What are the Republicans afraid of? If Bush didn't twist the intelligence, lie to the American people about Iraq, why are they afraid to release this report? Answer: Because he did twist the intelligence and lie to the American people.
Link below; my emphasis.
"For eight months, the Senate Intelligence Committee has made little effort to pursue its long-promised probe into whether the Bush administration intentionally misconstrued intelligence in the run-up to the Iraq war -- an investigation that would have delved into whether White House aides tried to put pressure on CIA analysts.
The revelation that Karl Rove, a White House political adviser, leaked information about a CIA operative to discredit her husband's complaints about President Bush's use of intelligence has focused new attention on the relationship between the White House and CIA. But the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence has shown no signs of moving ahead with its investigation.
Pat Roberts, chairman of the committee, vowed last year that soon after the presidential election was over, his panel would examine whether Bush or his top aides misled the public about prewar intelligence, or pressured CIA agents to make a stronger case for invading Iraq. But since then, the Intelligence Committee has made no measurable progress on the investigation. Instead, Roberts has offered vague public promises of picking up the key pieces of the probe at some point but has warned that other more pressing matters must be dealt with first.
Senator John D. Rockefeller IV, vice chairman of the committee, said he is frustrated by the delay and is beginning to suspect political motivations from congressional Republicans who want to shield the administration.
''The chairman has declared firmly that it will be done," said Rockefeller, Democrat of West Virginia. ''I always think there's a reluctance to do anything which might embarrass the administration. I think that's been true since the beginning of all of this."
The failure of the committee to act has taken on renewed importance in recent weeks, as the criminal investigation of an administration leak that revealed the identity of undercover operative Valerie Plame Wilson has widened to implicate Rove and Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby. On Monday, Democrats called for a special congressional probe into the leak, including Rove's and Libby's conversations with reporters.
Libby was particularly involved in helping the administration make a case to topple Saddam Hussein. He coordinated Cheney's efforts to seek out information directly from CIA analysts and was part of a group of administration neoconservatives that relied heavily on information provided by Ahmed Chalabi, who was once Washington's choice to replace Hussein, and the Iraqi National Congress.
Though an investigation of the uses of prewar intelligence would not cover the leaking of Plame Wilson's name -- that occurred after the invasion of Iraq -- it could shed light on whether members of the administration took other actions to suppress or discredit opposing views.
Roberts, Republican of Kansas, said in February that the committee's investigation of the administration's use of intelligence is ''on the back burner," and said in April that other issues have more urgent claims on the committee's attention."
More at the link:
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2005/07/27/senate_probe_of_prewar_intelligence_stalls/