The Selling of the Iraq War

The first casualty of the Iraq War was intelligence agencies, particularly the CIA, says this article in the New Republic. Another casualty, albeit facing a slower death, may prove to be America’s trust in the decisions of their leaders. According to this article, the Bush Administration misrepresented information about weapons programs, fabricated terrorist links, and suppressed internal opposition in the CIA to win support for the Iraq War. As a result, the integrity of intelligence agencies and the trust of the American public in their leadership have been deeply – and perhaps dangerously – damaged. If future foreign policies are to be supported and successful, citizens must be able to trust their leaders’ interpretation of classified information to which they have no access. For, according to the authors, "if an administration represents the intelligence unfairly, it effectively forecloses an informed choice about the most important question a nation faces: whether or not to go to war." – YaleGlobal