Medal of Freedom Time Again

The Washington Post informs us that two Army intelligence analysts who decided that those aluminum tubes possessed by Saddam indicated that he was moving forward with a nuclear weapons program have not been punished nor reprimanded for providing faulty intelligence. Instead, they have been given "performance awards" for the last three years. Their errors in judgment, their mistakes, helped convince the Congress that we should go to war pre-emptively. The Pentagon usually punishes the lower level offenders, but this time no one at all appears to be accountable. This time sense and reality are reversed. Of course, it all depends on what the current government was trying to accomplish. One might assume that "performance awards " are given when the performer has done something that you wanted them to do, so in this case it must have been to bolster a bogus plan to start a war. It's kind of like choosing the most famously contrary and negative asshole we can find to represent us diplomatically in the U.N. If what you really want to do is slow down all effective international cooperation to gridlock, then Bolton's your man. In the Bush Administration, this kind of performance usually earns the Medal of Freedom.