When Logic Is Optional

I know I shouldn't be wasting my time reading stuff intended for the kool-aid krusaders of the world, but I can't help myself. I read the stuff hoping to learn some new tidbit of information. All I ever learn is that these people are living in their own bizarro world where the rules of logic and common sense do not apply. Yet I still read the stuff. I must be an idiot to keep banging my head against the same brick wall.

The piece that inspired my latest intellectual concussion is from David Corn, WMD Commission Stonewalls

On Thursday, President Bush's commission on weapons of mass destruction intelligence released a 692-page report that harshly criticizes the US intelligence establishment. It notes that "the Intelligence Community was dead wrong in almost all of it pre-war judgments about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. This was a major intelligence failure." That's no news flash. The Senate intelligence committee issued a report last July that said the same. But like the Senate committee, Bush's commission--cochaired by Judge Laurence Silberman, a Republican, and former Senator Chuck Robb, a Democrat--ignored a key issue: whether Bush and his aides overstated and misrepresented the flawed intelligence they received from the intelligence agencies.

Alright, fabulous! Corn is about to show us exactly where Bush lied! Finally! Corn has to know where Bush lied, right? Hell, Corn wrote a whole book called The Lies Of George W. Bush (as the web page states over and over - we get it, you want us to buy your book!), so he is about to deliver the goods, right?

The commission, which claimed it found no evidence that Bush officials pressured intelligence analysts to rig their reports, notes in a footnote,

Our review has been limited by our charter to the question of alleged policymaker pressure on the Intelligence Community to shape its conclusions to conform to the policy preferences of the Administration. There is a separate issue of how policymakers used the intelligence they were given and how they reflected it in their presentations to Congress and the public. That issue is not within our charter and we therefore did not consider it nor do we express a view on it.

So two years after Bush launched the invasion of Iraq, there still has been no official inquiry into how he and his lieutenants handled the prewar intelligence. The question is whether Bush and other administration officials exaggerated the intelligence community's overstatements.

Is it? Since when? We have been told repeatedly that Bush invented claims about Iraq's WMD programs without a shred of evidence. When the evidentiary committees return with findings proving conclusively that the Bush administration neither invented intelligence reports nor coerced intelligence agencies to alter their estimates we are then told that wasn't the issue.

In fact the claim is now made that Bush's lies consist not in the coercing of intelligence agencies but in leaving them alone.

When the intelligence report states:

The Intelligence Community needs to be pushed. It will not do its best unless it is pressed by policymakers-sometimes to the point of discomfort. Analysts must be pressed to explain how much they don't know; the collection agencies must be pressed to explain why they don't have better information on key topics. While policymakers must be prepared to credit intelligence that doesn't fit their preferences, no important intelligence assessment should be accepted without sharp questioning that forces the community to explain exactly how it came to that assessment and what alternatives might also be true.

Corn responds with:

It's obvious that Bush did not push the intelligence services in this fashion.

It's funny. Last year the Bush administration were supposedly all in the face of the intelligence agencies telling them to respond with what the Bushies wanted to hear or else, and that was what proved that they were liars. This year the Bush administration is supposedly guilty of not being all in the face of the intelligence community and now that is what proves that they are liars.

I wish they would pick a story and stick to it. Otherwise one is forced to think that they are merely wanting to get Bush either coming or going.