That Senate report saying (in effect) Bush lied, Part 2

In the first installment reviewing the Senate Intelligence Committee's report on the administration's statements respecting Iraq, we saw that on the issue of nuclear weapons the administration's statements were generally in line with the understanding of the intelligence services.

Next in the report (page 17) is "Biological weapons."

Though this section lists nearly three full pages of quotations (17-19) from administration officials coming from speeches identified as important to making the public case for war along with about three times that space for subsequent commentary, this entry will be short in light of the report's conclusion:

(U) Conclusion 2: Statements in the major speeches analyzed, as well as additional statements, regarding Iraq's possession of biological agent, weapons, production capability, and use of mobile biological laboratories were substantiated by intelligence information. Intelligence assessments from the late 1990s through early 2003 consistently stated that Iraq retained biological warfare agent and the capability to produce more. Assessments on the mobile facilities included the production capabilities of those labs, both in terms of type of agent and in amount. Prior to the October 2002 NIE, some intelligence assessments left open the question as to whether Iraq possessed biological weapons or that it was actively producing them, though some assessments did not present such uncertainties. Policymakers did not discuss intelligence gaps in Iraq's biological weapons programs, which were explicit in the October 2002 NIE.

Conclusion 2, as with Conclusion 1, only implicitly faults the Bush administration. Their supposed sin was in not specifically alluding to uncertainties in intelligence. For my part, I can't imagine why a government would want to spell out the gaps in its intelligence in public during a sensitive political moment. Unless it was to forestall subsequent politicized attacks, but that seems like a minor consideration overall when one is contemplating war against a dangerous entity.