Just read their speeches

Re “Verdict mixed on Iraq claims,” March 10

A senior Senate intelligence committee aide is quoted as saying: “It’s inherently problematic to try to climb inside the heads [of policymakers] and know what they knew at the time.” But the issue is not what they knew but what they could and should have known. After all, I’m just a regular guy with no special access, and yet my assessment before the war -- that President Bush’s push for war was manipulative and fraudulent -- turned out to be right on the money. What I have is a fairly powerful BS detector and the unpatriotic sense to put the claims of the powerful through a historical and non-nationalist wringer and see what happens. The respectable classes (in politics and, sadly, the media) hardly ever do this.

Ron Leighton

Anaheim

The Senate intelligence committee will soon present its “mixed verdict” report as to whether the Bush administration misused intelligence to make a case for war in Iraq. In 2002, after scores of speeches by Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney connecting Saddam Hussein to 9/11, Congress gave Bush the authorization to go to war. By 2003, following more deceptive prewar speeches, opinion polls reported that most Americans connected Hussein to 9/11. If the Senate is looking for evidence of a misinformation campaign by the White House, all that is needed is to re-read the Bush-Cheney speeches and consider how most Americans came to believe such a colossal untruth.

Bill Rolfing

Laguna Beach