Okay, now he'll name a new director

The acting director of the CIA is speaking up in defense after the Pointless Commission's slam on intelligence. I'm surprised. He doesn't look like someone who would take on the White House. In fact, I believe he's the one who signed off on the "16 word" fiasco when Tenet wouldn't.

The country's new acting intelligence chief said Wednesday that American intelligence agencies should not be blamed if there was inadequate debate about the decision to go to war against Iraq.

... The Senate panel dissected the intelligence behind a National Intelligence Estimate of October 2002. That document included flat assertions that Iraq had chemical and biological weapons and was reconstituting its nuclear program, statements that the Senate committee called unfounded and unreasonable.

But to treat the document as a pivotal element in the march to war would be "an oversimplification of the situation,'' Mr. McLaughlin said on CNN, in one of a series of interviews intended to counter the sharp criticism of the agency, adding, "If there wasn't sufficient debate about these issues, it wasn't the fault of the people who prepared this estimate.''

  NY Times article

This could get interesting. On the other hand, I think it's more likely that Mr. McLaughlin is just trying to cover his butt for having signed off on that faulty yellowcake information. He'll be replaced, and maybe write a book, huh?

And then there's Pat Roberts....

But in an hourlong interview on Wednesday morning in his office, Mr. Roberts said he was "not too sure" that the administration would have invaded if it had known how flimsy the intelligence was on Iraq and illicit weapons. Instead, the senator said, Mr. Bush might well have advocated efforts to maintain sanctions against Iraq and to continue to try to unearth the truth through the work of United Nations inspectors. "I don't think the president would have said that military action is justified right now," Mr. Roberts said. If the administration had been given "accurate intelligence," he said, Mr. Bush "might have said, 'Saddam's a bad guy, and we've got to continue with the no-fly zones and with inspections.' "

Oh sure, Pat. What about that little phrase, "Fuck Saddam, we're takin' him out." Hmmmm?

Come back to the real world Pat.

Take a vote, Pat. Senator Bond would still have voted to invade. Well, that's what he said. Maybe he's just too stupid to lie.

Senator Rockefeller said last week that he believed a war resolution would have failed in Congress had the flimsiness of the intelligence been known; Senator Roberts has said he was "not sure.''

That's more like it.

....but hey, say what you want....you will anyway.