When even your guys question you.

Sure, Republicans and the Bush administration will always say that their critics, those who accuse them of fudging the intelligence on Iraq are on the left, or somehow the political opposition.

OK, then how about a member of their own administration, someone who as recently as this past January was in a position of authority in the Bush White House?

In a BBC Interview, Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, who was formerly a top advisor to former Secretary of State Colin Powell, while focusing on the treatment of prisoners also had this to say:

In the BBC interview, Col Wilkerson also developed his views on whether or not pre-war intelligence was deliberately misused by the White House.

He said that he had previously thought only honest mistakes were made.

But recent revelations about doubts in the intelligence community that appear to have been suppressed in the run-up to the war have made him question this view.

Now, this goes along with Wilkerson's coming to grips that some of the information he got, and gave to Powell, was false. I blogged on Wilkerson and Powell on August 19, Trading honor for a pack of lies and September 10,Righties should pay attention to this Republican. I do. In the August 19 post, I quote Wilkerson (and David Kay) as saying,

How did it happen? Wilkerson gives some hints:

"(Powell) came through the door ... and he had in his hands a sheaf of papers, and he said, 'This is what I've got to present at the United Nations according to the White House, and you need to look at it,'...It was anything but an intelligence document. It was, as some people characterized it later, sort of a Chinese menu from which you could pick and choose."

David Kay, who was once the CIA's chief weapons inspector in Iraq, says it even more bluntly: "In fact, Secretary Powell was not told that one of the sources he was given as a source of this information had indeed been flagged by the Defense Intelligence Agency as a liar, a fabricator..."

So, Wilkerson, a former high official in the Bush state department, has gone from thinking it was just bad intel to thinking it was deliberately manipulated, scarcely ten months after he left the administration.

And his former boss is becoming more vocal as well. Powell blasted the White House for smearing Murtha last week.

Now, I've said before that if I were put on a spot and forced to name a Republican who I thought was most qualified to serve as President, it would be Colin Powell. And I'm glad he is starting to speak out, not as beholden to the Bush administration, but as an independent and reasonable voice that we should all listen to.