The lies are starting to surface in the major media. The circling of the wagons has begun as everyone tries to cover their pitifull asses.

Pattern of Corruption
by Paul Krugman

More than half of the U.S. Army's combat strength is now bogged down in Iraq, which didn't have significant weapons of mass destruction and wasn't supporting Al Qaeda. We have lost all credibility with allies who might have provided meaningful support; Tony Blair is still with us, but has lost the trust of his public. All this puts us in a very weak position for dealing with real threats. Did I mention that North Korea has been extracting fissionable material from its fuel rods?

How did we get into this mess? The case of the bogus uranium purchases wasn't an isolated instance. It was part of a broad pattern of politicized, corrupted intelligence.
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16 Words, and Counting
by Nicholas Kristof

After I wrote a month ago about the Niger uranium hoax in the State of the Union address, a senior White House official chided me gently and explained that there was more to the story that I didn't know.

Yup. And now it's coming out.
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Intelligence Unglued
by Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity

MEMORANDUM FOR: The President

FROM: Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity

SUBJECT: Intelligence Unglued

The glue that holds the Intelligence Community together is melting under the hot lights of an awakened press. If you do not act quickly, your intelligence capability will fall apart—with grave consequences for the nation.
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16 words

It's been a long weekend and Monday, and I've felt like crap for most of today. I really wanted to watch WWE Raw, relax and hope to be able to work tomorrow. But when I came across this wee bit o'fiction from James Taranto, I figured I had to come out swinging.

We'll take each paragraph on its own. Since they're each filled with errant asumptions.

To those of us who supported Iraq's liberation without reservation, the 16 words in the president's speech are an irrelevancy. There was an overwhelming legal, strategic and humanitarian case for removing the Baathist regime from Baghdad, whether or not it recently sought to obtain uranium in Africa. And let's be honest: For Howard Dean, the African uranium question is equally irrelevant. His Watergate comparison is telling. Watergate, after all, was a criminal conspiracy; Dean seems to view the liberation of Iraq as a crime (and Saddam Hussein as the victim?).

Well, so do most Iraqis. Those 16 words created a clear and present danger to the US. A nuclear armed Iraq might have been a threat, granted that they lacked any kind of delivery vehicle or even access to a port which could tranship such a weapon, but that's a minor detail.

The Iraqis do not call this a liberation.
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