In separate speeches Friday, Senator Edward M. Kennedy (D-MA) and Congresswoman Jane Harman (D-CA) attacked the Bush administration's use of intelligence information during the run-up to the Iraq War. Kennedy spoke before the Council on Foreign Relations, while Harman spoke at the American Enterprise Institute.

Kennedy by far presented the more blistering attack, stopping perhaps just short of a direct accusation that the administration had been lying.

Over two centuries ago, John Adams spoke eloquently about the need to let facts and evidence guide actions and policies. He said, "Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence." Listen to those words again, and you can hear John Adams speaking to us now about Iraq. "Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence."

Tragically, in making the decision to go to war in Iraq, the Bush Administration allowed its wishes, its inclinations and its passions to alter the state of facts and the evidence of the threat we faced from Iraq.

Kennedy proceeded to document a long list of statements and mis-statements by members of the administration and CIA head George Tenet, drawing from numerous speeches and press interviews given by these people. Kennedy also drew references from Ron Suskind's book on former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, The Price of Loyalty, Greg Thielmann, former Director at the State Department, David Albright, a former weapons inspector with the IAEA, Ken Pollack, a former CIA analyst, Mel Goodman, a long-time CIA analyst, retired Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski, and news articles from the New York Times and Washington Post.

Kennedy successively derided the administration's claims of a Saddam-Al Qaeda connection, their denial of presenting an Iraqi nuclear threat as "imminent", and their claims that Iraq was pursuing a chemical and biological weapons program, offering dozens of specific pieces of evidence against each and portraying all of these as "pure, unadulterated fear-mongering".

That Kennedy was so impressively armed with facts was hardly an accident. Much of his material was drawn directly from the research performed by the newly-created Center for American Progress (CAP), a progressive think tank under the guidance of former Clinton Chief of Staff and National Security Council member John Podesta. In particular, Kennedy's "imminent threat" denial came from CAP's extensively-researched "In Their Own Words: Iraq's 'Imminent' Threat" compiled in late January:

The Bush Administration is now saying it never told the public that Iraq was an "imminent" threat, and therefore it should be absolved for overstating the case for war and misleading the American people about Iraq's WMD. Just this week, White House spokesman Scott McClellan lashed out at critics saying "Some in the media have chosen to use the word 'imminent'. Those were not words we used." But a closer look at the record shows that McClellan himself and others did use the phrase "imminent threat" -- while also using the synonymous phrases "mortal threat," "urgent threat," "immediate threat", "serious and mounting threat", "unique threat," and claiming that Iraq was actively seeking to "strike the United States with weapons of mass destruction" -- all just months after Secretary of State Colin Powell admitted that Iraq was "contained" and "threatens not the United States."

This document then proceeds to cite thirty-one specific instances where key members of the administration used these phrases in speeches and interviews. (Kennedy in fact cited only nine of these, but the point was effectively made.)

Predictably, of course.

"I don't think this is the first time we've heard Senator Kennedy make such unsubstantiated and baseless charges," press secretary Scott "I don't think this is the first time we've heard Senator Kennedy make such unsubstantiated and baseless charges," press secretary Scott McClellan said in Crawford, Tex. "Given that it's an election year, it won't be the last time." said in Crawford, Tex. "Given that it's an election year, it won't be the last time."

McClellan clearly had not heard Kennedy's speech.

It is almost certain that attempts will be made to write off Kennedy's attack as "typical negativism" by the Democrats, and so in a move that was clearly designed as a co-ordinated attack, Congresswoman Jane Harman was simultaneously presenting the keynote address at the very conservative American Enterprise Institute's "Serious Intelligence Reform" seminar. Harman's speech was distinctly gentler in tone than Kennedy's, offering credit for positive intelligence developments as she presented a five-point Democratic plan for intelligence reform.

Harman did not however completely avoid the fray, mentioning several times in her speech (to what was certainly a Hawkish audience) that the White House seemed unwilling to take on intelligence reform during an election year, and suggesting that waiting to do so was not prudent.

Recent actions inside the CIA are encouraging, but there are no discernible signs from the Vice President or President acknowledging the obvious flaws in our intelligence systems. The White House is unwilling to fix the problems in an election year, and so it has kicked the can down the road until March 2005, when a new WMD Commission - our sixth such effort to review the Iraq problems - makes its recommendations. That will not make us safer. That is like the auto-mechanic who says, "I'm sorry I can't fix your brakes this week, but don't worry because I made your horn louder."

On this issue, I actually think the President put it best when he said, in a different context, that the terrorists will not wait for us. They will not wait until after November, and neither should we. We must act now to make our country safer.

The Democrats it seems are at last starting to learn from their more aggressive Republican counterparts. While Kennedy's remarks were by far the more inflammatory and therefore grabbed the headlines and the bulk of the print, both the New York Times and the Washington Post stories on this also provided coverage of Harman's speech, noting her five-point plan.

This is good smart politics. The one hand wielding "the big stick"; the other holding out a better way. A very good day for the Democrats.

Meanwhile, John Kerry said nothing. Sometimes it's best not to.

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• Senator Edward M. Kennedy: Speech to the Council on Foreign Relations, 3/5/2004
• Center for American Progress: In Their Own Words: Iraq's 'Imminent' Threat, 1/29/2004
• Congresswoman Jane Harman: Keynote Address to
  Americam Enterprise Institute Security Seminar, 3/5/2004
• New York Times: Iraq Threat Deliberately Inflated, Kennedy Says, 3/6/2004
• Washington Post: Kennedy Says Bush Skewed Iraq Data, 3/6/2004
• Council on Foreign Relations (Site unavailable at press time.)
• American Enterprise Institute: Serious Intelligence Reform
  

[ Via Benedict@Large.]