In the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, I watched helplessly as the Bush administration led America into a strategic blunder of historic proportions. It became painfully obvious that the executive branch of our government did not trust its military. It relied instead on a neoconservative ideology developed by men and women with little, if any, military experience. Some senior military leaders did not challenge civilian decision makers at the appropriate times, and the courageous few who did take a stand were subsequently forced out of the service.

Four years after Kansas Senator Pat Roberts triumphantly cleared the Bush administration of misusing pre-war Iraq intelligence, the Phase 2 report of the Senate Intelligence Committee he once chaired today reached a much different conclusion. After Roberts successfully stonewalled past the 2004 and 2006 elections the studies examining White House statements on the Iraqi threat and the role of the Pentagon’s Office of Special Plans, his successor Jay Rockefeller today concluded:

“The president and his advisers undertook a relentless public campaign in the aftermath of the attacks to use the war against Al Qaeda as a justification for overthrowing Saddam Hussein.”

While Democratic and Republican committee members battle it out over the implications of the Phase 2 report, Pat Roberts’ role in obstructing the investigation of the Bush administration’s uses - and misuses - of intelligence in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq is beyond dispute. Read on…