NBC, not Bush, Lies!

While I don't have high regard for Bush on a lot of things I appreciate his effort in the war on terror and believe he went into Iraq for what he, the intelligence community, dozens of other nations, the UN, and all the senators who approved the action believed...that Saddam had WMD's and would use them. Powerline shows the media's unwillingness to let go of the "Bush lied" angle even when they have the scoop that should do just that. Instead, as John Hinderaker of Powerline points out, NBC creates a Bush administration negative headline for a story that contains once sentence that helps exonerate Bush on WMD's.

The headline reads Iraqi diplomat gave U.S. prewar WMD details Saddam’s foreign minister told CIA the truth, so why didn’t agency listen?

Then burried in the story is: Sabri said Iraq had stockpiled weapons and had "poison gas" left over from the first Gulf War. Both Sabri and the agency were wrong.

John writes: Obviously, if Saddam's Foreign Minister admitted that Iraq had large stockpiles of chemical weapons and leftover poison gas, that would have been seen as the final confirmation of what everyone in the intelligence community already believed. And Sabri's statement that Saddam "desperately wanted a [nuclear bomb]" but would need more than a few months to a year to build one--bizarrely presented as exculpatory by NBC--would hardly have been reassuring.