All Noodles, No Shrimp: Bush's "Chinese Menu"

An aide to Colin Powell, Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, gives up the fact that prior to Powell's UN Speech (remember the one the media heralded as an Adlai Stevenson moment ... Ha Ha Ha), the White House gave Powell a sheaf of documents to use in making his presentation. Wilkerson states: "It was anything but an intelligence document. It was, as some people characterized it later, sort of a Chinese menu from which you could pick and choose."

He then adds:

"There was no way the Secretary of State was going to read off a script about serious matters of intelligence that could lead to war when the script was basically un-sourced," Wilkerson says.

But that is exactly what Powell then proceeded to do. Wilkerson tries to provide an amusing out for Powell. He suggests that Powell only made the presentation after spending 4 days & nights in conferences with Tenet at the CIA. Implicit in this spin is the suggestion that Powell was not naive enough to rely on representations from the White House. Think about how funny that is for a moment.

Powell can't get off that easy. One thing I've never accused Colin Powell of is stupidity, and he is not going to get away with playing dumb now. If he knew, as is implied here, that the White House was pushing bogus info, couldn't he assume the same pressures that were being brought to bear on him to play the loyal soldier were being brought to bear on Tenet as well.

Most importantly, this story is just further evidence as to how the "intelligence and facts were being fixed around the intelligence" by the Bush Administration. THIS IS THE SCANDAL THAT DESERVES AN INVESTIGATION ABOVE ALL OTHERS.