printGeorge Bush had the “Lie Factory—the Office of Special Plans”—which was a central edifice of the Bush administration. The OSP, reminisces Justin Raimondo (cited in The Trump Revolution) in a retrospective about Bush’s lies, was “a parallel intelligence-gathering agency set up by the neoconservatives in the administration [to feed] Congress and the media ‘factoids’ which were later proved to be false.”
To distort intelligence, Barack Obama ushered in a “structural and management changes” in the “CENTCOM Intelligence Directorate, starting in mid-2014,” to give him “the intelligence products” that would serve his purposes.
I hope you come to this space for the unvarnished truth, because it is this: Obama comes out on top on this issue. Barack finessed the reality about ISIS to avoid going to war; Bush lied to get America into war. Ask Donald.
Intelligence reports produced by U.S. Central Command that tracked the Islamic State’s 2014-15 rise in Iraq and Syria were skewed to present a rosier picture of the situation on the ground, according to a bombshell report released Thursday by a House Republican task force.
The task force investigated a Defense Department whistleblower’s allegations that higher-ups manipulated analysts’ findings to make the campaign against ISIS appear more successful to the American public.
The report concluded that intelligence reports from Central Command were, in fact, “inconsistent with the judgments of many senior, career analysts.”
Further, the report found, “these products also consistently described U.S. actions in a more positive light than other assessments from the [intelligence community] and were typically more optimistic than actual events warranted.”
Rep. Mike Pompeo, R-Kan., who was involved in the House report, said Thursday the data was clearly “manipulated.”
“They wanted to tell a story that ISIS was the JV, that we had Al Qaeda on the run,” he told Fox News. “This is incredibly dangerous. We haven’t seen this kind of manipulation of intelligence … in an awfully long time.”
It is unclear how high up the reports in question went, though the task force found “many” Central Command press releases, statements and testimonies were “significantly more positive than actual events” as well. …