Wank more into the breech

Today Fred Hiatt writes yet another editorial exempting both Bush and himself from the Iraq War fiasco.

It's rather sad and hilarious that Hiatt continues to do this...and gets away with it. Especially since many of the journalist that write for the Post such as Rajiv Chandrasekaran and Thomas Ricks (whose book was even called "FIASCO" for chrissakes) have shown Fred to be shit-pusher No. 1.

But to write this kind of bullshit...

There's no question that the administration, and particularly Vice President Cheney, spoke with too much certainty at times and failed to anticipate or prepare the American people for the enormous undertaking in Iraq.

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.

Where upon Fred goes into a full-throated defense of the Bush Administration not lying -- for the obvious reason that Fred Hiatt doesn't want to be portrayed as the incredible chump he is.

With this kind of cult-like cognitive dissonance Fred might consider getting himself into his best sweat suit and sneakers and start eating those pudding cups.

The real secret to being Fred Hiatt is not reading your own paper.

For today on the "Walter Pincus Page" of the Post -- just after the Car Ads and just before the Adult Bookstore Ads -- he could read this:

There is an important line in last week's Senate intelligence committee report on the Bush administration's prewar exaggerations of the threat posed by Saddam Hussein. It says that the panel did not review "less formal communications between intelligence agencies and other parts of the Executive Branch."

More important, there was no effort to obtain White House records or interview President Bush, Vice President Cheney or other administration officials whose speeches were analyzed because, the report says, such steps were considered beyond the scope of the report.

One obvious target for such an expanded inquiry would have been the records of the White House Iraq Group (WHIG), a group set up in August 2002 by then-White House Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr.

The group met weekly in the Situation Room. Among the regular participants (many have since left or changed jobs) were Karl Rove, the president's senior political adviser; communications strategists Karen Hughes, Mary Matalin and James R. Wilkinson; legislative liaison Nicholas E. Calio; and policy aides led by national security adviser Condoleezza Rice and her deputy, Stephen J. Hadley, as well as I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Cheney's chief of staff.

As former White House press secretary Scott McClellan wrote in his recently released book, "What Happened," the Iraq Group "had been set up in the summer of 2002 to coordinate the marketing of the war to the public."

"The script had been finalized with great care over the summer," McClellan wrote, for a "campaign to convince Americans that war with Iraq was inevitable and necessary."

And then Freddy could read this:

Two days later, WHIG's product placement was on display. It began with a front-page story in the Times describing Iraq's clandestine purchase of aluminum tubes that, the story said, could be used to produce weapons-grade uranium. The story said that information came from "senior administration officials."

The story also spoke of "hardliners" in the Bush administration being "alarmed that American intelligence underestimated the pace and scale of Iraq's nuclear program before Baghdad's defeat in the gulf war." They "argue that Washington dare not wait until analysts have found hard evidence that Mr. Hussein has acquired a nuclear weapon. The first sign of a 'smoking gun,' they argue, may be a mushroom cloud," the Times story said.

That same morning, the message was carried on three network news shows. Cheney appeared on NBC's "Meet the Press" and, referring to the Times story, said that intelligence showed that Hussein "has reconstituted his nuclear program to develop a nuclear weapon." The Iraqi leader was "trying, through his illicit procurement network, to acquire the equipment he needs to be able to enrich uranium to make the bombs," Cheney said.

That same day, on CNN's "Late Edition," Rice said, "There will always be some uncertainty" in determining how close Iraq may be to obtaining a nuclear weapon but, "we don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud."

On CBS's "Face the Nation," Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld was asked about the Times story and whether Hussein had nuclear weapons. "Is there a smoking gun here?" host Bob Schieffer asked. " 'Smoking gun' is an interesting phrase," Rumsfeld said, and then he went to the same message his colleagues had given.

"The problem with that is the way one gains absolute certainty as to whether a dictator like Saddam Hussein has a nuclear weapon is if he uses it . . . and that's a little late." Bush picked up the slogan a month later in his nationally televised speech on the threat from Iraq.

McClellan wrote that WHIG was not used to "deliberately mislead the public" but that the "more fundamental problem was the way [Bush's] advisers decided to pursue a political propaganda campaign to sell the war to the American people.

It must be copious in that Hiatt-scented colon that Fred puts his head up.