winterbadger | more lies and evasion from the White House on Iraq intel assessment

from the Post's Whitehouse Briefing

Douglas Jehl and David E. Sanger write in the New York Times: "A draft of the executive order Mr. Bush is preparing to sign this week to create the commission makes no explicit reference to a study of how the intelligence assessments were used. Instead, it only directs the panel to compare intelligence findings about Iraq produced before the war with the absence of stockpiles of unconventional weapons found by American inspection teams on the ground."

In other words, the commission could conceivably choose not to examine "a highly charged political issue: whether President Bush and other senior administration officials exaggerated the evidence that Iraq possessed large stockpiles of illicit weapons."

and also

Richard Leiby, The Washington Post's "Reliable Source," has a more recent possible contender:
"Asked yesterday by a reporter whether 'the country is owed an explanation about the Iraq intelligence failures,' President Bush said, 'Well, first of all, I want to know all the facts. . . . What we don't know yet is what we thought and what the Iraqi Survey Group has found, and we want to look at that.' "

and the Oscar for lies, damned lies, and obfuscation goes to Scott McClellan for yesterday's appaling press conference.