It's all over for the radical right-wing dunderheads. Now even the White
House is backing off claims that Hussein actually had WMDs. Now the
reason we went to war was because Hussein had "intentions". By november,
Bush is going to be toast. The only way to avoid a full-blown
investigation and scandal will be for Bush to lose and pardon everyone.
Just like Daddy did.

Read it and weap rightards:

sfgate.com/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2004/01/27/MNG654IJAB1.DTL

Washington -- The White House began to back away Monday from its
assertions that Iraq had illegal weapons, saying it now wanted to
compare prewar intelligence assessments with what actually may be found
there.

The evolving position followed sharp public words from the CIA's former
chief weapons inspector, David Kay, comments that have suddenly
intensified the debate in Washington over who was responsible for the
shaping of prewar intelligence that President Bush used to justify
toppling Saddam Hussein.

On Monday, White House officials were no longer asserting that
stockpiles of banned weapons would eventually be found.

Scott McClellan, the White House spokesman, told reporters en route to
an appearance by Bush in Little Rock, Ark., that the administration
would wait for the weapons hunting team, the Iraq Survey Group, to
complete its work before drawing any conclusions about the quality of
the intelligence available.

However, he said, whatever the group's final conclusions about Iraq's
weapons programs, Bush did the correct thing in deposing Hussein because
Iraq was clearly working on chemical, biological and nuclear weapons.

"We know he had the intention -- we know he had the capability,"
McClellan said of Hussein. "And, given his history and given the events
of Sept. 11, we could not afford to rely on the good intentions of
Saddam Hussein. "

Kay, who resigned Friday, now says that there is scant evidence that
Hussein had kept stockpiles of illicit weapons and that the CIA and
other intelligence agencies were wrong in their prewar assessments about
Iraq's weapons programs.

Kay has avoided placing any political spin on the flaws in the prewar
intelligence. But his comments, coming amid a presidential campaign and
at a time when a congressional panel is trying to complete its own
review of prewar intelligence, had immediate political impact at the
White House, in Congress and elsewhere Monday.

On Capitol Hill, Democratic leaders used Kay's statements to argue for a
more aggressive investigation by the GOP-controlled Congress into the
shaping of pre-war intelligence. Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle,
D-S.D., complained that the Republican leader of the Senate Intelligence
Committee was seeking to limit the scope of that panel's inquiry, even
as Kay was now revealing the extent of the problem. Sen. Pat Roberts,
R-Kan., is chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

"Unfortunately, it appears neither the administration nor the chairman
of the Senate intelligence committee share this view" of the need for a
vigorous investigation, Daschle said.

McClellan, pressed on whether the White House still believed stockpiles
of illicit weapons would be found in Iraq -- an assertion that White
House officials made as recently as Friday -- replied, "I think it was
the judgment of intelligence agencies around the world, as well as the
United Nations Special Commission on Iraq, that there were large
unaccounted-for stockpiles."

The special commission was the U.N. inspection team.

Caught in the middle of the growing political firefight is the CIA
director, George Tenet, who is both a Bush confidant and a strong
defender of the agency.

The Senate intelligence panel has drafted a report strongly critical of
the CIA's handling of prewar intelligence and is waiting for Tenet's
written testimony, among other things, before completing its work.

Tenet is tentatively scheduled to appear before the intelligence panel
in closed session March 4, marking the first time that he has done so
since the panel began its inquiry into intelligence on Iraq last spring,
a congressional official said. The official said that the Senate
committee did not expect to release its final report until after hearing
from Tenet, first in his written testimony and then when he answers
questions in person.

Kay said in an interview this weekend that he did not believe that CIA
analysts had been pressured by the Bush administration to exaggerate the
threat posed by Iraq's weapons programs.

He said that U.S. intelligence analysts had believed that Iraq had
illegal weapons during the Clinton and Bush administrations, and said
that the fact that the intelligence community as a whole was so wrong
means that there should be a thorough reappraisal of how such work is
conducted.

On Monday, Kay's comments prompted members of both parties to argue that
it was time for the CIA to acknowledge that it had made serious mistakes
in its prewar assessments.

Rep. Jane Harman, D-Rancho Palos Verdes (Los Angeles County), the top
Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said over the weekend that
the administration had been "in deep denial" by failing to acknowledge
what she called "serious deficiencies in prewar intelligence on Iraq"
and having "no apparent commitment to addressing them."

"In light of Dr. Kay's statement, the president owes the American public
and the world an explanation," she said.

--
"I am angry that so many of the sons of the powerful and well-placed...
managed to wangle slots in Reserve and National Guard units...Of the
many tragedies of Vietnam, this raw class discrimination strikes me as
the most damaging to the ideal that all Americans are created equal and
owe equal allegiance to their country." (Colin Powell’s autobiography,
My American Journey, p. 148)