This is a surprise, only in that it’s coming from the LA Times
In 2006, John F. Kerry explained the Senate’s 77-23 passage of the Iraq war resolution this way: “We were misled. We were given evidence that was not true.” On the campaign trail, Hillary Rodham Clinton dodged blame for her pro-war vote by claiming that “the mistakes were made by this president, who misled this country and this Congress.”
Nearly every prominent Democrat in the country has repeated some version of this charge, and the notion that the Bush administration deceived the American people has become the accepted narrative of how we went to war.
Yet in spite of all the accusations of White House “manipulation” — that it pressured intelligence analysts into connecting Hussein and Al Qaeda and concocted evidence about weapons of mass destruction — administration critics continually demonstrate an inability to distinguish making claims based on flawed intelligence from knowingly propagating falsehoods.
The Times calls out J.D. Rockerfeller for his flawed Intelligence Committee report that was released at the beginning of the month and which continues the “Bush lied” meme
Contrast those conclusions with the Senate Intelligence Committee report issued June 5, the production of which excluded Republican staffers and which only two GOP senators endorsed. In a news release announcing the report, committee Chairman John D. Rockefeller IV got in this familiar shot: “Sadly, the Bush administration led the nation into war under false pretenses.”
Yet Rockefeller’s highly partisan report does not substantiate its most explosive claims. Rockefeller, for instance, charges that “top administration officials made repeated statements that falsely linked Iraq and Al Qaeda as a single threat and insinuated that Iraq played a role in 9/11.” Yet what did his report actually find? That Iraq-Al Qaeda links were “substantiated by intelligence information.” The same goes for claims about Hussein’s possession of biological and chemical weapons, as well as his alleged operation of a nuclear weapons program
Read the whole thing, if for no other reason than to see a typically left-leaning news outlet get one right. For all the hero worship and pedestal polishing going on about Tim Russert, you’d think the liberal media would take the hint and just do a little more fact reporting and let the chips fall. Russert was tough, but generally honest. We can all hope that it might catch on.
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