I spent so much time writing this as a repsonse to my bro-in-law's post on the NY Times article on Bush lies, I figured I'd post it here too.

It's late on a Saturday night, wife and kids are sleeping so I have time to write......I don't write this much because I feel filled with righteous spirit, it's just because I think these matters are important and I enjoy the spirit of the joust. Think of it not as an attempt on my part to change people's minds but an attempt to let your readers know what the rest of us are thinking, even if it's wrong.

I'm no GOP spinmeister, but I believe you're jumping to conclusions in your post. One, that Libi was the only source of this information on the topic in question. Two, that even if this was the only source of this information that there weren't also intelligence reports at the time suggesting that the information provided by Libi was reliable.

The passage you quote above is actually quite misleading (not your fault). It says, “Without mentioning him by name, President Bush, et al. repeatedly cited Mr. Libi's information as ‘credible’ evidence". The actual NY Times article says (towards the end of course), "At the time of Mr. Powell’s speech (to the UN), an unclassified statement by the C.I.A. described the reporting, now known to have been from Mr. Libi, as “credible.’’ In other words, the Bushies described it as credible because at least one intelligence agency said it was.

The reporting clearly shows that there were differing opinions within the intelligence community at the time regarding Libi's veracity. Again, assuming that the powers that be were aware of all the available intelligence, all they could do was flip the true/not true coin. If I'm dealing with Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden, I personally don't give them the benefit of the doubt.

As an aside, why is it that every time something like this comes out there seems to be a cliam that the Administration rested it's entire case for the war on the words of one person. It used to be Chalabi, then it was the Niger yellowcake guy, now it's Libi. Is it not entirely possible that our intelligence agencies were dealing with years and years of intelligence gathering work including that done by other countries? Just becuase the press finds a handful of lying sources out of the hundreds or thousands used and declares that they were the lynchpin in the decision-making process does not mean that they actually were.

Think of it this way (bad analogy coming). If two reliable people saw a crime occur and they testified truthfully about it, and an unreliable third person lied and said he saw it to get in good with the authorities, it doesn't mean the crime didn't happen because one person gave false testimony. We know that Libi is man number three here, but who knows how many others gave evidence to the administration on al-Qaeda weapons training in Iraq?

Now THAT would be comprehensive reporting that could help settle this thing once and for all and if the President needs to be impeached, so be it. Instead we get bits and pieces of information that support one side of the argument or the other.