Commission Report: Bush Didn't Lie

The following summary of the WMD commission report is found at:

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1044640,00.html

Saturday, Apr. 02, 2005

A presidential commission chaired by former Senator Chuck Robb and retired Judge Laurence Silberman was blunt in assigning blame for the flawed conclusion that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction (WMD), one of the major reasons Bush gave for invading Iraq.

WHO SCREWED UP? The finger pointed directly at U.S. spy agencies: prewar knowledge of Saddam's WMD was "dead wrong." Most of the material it was based on was "either worthless or misleading." Important for the President, the report states that his Administration didn't pressure intelligence analysts to support its conclusions about Iraq. The panel passed on the issue of whether senior officials hyped the bad info to justify the invasion.

DID ANYTHING GO RIGHT? There was praise for the spy community's discovery of Libya's nuclear program, an act that led Muammar Gaddafi to close it.

SO EVERYTHING'S O.K. NOW, RIGHT? Nope. The bottom line is that many of the causes of the intelligence breakdown in Iraq persist and "are still all too common" in American espionage. These include a "poorly coordinated" bureaucracy that failed to question key information from an Iraqi defector who was a "fabricator" known as Curveball. Even today the U.S. "knows disturbingly little about the nuclear programs of many of the world's most dangerous actors," notably Iran and North Korea.

CAN THE PROBLEM BE FIXED? The commission's 74 recommendations are designed to "transform" intelligence by undoing bureaucracies and smashing competing CIA, FBI and Pentagon fiefs. The report stresses the need to develop more human agents instead of relying so much on technology.

So if the spy agencies screwed up, that means that:

BUSH DID NOT LIE.

HE SIMPLY USED THE INOFORMATION HE WAS GIVEN.

Now, can we get back to our regularly schedule life?