Since May

At least.

Juan Cole talks about the Observer report that senior U.S. intelligence people knew since May that there would be no WMD found.

The Observer interviewed someone it identified as "a very senior US intelligence official" who served during the war against Iraq, and knew the WMD issue thoroughly. He said, "We had enough evidence at the beginning of May to start asking, 'where did we go wrong?' . . . We had already made the judgment that something very wrong had happened [in May] and our confidence was shaken to its foundations." The source asserted that the intelligence community had "suppressed dissenting views and intelligence."

This allegation directly contradicts the repeated assertions by the Bush administration and by the intelligence services themselves that no pressure was exerted on analysts.

The account was confirmed by former UN nuclear inspector David Albright: "It was known in May that no one was going to find large stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons. The only people who did not know that fact was the public."

Actually, some of the "public" wasn't unaware of at least some of these facts either. See the first entry for the Informed Comment column of June 11 and the March 18 email by moi cited there.

Okay. So, we know that the intelligence about there being any WMD in the first place was disputed roundly. But for the sake of argument - and only for that sake - let's concede that there was reason to believe they were there up until May. That still leaves us nine full months of pouring money down a hole for the investigations that they knew were useless.

There are a bunch of people out there who ought to be rounded up and tossed. And somebody's ass should be in a sling right now instead of out chasing the democrats around the country and cracking stupid jokes and collecting tens of millions of dollars so that he can continue to f*ck every last one of us for four more years.

Don't go squeamish on me now.

How's it feel?