corrente

So how plausible is the latest cover story? The one that says Bush isn't really responsible for the WMD fiasco because He went to war on the basis of a one-page memo that didn't have any, you know, nuance in it?

On one, level, really plausible. After all, Bush refused clemency to over 57 Texas death-row inmates on the basis of sloppy, one-page memos, and is there really all that much difference between 57 and 800 or so? (And as for the Iraqis, hey, who's counting?)

But is it really plausible that the entire administration—that vast congereries over which Inerrant Boy, The Chosen One, has dominion—didn't do their homework either? Thomas Oliphant doesn't think so:

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To absolve Bush of disqualifying responsibility for this true scandal, this is what you have to believe.

You have to believe that in processing all of this, Bush never bothered to look beyond the summary or to inquire in depth whether it was supported. You then have to believe that Condoleezza Rice never had her large national security staff in the White House take a long look at the backup material on Bush's behalf.
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You have to believe that in getting ready for a war, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his huge operation never snuck a peek, either.
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You have to believe that Vice President Dick Cheney - he of the long resumé and rich experience, not to mention his status as prime mover behind the idea of hasty, nearly unilateral invasion - never bothered to see if his extreme statements about the "threat" from Iraq were supportable. You have to believe that his many personal visits to the CIA were simply to ask questions, not influence answers.
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And you have to believe that before he went to the United Nations to make Bush's "case" just before the war - with George Tenet, the director of central intelligence - Secretary of State Colin Powell's own visits to the CIA never once turned up the hedging, contradictory information that the Senate committee found by the bucketful.
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(via International Herald Trib)

Well, unless they were all in it together, of course. All the "principals." Kind of like a gang of true believers, know what I mean? Gee, that's not all that hard to believe, is it?