http://www.sunspot.net/news/opinion/bal-ed.kay01feb01,0,7043360.story?coll=bal-opinion-headlinesexcerpt:
Was the president misled by the incompetents at the CIA? That's the emerging Republican version. Or was the CIA simply telling the White House what it wanted to hear? That's how the Democrats would describe it - and a recent report by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace that traces what was known and what was said about Iraqi weapons provides them with powerful circumstantial evidence. But here's another way to ask the question: Was the war itself all wrong?
Mr. Bush says it wasn't because even if Saddam Hussein didn't have any nasty weapons he would have liked to have some. Critics of the war never thought the weapons were anything more than a pretext anyway, and focused on other issues. But millions of Americans went along with the administration's precisely detailed warnings about the Iraqi threat - and now their trust is being sorely tested.
The president's response so far suggests that he's not especially taken aback by the absence of those terrible weapons - which in turn suggests that his critics were right in contending that the weapons were never the real issue. But there's an air of cavalier cynicism at the White House, as if reasons and facts don't matter. At its heart is a disdain for all those who placed their faith in the commander in chief and believed in the necessity of war. This is poisonous. Americans of every affiliation should demand a full and independent inquiry into the whole business. A whitewash won't do
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