Seething from a Bush-Lied™-based BBC/NPR "report" on the car radio this morning asserting the "bottom line" of chief weapons inspector Charles Duelfer's Iraq Survey Group report is that they found no WMDs, we dived into the blogosphere for relief and came up cool and refreshed. Hindrocket of Power Line, Glenn Reynolds and others are reading the entire report so you don't have to and are publishing fascinating interim reports as they go along. From Hindrocket:
I've barely had time to dip into the Iraq Survey Group's report, but it's apparent that the report is a treasure trove of information. No one could read even a small portion of the report and conclude that "Iraq had no WMDs" is a fair summary of its contents . . . Even Iraq's own military commanders didn't know whether the WMDs existed or not . . . A major theme of the ISG report is Saddam's continuing determination to acquire WMDs . . . If Saddam could produce mustard gas within a few days, or at most a few months, then the existence or non-existence of stockpiles is a moot point.
As we started to read Hindrocket's excerpt re the Iraqi Intelligence Service's attempt to bribe an American UN inspector with offers of preferential treatment for future business dealings with Iraq, our mind became feverish again as we remembered the distasteful Scott Ritter's sudden turning against GW in the run-up to the war. Hindrocket had the same thought:
I can't see that the report ever says whether the Iraqis were successful in bribing the American weapons inspector. The obvious candidate, of course, is Scott Ritter. We do know that Saddam succeeded in penetrating the U.N.'s inspection teams, so that he had advance knowledge of the inspectors' intentions . . . Keep that in mind next time someone tells you the inspections were working.
Wouldn't you know? Just after reading that, we caught a snippet (can't stomach the sound of his voice more than a few seconds at a time) of none other than Candidate Kerry, LIVE on FOXNews claiming that the Iraq Survey Group report proves -- ready? -- the inspections were working.
Even as the MSM echoes Mr. Kerry's fact-challenged spin, Professor Reynolds provides the facts, ma'am, just the facts over at MSNBC's GlennReynolds.com:
The weapons of mass destruction case is a bit more, um, nuanced than a lot of the press treatment makes it sound, of course. No weapons have been found, but the Iraq Survey Group's report makes clear that Saddam wanted to outwait sanctions and then start making the weapons again . . .
The real centerpiece of Kerry's foreign policy stance, though, has been that he would be better than Bush at getting allies together, and at passing the "Global Test" before taking military action. And that case is in total collapse this week . . . it looks even worse when you consider the other revelations of the Iraq Survey Group -- namely, that most of the opposition to the war came from people who were being bribed by Saddam . . . It's hard to pass the "Global Test" when the people grading it are being bribed to administer a failing grade. Perhaps Kerry should change his stance and promise that a Kerry Administration would "outbid the bad guys."
What a revelation it is to realize that we really do have a richly-networked alternative source of information at our fingertips, unfiltered by propagandists with an agenda we don't share. The ripple effect is already underway in a Hindrocket trackback from Kate of Little Dead Animals, who reports she has sent an angry email to the newsreader at her local station who, having obviously not seen the report himself, is already intoning the Bush Lied™ mantra.
Meanwhile, the Bush Administration itself seems to have actually read the document and grasped the nuances, warts and all, according to this report in the conservative The Washington Times:
"Iraq didn't have the weapons we believed were there," Bush said about the report. But "the Duelfer report showed Saddam was systematically gaming the [sanctions and inspection] system using the U.N. Oil-for-Food Program to try to influence countries and companies in an effort to undermine sanctions. He was doing so with the intent of restarting his weapons program once the world looked away."
And Tony Blair, equally nuanced, is saying
Just as I have had to accept that the evidence now is that there were not stockpiles of actual weapons ready to be deployed, I hope others have the honesty to accept that the report also shows that sanctions weren’t working.
We can already hear the spin on that one: Blair Lied.™ End of story.
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