And while we're on the subject....

Call this, if you will, a pre-emptive counterstrike.

Washington (AP. February 5) - In his first public defense in the growing controversy over intelligence, CIA Director George Tenet said Thursday that U.S. analysts never claimed before the war that Iraq was an imminent threat. The urgency of such a threat was the main argument used by President Bush for going to war.

In a speech clearly aimed at protecting the CIA from becoming a scapegoat, Tenet said analysts held varying opinions about whether Iraq possessed chemical, biological and nuclear weapons before the war. Those differences were spelled out in the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate given to the White House, he said.

Tenet insisted that the CIA had good intelligence that Saddam was holding and/or developing nuclear and biochemical weapons but had no explanation as to why none were found, falling back on the White House line that the "search isn't over." I think it's clear at this point that this search will never be "over" in any rational sense of the term.

"We've searched every building, every vehicle, every hole in the ground, and every field in Iraq and haven't found anything. They must have been moving it around the whole time! We'll just have to start over." - US weapons team, February, 2016

As usual, a footnote: Speaking to a military audience in Charleston, SC, Bush said "As the chief weapons inspector has said, we have not yet found the weapons we thought were there."

Uh, er, no.... That's not what David Kay said. He didn't say we haven't found them yet, he said they weren't there to be found. Just a small slip, I'm sure. He'll get it right next time.