Difficile est satiram non scribere.
(It is difficult not to write satire.)
--Juvenal
Tenet Defends Iraq Intelligence
CIA Chief Rebuts Allegations of Pressure From Administration Before the War
By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, May 31, 2003; Page A01
CIA Director George J. Tenet took the unusual step yesterday of publicly defending the agency's intelligence on Iraq's possession of chemical and biological weapons…Tenet's statement came in response to the release on Thursday of a "memorandum" to President Bush … by a group of retired CIA and State Department intelligence analysts, [saying] there is "growing mistrust and cynicism" among intelligence professionals over "intelligence cited by you and your chief advisers to justify the war against Iraq."
It added that intelligence in the past had been "warped for political purposes but never before has such warping been used in such a systematic way to mislead our elected representatives into voting to authorize launching a war."
Administration officials angrily denied that allegation. Smythee Allen, Head of the White House Office of Making Things Sound Less Bad, said “Helloooo? Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, anyone? What do you think that was, an exercise in rhetoric? We needed Congress’s OK, so we made stuff up. Duhh. The only difference here is that the facts are catching up with us in a few weeks instead of a decade or two. Well, sue me. As for those intel weenines, those guys have rolled over too many times to be complaining about integrity now. Heck, if the CIA had existed in 1898, it would have been the first to attribute the accidental sinking of the Battleship Maine to Spanish authorities. Hearst and his sled would have been playing catch-up.”
(Remember, Kids, the part in bold is actual 100% news-flavored media product. The rest is the fakey part.)