George,

I know it is a hackneyed phrase to say I am "preaching to the choir", but the frustration level created by the ongoing dishonesty and parsing by the Bush Administration makes me feel I have to vent somewhere!

There was no intelligence failure when Bush and his minions continuously tried to link Iraq and Saddam to the terrorist's attacks on 9-11-01,there was no intelligence failure when the Bushites linked by innuendo and misleading statements Iraq and Saddam to Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden,there was no intelligence failure when Bush told the fable about uranium from Niger, the intelligence community said there was no such thing as uranium from Africa. In fact, the White House was so incensed by the ambassador claiming the lack of any credible evidence to Bush's claim,they "outted" his wife and revealed to Mr. Novak that his wife was a CIA operative, endangering her life, violating the law and ending her career.

Mr. Kay has testified that there was no evidence to support the claim that the CIA was pressured to tailor the "intelligence" to fit the tale of WMDs and imminent threats posed by Bush and his sycophants. I am not surprised he has said this, he was head cheerleader of the Bush gang in their efforts to "sell" the story to the American people and, although he was compelled to be truthful about the obvious, he left himself and Bush some "wiggle room'" and deniability, by saying that,although they were 'almost all wrong', there was no evidence that they were pressured to make the information conform to what Bush and his cohorts were telling us. I don't for one second believe this, there is just too much evidence to contradict Mr. David Kay, including CIA personnel speaking anonymously.

So hundreds of young Americans are dead,thousands wounded and maimed, countless thousands of Iraqi citizens dead and injured,all for a BIG LIE and a man willing to endanger a nation for his own personal Oedipal War. Lets call it what it really is, not an intelligence failure, but the failure of a man to use fundamental intelligence and decency to avoid such a horrific, costly war.

We simply must rid this nation of this pariah,by working very hard to replace him in the Oval Office!

Harry Tenney (electronic mail, February 2, 2004)