Earlier today, I linked to British stories that report how a parliamentary committee looks set to exonerate Blair from interpolating a piece of evidence into the intellgience reports about Saddam’s WMD capacity. Slate’s Fred Kaplan also argues that the discrepancy between what we believed Saddam possessed and what we have so far found is best explained by the usual vagaries of intelligence assessments, not unlike the “missile gap” of 1960. And Gene Volokh also does some homework on the now famous Cheney quote of Saddam having reconstituted “nuclear weapons.” Volokh convincingly (to me) shows how at worst this was a function of Cheney’s mis-speaking, not lying:
Rumsfeld’s and Cheney’s critics … are literally correct when they quote Cheney as saying Saddam had nuclear weapons, [but] they don’t even hint to their readers that instead of “recklessly exaggerat[ing],” Cheney quite likely simply misspoke – and that rather than trying to mislead people into thinking that Saddam had nuclear weapons, Cheney repeatedly suggested the contrary several times in the very interview that they’re quoting. One source that I’ve seen – a Dana Milbank Washington Post piece – at least acknowledged this possibility, by saying that “aides later said Cheney was referring to Saddam Hussein’s nuclear programs, not weapons.” Even there, it would have been helpful to readers if the writer had also indicated that the full transcript supports the aides’ claims. But the other sources that I mentioned above (the Kristof New York Times article, the Slate “Whopper” piece, and the Conason Salon piece) don’t even do as much as the Post did.
The American public have gotten this one right again. And the far Left, still desperate to undermine this administration and retroactively discredit the war of Iraqi liberation, is merely digging a bigger and bigger hole for itself.
The Dish 