The New York Times finally says it, the administration lied!

Was the administration only accepting intelligence that fit their pre-conceived notion of reality or only accepting intelligence that was useful for their PR campaign to justify the Iraq war? Does it matter? The New York Times in their Op Ed, The Nuclear Bomb That Wasn't" says for the first time, they lied.

Of all the justifications that President Bush gave for invading Iraq, the most terrifying was that Saddam Hussein was on the brink of developing a nuclear bomb that he might use against the United States or give to terrorists. Ever since we learned that this was not true, the question has been whether Mr. Bush gave a good-faith account of the best available intelligence, or knowingly deceived the public. The more we learn about the way Mr. Bush paved the road to war, the more it becomes disturbingly clear that if he was not aware that he was feeding misinformation to the world, he was about the only one in his circle who had not been clued in.

The foundation for the administration's claim that it acted on an honest assessment of intelligence analysis - and the president's frequent claim that Congress had the same information he had - has been steadily eroded by the reports from the Senate Intelligence Committee and the 9/11 commission. A lengthy report in The Times on Sunday removed any lingering doubts.

Those aluminum tubes:

Even though Iraq had a history of using the same tubes to make small rockets, the president and his closest advisers told the American people that the overwhelming consensus of government experts was that these new tubes were to be used to make nuclear bomb fuel. Now we know there was no such consensus. Mr. Bush's closest advisers say they didn't know that until after they had made the case for war. But in fact, they had plenty of evidence that the claim was baseless; it was a long-discounted theory that had to be resurrected from the intelligence community's wastebasket when the administration needed justification for invading Iraq.

Are they sloppy idiots or liars?

It's shocking that with all this information readily available, Secretary of State Colin Powell still went before the United Nations to repeat the bogus claims, an appearance that gravely damaged his reputation. It's even more disturbing that Vice President Dick Cheney and Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, had not only failed to keep the president from misleading the American people, but had also become the chief proponents of the "mushroom cloud" rhetoric.

Ms. Rice had access to all the reports debunking the tubes theory when she first talked about it publicly in September 2002. Yet last Sunday, Ms. Rice said that while she had been aware of a "dispute" about the tubes, she had not specifically known what it was about until after she had told the world that Saddam was building the bomb.

Ms. Rice's spokesman, Sean McCormack, said it was not her job to question intelligence reports or "to referee disputes in the intelligence community." But even with that curious job disclaimer, it's no comfort to think that the national security adviser wouldn't have bothered to inform herself about such a major issue before speaking publicly. The national security adviser has no more important responsibility than making sure that the president gets the best advice on life-and-death issues like the war.

This is worth repeating; Ms. Rice's spokesman, Sean McCormack, said it was not her job to question intelligence reports or "to referee disputes in the intelligence community." Then what the f*ck was her job, to read books about pet goats to the President of the United States? The reality is a lot of people in the administration lied and as a result a lot of people have died.