Fred Hiatt lends a hand with that Senate Intelligence Report

Editor Fred Hiatt of The Washington Post preemptively spills the beans on my project involving the Senate Intelligence Committee report on the administration's prewar statements of intelligence.

Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), chairman of the Select Committee on Intelligence, set out to provide the official foundation for what has become not only a thriving business but, more important, an article of faith among millions of Americans. And in releasing a committee report Thursday, he claimed to have accomplished his mission, though he did not use the L-word.

(...)

But dive into Rockefeller's report, in search of where exactly President Bush lied about what his intelligence agencies were telling him about the threat posed by Saddam Hussein, and you may be surprised by what you find.

I'm surprised to find the mainstream press willing to take on the report as Hiatt does, so major props to the WaPo and Hiatt. As for me, I'm not that surprised to find the report lacking in any substantive proof that Bush lied, for I have investigated a variety of such claims over the years and found them almost invariably without merit.

Hiatt notes the same fact that Power Line pointed out about the report. Aside from the minority view appearing near the end of the report, it excludes consideration of prewar statements from Democrats such as the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, John D. Rockefeller (D-W. Va.). Hiatt appropriately faults the report for that omission, and goes on to criticize the report for trivializing the issue of faulty intelligence leading up to the war by, in effect, papering it over with "Bush Lied" bumper stickers.

Hiatt could have added that the report demonstrates an appalling level of cynical partisanship from Democrats in the Senate.