The Anchoress draws my attention to this piece by Washington Post editorial writer Fred Hiatt, who makes mincemeat of Senator Rockefeller's latest "Bush Lied" report, noting that Bush did not lie and the Senate Intelligence Committee report itself, despite the often contrary headlines, shows he didn't.
...the phony "Bush lied" story line distracts from the biggest prewar failure: the fact that so much of the intelligence upon which Bush and Rockefeller and everyone else relied turned out to be tragically, catastrophically wrong.
And it trivializes a double dilemma that President Bill Clinton faced before Bush and that President Obama or McCain may well face after: when to act on a threat in the inevitable absence of perfect intelligence and how to mobilize popular support for such action, if deemed essential for national security, in a democracy that will always, and rightly, be reluctant.
For the next president, it may be Iran's nuclear program, or al-Qaeda sanctuaries in Pakistan, or, more likely, some potential horror that today no one even imagines. When that time comes, there will be plenty of warnings to heed from the Iraq experience, without the need to fictionalize more.
Of course, if Rockefeller and the press told the truth, there'd be pressure to do something about such a critical problem--clean up our intelligence service. And the leaks designed to undermine the Administration would dry up.
I applaud Hiatt, but I do recall the WaPo publishing some of those leaks, and I remember how diligently his paper fanned the Plame flames, despite so many working for the paper knowing full well that the leaker of this (in any event insignificant bit of information) was one of their favorite anti-administration sources, Richard Armitage.
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