Helen Thomas

President Bush doesn't seem to be perturbed over the fact that every ominous argument he made to invade Iraq has turned out to be false. Maybe that's because the public seems to be ho-hum about it all.

After a year-long study, the Senate Intelligence Committee has released a 511-page report -- the first phase of a two-part inquiry -- that rejects as wrong and exaggerated Bush's constantly reiterated claims that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction and had ties to the al Qaida terrorists.

The committee blamed the CIA alone for the mistakes.

Bush later acknowledged there were "some shortcomings" in the intelligence area but praised the intelligence professionals for doing an "essential job."

Bush's low-key response is mystifying, given the fact that his entire justification for going to war has exploded and the administration's claims have been repudiated.

No expressions of apology or regrets have been heard from the president or other top administration officials. There was no admission that a colossal mistake had been committed, no recognition of the loss of nearly 900 American lives and thousands wounded in a war whose real reason remains mysterious.

Bush sounded defiant earlier this week.

"Although we have not found stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction," Bush said Monday in Oak Ridge, Tenn., "we were right to go into Iraq."

"We removed a dedicated enemy of America who had the capability of providing weapons of mass murder and could have passed that capability to terrorists. . . that is a risk we could not afford."

Bush apparently is bargaining that his best defense is an offense to blunt any national uproar. But he doesn't have to worry -- it's summer time and the public seems to have become inured to deception.

The Senate's scorching report is a fast-fading story in the national press and apparently only a temporary embarrassment to the administration.

However, there may be some political fallout.

The latest CNN-USA Today-Gallup poll gives Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., the presumed Democratic presidential candidate, a 50 percent to 45 percent edge over Bush. And Michael Moore's film "Fahrenheit 9-11" continues to be a popular attraction at the box office; the film brings home some of the war's tragic realities.

Both Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kans., chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV, D-W.Va., the top Democrat on the panel, agreed that the Republican-led Congress would not have voted to authorize the U.S. invasion of Iraq had the lawmakers known there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

Commenting on the committee report -- which was reached unanimously -- Rockefeller said "there is simply no question that mistakes leading up to the war rank among the most devastating losses and intelligence failures in the history of the nation."

"The fact is that the administration at all levels, and to some extent us, used bad information to bolster its case for war," he added.

Congress would not have authorized the war "if we knew what we know now," he said.

Although the committee said it found no evidence that the Central Intelligence Agency made its mistakes because "of politics or pressure," Rockefeller disagreed.

He noted the "environment of intense pressure" that the intelligence analysts were subjected to after administration bigwigs had spoken out "forcefully and repeatedly" about Iraq's threats. Those public statements put pressure on the analysts to frame conclusions that supported the official line.

Rockefeller said it was clear to everyone on the committee that administration officials "had made up their mind that they were going to go to war." They were looking to the CIA to come up with a rationale that would support their pre-conceived goal of attacking Iraq.

It's difficult to ignore the whiff of politics in the committee's decision to postpone until after the Nov. 2 presidential election the second phase of the inquiry. That will deal with the question of how the Bush administration used the intelligence they were given.

Judging from their passive reaction, Congress and public seem also to be willing to let the president off the hook and to let the CIA take the fall for the Iraqi debacle.

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