If you don't already, you are missing out on satire of John Stewartish proportions (and sometimes better). On Presidential WMD Fact-Finding Commisions:
We Apologize For The Inconvenience
The precis of the final report of the Medium Lobster Commission, reporting on the failure to accurately determine Saddam Hussein's weapons capabilities in the months preceding the Iraq War:
America's intelligence agencies made thorough and grievous errors in their assessments of Iraq's weapons capabilites. For example, in the 2002 National Intelligence Estimate, the line "Saddam Hussein is made entirely of poison and can launch fifty fusion warheads from his perpetually-flared nostrils" should properly have read "No nukes here, nothing to see, all done now." The commission has concluded these were wholly the result of clerical error, most likely a typo or a severe paper jam.
The CIA's secretary, Mrs. Bigglesby, has been given a stern talking-to. Further, the commission strongly recommends that the intelligence community double the number of proofreaders currently on staff, as well as update its spellchecking software. As of publication date, the National Security Council was still using Word 98; updating to Office XP would, according to sources at the commission's local Staples, reduce the number of future preventive wars and massive unilateral invasions by up to 50%.
The commission did not investigate who ordered these intelligence assessments, or who read them (if anyone did), and is not particularly interested in theories as to who did. The commission is only interested in intelligence in the abstract, which is most sublime at the precise moment of its creation, when it most purely reflects the Form of Intelligence itself. Whoever might use it, whatever it might blow up, is insufficiently fascinating to us.
Later this year the commission will investigate whether or not one hundred thousand Iraqi corpses were the product of a misplaced carriage return.
I'm still using Word98, I think. That might explain a few things...
Posted by baltar at April 13, 2005 10:17 AM | TrackBack | Posted to