Even Faux News isn't buying Bush's BS >> "Caveat Emptor?"

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,176308,00.html

Bush: Congress Shouldn't Have Trusted Rice?

The Bush administration is in the process of establishing a dangerous new precedent in relations between the president and Congress on issues of national security and intelligence -- one that could seriously hamper future presidents of either party.


It’s called caveat emptor (buyer beware).

It goes something like this: If I (the executive branch) provide you (the Congress) with intelligence that proves to be completely wrong and I (the executive branch) exaggerate and hype the meaning of this intelligence and you (the Congress) are gullible enough to vote with me on the basis of this false intelligence and my spin, you are as guilty as sin for your vote and shouldn’t complain to anyone.


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Congressmen and senators assume that the briefings being given to them by the executive branch are factual and not loaded with hype or spin. The national security of the country is too important for typical political spin.

That, of course, is not what happened this time. Then National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and others engaged in an enormous amount of spin, hyping the intelligence to assure Congress that Saddam Hussein was well on his way to developing nuclear weapons and that he certainly had vast supplies of chemical and biological weapons at his disposal.

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So what is the administration’s response now? Members of Congress should not have been so foolish as to rely on Dr. Rice’s presentation; All 435 members of the House and all 100 senators should have crowded into those small rooms in the Capitol and personally inspected every piece of intelligence.