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A Useful Whitewash
"Bush views new report on spy lapses with favor," was the headline on the New York Times story previewing the latest commission that reported several weeks ago on the manifest and manifold U.S. government intelligence failures in detecting "illicit" weapons and weapons programs abroad. As well he might. The 600-plus-page report not only placed almost all of the blame for being "dead wrong" prior to the Iraq war on the intelligence agencies rather than on the politicos in the administration, but it didn't explore at all the question of whether the administration had pressured or circumvented intelligence agencies to get the intelligence it desire to justify a policy course it had already decided to pursue.

That's because, as the Washington Post reported it, "the panel that Bush appointed under pressure in February 2004 said it was 'not authorized' to explore the question of how the commander-in-chief used the faulty information to make perhaps the most critical decision of his presidency. As he accepted the report yesterday [March 31], Bush offered no thoughts about relying on flawed intelligence to launch a war and took no questions from reporters."

Big surprise....