'THEY LIED!! ... not really"

Ah, the LA Times, perhaps the most liberal of the liberal bias media, steps up to the plate today and bats one out of the park. The front page leads with this headline:

Flaws Cited in Powell's Speech to U.N. on Iraq

“Days before Secretary of State Colin L. Powell was to present the case for war with Iraq to the United Nations, State Department analysts found dozens of factual problems in drafts of his speech, according to new documents contained in the Senate report on intelligence failures released last week.”

The writer, Gregg Miller, goes on and on listing problems the State Department had with the initial draft of the report. What he mentions, just in passing, is this:

“Offering the first detailed look at claims that were stripped from the case for war advanced by Powell, a Jan. 31, 2003, memo cataloged 38 claims to which State Department analysts objected. In response, 28 were either removed from the draft or altered, according to the Senate report, which was released Friday and included scathing criticism of the CIA and other U.S. intelligence services.”

So, Gregg, let me get this straight. The initial draft of the speech, sent to various departments for comments, included assertations of Iraqi threats that some of these departments said my be a little reaching and these flawed accusations were removed from the final version? THIS is supposed to prove what? That the Administration was reckless? That’s what I take from the story, when in fact it shows a deliberative approach to what everyone agreed was a threat to world security.

Look, it’s obvious what you’re trying to do. Giving a laundry list of what was removed from the speech really leaves the impression that these were in the final version and they were all wrong and that “BUSH LIED, PEOPLE DIED”. What’s that you say, I’m paranoid and putting words in your mouth? What about this:

“The speech also has become a point of reference in the failure of U.S. intelligence. Although Powell has said he struggled to ensure that all of his arguments were sound and backed by intelligence from several sources, it nonetheless became a key example of how the administration advanced false claims to justify war.”

I’d laugh if it wasn’t so terrible.