represented a "a serious lapse in analytic tradecraft" because the center's personnel "could and should have conducted a more exhaustive examination of the question."

Our Orwellian war marches on. In this strange new universe where we find ourselves, Saddam really did have the WMDs and the invasion was completely justified. Our troops were met with flowers and a square in Baghdad named after Bush has been built. All costs incurred by the US by the war have been covered by Iraqi oil revenue. Loss of life has been minimal on both sides and only a handful of civilians have been killed.

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