Does the Washington Post editorial board read their own newspaper?

There's been a lot of buzz about the latest report in the Washington Post about intel on Niger in 2002-2003. Key excerpt:

[T]he National Intelligence Council, [is] the senior coordinating body for the 15 agencies that then constituted the U.S. intelligence community. ...

The council's reply, drafted in a January 2003 memo by the national intelligence officer for Africa, was unequivocal: The Niger story was baseless and should be laid to rest. Four U.S. officials with firsthand knowledge said in interviews that the memo, which has not been reported before, arrived at the White House as Bush and his highest-ranking advisers made the uranium story a centerpiece of their case for the rapidly approaching war against Iraq.

So we know that Bush knew the Niger story was bogus. Yet, in an amazingly obtuse editorial (A Good Leak), the Washington Post writes:

PRESIDENT BUSH was right to approve the declassification of parts of a National Intelligence Estimate about Iraq three years ago in order to make clear why he had believed that Saddam Hussein was seeking nuclear weapons.

The Washington Post is asserting that the leak of selected NIE assessments about Niger, were "to make clear Bush believed" in the Niger story, which he clearly did not.

NOTE: Post defenders could argue that Bush believed Saddam was doing something (some things involving Niger; some others, not) towards getting nukes, and that's what they meant in the editorial when writing that Bush "believed that Saddam was seeking nuclear weapons". But thats a bait and switch. Leak about Niger? Okay, says the Post, since clarification about nuclear programs was merited.

Sorry, no sale.

See also Josh Marshall's well written thoughts on the Post editorial.

And take a look at Think Progress' take-down of the Post editorial's many factual errors.


posted by Quiddity at 4/09/2006 04:24:00 PM