Bush Lied!! well, sort of

Great op/ed about the recent report from the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. (Fred Hiatt - "'Bush Lied'? If Only It Were That Simple." - washingtonpost.com). Like most Americans, I could hardly take the time to read the report. And the Democratic authors would rather you just take their word for what the report contains. After demonstrating how equivocal the data is in the matter (and in the report), Fred Hiatt--like an adult, raises the following points:

But the phony 'Bush lied' story line distracts from the biggest prewar failure: the fact that so much of the intelligence upon which Bush and Rockefeller and everyone else relied turned out to be tragically, catastrophically wrong.

And it trivializes a double dilemma that President Bill Clinton faced before Bush and that President Obama or McCain may well face after: when to act on a threat in the inevitable absence of perfect intelligence and how to mobilize popular support for such action, if deemed essential for national security, in a democracy that will always, and rightly, be reluctant."