The administration is getting high and mighty about people who suggest that they manipulated intelligence. To me, this seems totally beside the point, given that they have admitted the intelligence was wrong. These people are our leaders -- it was their responsibility to get the intelligence right. To a certain extent, the reasons (excuses) don't matter.
They say that they didn't muck with the intelligence. I'm willing to believe that they didn't. But I am not willing to believe that they didn't muck with the intelligence *process*, which is worse, in the long run. Mess with the process and you have lost access to reliable intelligence. Once you've biased the process, then you don't have to muck with the actual intelligence. In other words, their defense is a weak straw man. "We didn't manipulate intelligence," is weak because there's a fair bit of evidence that they did. But it's a straw man because the core of their irresponsibility was to screw up the process that formerly produced reliable intelligence. They blame the agencies, but fail to acknowledge their own responsibility for how they chose to interact with the agencies. Nick _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l