Articles like this one remind me why I became paying subscriber to Salon magazine.

In "The New Pentagon Papers", retired lieutenant colonel Karen Kwiatkowsk comes forward with a first hand account of what happened with Pentagon intelligence after Bush rose to power. It began with the replacement of people in key leadership positions.

At the time, I didn't realize that the expertise on Middle East policy was not only being removed, but was also being exchanged for that from various agenda-bearing think tanks, including the Middle East Media Research Institute, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, and the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs.

According to her account, during the time leading up to the Iraq war, pentagon intelligence reports to be presented to the people at the top contained scarce bits of real intelligence, while making many sensationalist arguments based only on selective information that fit the neoconservative philosophy, as had been ordered by key officials.

They were propagandistic in style, and all desk officers were ordered to use them verbatim in the preparation of any material prepared for higher-ups and people outside the Pentagon. The talking points included statements about Saddam Hussein's proclivity for using chemical weapons against his own citizens and neighbors, his existing relations with terrorists based on a member of al-Qaida reportedly receiving medical care in Baghdad, his widely publicized aid to the Palestinians, and general indications of an aggressive viability in Saddam Hussein's nuclear weapons program and his ongoing efforts to use them against his neighbors or give them to al-Qaida style groups. The talking points said he was threatening his neighbors and was a serious threat to the U.S., too.

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The message sent by Policy appointees and well understood by staff officers and the defense intelligence community was that senior appointed civilians were willing to exclude or marginalize intelligence products that did not fit the agenda.

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The talking points were a series of bulleted statements, written persuasively and in a convincing way, and superficially they seemed reasonable and rational. Saddam Hussein had gassed his neighbors, abused his people, and was continuing in that mode, becoming an imminently dangerous threat to his neighbors and to us -- except that none of his neighbors or Israel felt this was the case. Saddam Hussein had harbored al-Qaida operatives and offered and probably provided them with training facilities -- without mentioning that the suspected facilities were in the U.S./Kurdish-controlled part of Iraq. Saddam Hussein was pursuing and had WMD of the type that could be used by him, in conjunction with al-Qaida and other terrorists, to attack and damage American interests, Americans and America -- except the intelligence didn't really say that. Saddam Hussein had not been seriously weakened by war and sanctions and weekly bombings over the past 12 years, and in fact was plotting to hurt America and support anti-American activities, in part through his carrying on with terrorists -- although here the intelligence said the opposite. His support for the Palestinians and Arafat proved his terrorist connections, and basically, the time to act was now. This was the gist of the talking points, and it remained on message throughout the time I watched the points evolve.

I wonder how the White House is going to try to spin this one. I suppose they could claim that this is just one person with an ax to grind. Still, she does name a lot of specifics about people in key positions, showing patterns of intentially deceitful behavior. Surely, this could be verifiable by others who were also there. Where's the congressional investigation?

Meanwhile, Bush claims he wants to get to the bottom of all these intelligence failures. He wants us to believe he was ignorant, and merely acting on bad information from other sources. The problem with this argument is that if Kwiatkowski's account is true -- that key appointees were replaced by the administration with grossly biased officials who don't mind lying to achieve their mission -- then the President was decieved only because he chose to put deceivers in a position to advise him.

And what is the real mission in Iraq? I've always had trouble believing the argument that it was all about oil. Economically, it doesn't make sense. It would have been far, far cheaper to just buy the oil from Saddam, even if it was an inflated price, than undergo the massive expenditure of invading and occpying a country.

In this regard, the article also sheds a bit of light. (One might hope so, given that it is written by somebody who worked in military intelligence.)

Certainly, the neoconservatives never bothered to sell the rest of the country on the real reasons for occupation of Iraq -- more bases from which to flex U.S. muscle with Syria and Iran, and better positioning for the inevitable fall of the regional ruling sheikdoms. Maintaining OPEC on a dollar track and not a euro and fulfilling a half-baked imperial vision also played a role. These more accurate reasons for invading and occupying could have been argued on their merits -- an angry and aggressive U.S. population might indeed have supported the war and occupation for those reasons. But Americans didn't get the chance for an honest debate.

Regardless of the real reasons, does it really take an intelligence insider to tell us that we were led into this war on false premises? Shortly before the invasion over a year ago, long before mainstream media outlets had even begun to wake up to the deception, there were all sorts of hints that something was seriously amiss.

Pacifica radio, kuro5hin.org, indymedia, and Salon.com talked about them every day. Some might say that these are biased left wing sources, but the more information comes to light on how this war was sold to us, the more prescient they seem.

The warning signs were there. Reports that the so-called intelligence about WMD was not scientifically sound. The use of misdirection and manipulation of the big media by administration officials. The discrepencies from week to week in the official line for why we were going to war. It almost sounded like a bad joke.

Now, we're finding out that it didn't just look that way from the outside. Those who were in the thick of it knew it better than anybody. I just hope enough people wake up by November, so the problem can be corrected in the most democratic of ways.