Josh Marshall has a must read post on Rovegate regarding the Adminsitration's refusal to accept intelligence that undermined its Iraq theory. Josh references a June 15, 2003 WaPo article by Walter Pincus that connects this back to the lies in the rush to war:
A senior CIA analyst said the case "is indicative of larger problems" involving the handling of intelligence about Iraq's alleged weapons programs and its links to al Qaeda, which the administration cited as justification for war. "Information not consistent with the administration agenda was discarded and information that was 'consistent' was not seriously scrutinized," the analyst said.
Pay close attention to this. Because it raises several key points that have now been washed over and encrusted by two years of spin on both sides.
The key point that Joe Wilson got wrong, or seems to have gotten wrong, in his Times OpEd and subsequent statements is one that neither side has ever made that much of, because it doesn't fit neatly into either side's political narrative.
. . . Wilson . . . said that he'd been in government long enough to know that this was standard procedure and that he was confident that it had been. And if it had this amounted to an indictment of the administration.
Only it hadn't, or that's what the people in the White House say. . . . So the question is, why?
. . . Here in Pincus's reporting -- before the evidentiary and political battle lines were drawn -- is the answer: "Information not consistent with the administration agenda was discarded."
It never made it back to Cheney's office because it wasn't what Cheney's office wanted to hear. They were looking for evidence of an Iraqi nuclear program, not ambiguous data and certainly not evidence that contradicted the claim.
And of course, that was always the point wasn't it?
We want to go to war with Iraq. We will "fix the intelligence" to justify that war. This is just another piece of evidence of that.