April 03, 2005

Judge Silberman is a Liar

Judge Silberman of the US Circuit Court for the District of Columbia has a well-established history as a partisan Republican. But when he's wearing his hat as the co-chairman of the president's commission investigating all intelligence failures before Iraq that don't make the White House look bad, how does he get away with saying such a complete jaw-on-the-floor lie as this?

Silberman had a slightly different take: ''It's true, we put our prestige on the line . . . but the truth of the matter is that every intelligence agency that we know of . . . in the world, had the same views."

That's just plainly not true. The State Department's intelligence shop didn't buy into the excesses of some of the other US agencies. And the reports on the "Curveball" fiasco make it clear that there were certainly people within the intelligence community who didn't believe the mendacious manipulators that the politicians and their toadies at the top of some of these agencies longingly promoted. And there's an important article today by Dafna Linzer that states that UN inspectors and disproved all of the most alarming claims raised by President Bush as necessitating the invasion of Iraq - before we actually launched the invasion.

This is yet more sad revisionist history/ass-covering that the press shouldn't put up with. But given the fact that such comments are allowed to be the last word in stories printed by reputable major news sources it appears that the press is more interested in maintaining it's "balance" and he said/she said norms than in taking a firm line against deceitful acts and general incompetence. Posted by armand at April 3, 2005 03:03 PM | TrackBack | Posted to Politics


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