All politics requires positions. Once a course of action is decided upon the politicians and aides are required to "sell" it. It is natural that people employed in the intelligence industry will be asked to write assessment reports from limited and often conflicting data. Under such conditions one can expect politics to enter into the intelligence community. The recent departure of a democrat to the Kerry campaign illustrates this political undercurrent.

To assume the President is willfully lying is completely unfounded. Bush believes in his actions. He is not a prevaricator for fulfilling some personal agenda - but rather trusts the intelligence provided to him to be accurate and makes the hard decisions.

The selling of the Iraq war is an inevitable outcome of politics. WWII was hyped...every war has been hyped by those who are trying to gather support for action. Were the folks who portrayed "japs" as evil yellow skinned monsters without a heart beating in their chests called up after the war to account for their exaggerations?

Your desire to see an inquiry serves no real purpose other than partisan politics. It will not stop the politicizing of future conflicts or remove politics, exaggerations or even boldfaced lies from the intelligence community or government. If Bush is guilty of 'selling' a conflict - he is certainly not the first and wont be the last - if you're truly honest with yourself you know this as well and then must accept your motives as purely partisan in nature.

;-)

SDAI-Tech1