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Another voice is being heard in the loudening chorus of evidence that the Bush administration "fixed the facts" in order to justify the invasion of Iraq. The most recent voice is that of Paul R. Pillar, who last year retired from the CIA after a 28-year career, and who was responsible for the collection and assessment of Middle East intelligence.

Writing in Foreign Affairs, Pillar bluntly charges the administration with "cherry-picking" intelligence data to make its case for war. Here are some excerpts:

The "politicization" of intelligence

In the wake of the Iraq war, it has become clear that official intelligence analysis was not relied on in making even the most significant national security decisions, that intelligence was misused publicly to justify decisions already made...

The Bush administration deviated...not only in using policy to drive intelligence, but also in aggressively using intelligence to win public support for its decision to go to war. This meant selectively adducing data — "cherry-picking" — rather than using the intelligence community's own analytic judgments...

Ignoring intelligence reports

What is most remarkable about prewar U.S. intelligence on Iraq is not that it got things wrong and thereby misled policymakers; it is that it played so small a role in one of the most important U.S. policy decisions in recent decades...

The Bush administration's use of intelligence on Iraq did not just blur this distinction [between policymaking and intelligence-gathering]; it turned the entire model upside down. The administration used intelligence not to inform decision-making, but to justify a decision already made. It went to war without requesting — and evidently without being influenced by — any strategic-level intelligence assessments on any aspect of Iraq...

Ignoring the CIA's assessment of the threat posed by Hussein

Official intelligence on Iraqi weapons programs was flawed, but even with its flaws, it was not what led to the war. On the issue that mattered most, the intelligence community judged that Iraq probably was several years away from developing a nuclear weapon. The October 2002 NIE also judged that Saddam was unlikely to use WMD against the United States unless his regime was placed in mortal danger...

Ignoring the CIA's assessment of Hussein's link to al Qaeda

But the greatest discrepancy between the administration's public statements and the intelligence community's judgments concerned...the relationship between Saddam and al Qaeda. The enormous attention devoted to this subject did not reflect any judgment by intelligence officials that there was or was likely to be anything like the "alliance" the administration said existed...

Pillar's article is a damning condemnation of an administration totally without scruples and that considers itself accountable to no one.

Is the chorus finally singing loudly enough to convince even partisan members of Congress that the administration intentionally misled the public about the reasons for war? Please:

Yesterday, the Senate Republican Policy Committee issued a statement to counter what it described as "the continuing Iraq pre-war intelligence myths," including charges that Bush " 'misused' intelligence to justify the war." Writing that it was perfectly reasonable for the president to rely on the intelligence he was given, the paper concluded, "it is actually the critics who are misleading the American people." [emphasis mine]

Shame on you, Paul Pillar. And you, too Russ Feingold, John Murtha, John Conyers, Ted Kennedy, Robert Byrd, Joseph Wilson, Richard Clarke, Lawrence Wilkerson, Paul O'Neill, and on and on and on...