The left remembers to forget

What a week.

Democrats are coming out of the woodwork, backtracking on the Iraq war. Now they never would have authorized the use of force, had they been privy to the same intelligence Bush administration officials had in the run-up to the invasion. Somehow, these outspoken Dems allege, administration insiders with access to the complete picture twisted the pre-war intelligence they presented to Congress and the world to support their pro-war agenda.

This latest big noise comes from the left, despite not a shred of evidence emerging to support it.

Indeed, in his excellent analysis, “Who Is Lying About Iraq?,” Norman Podhoretz notes:

“…[I]n its report of 2004, the bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee, while criticizing the CIA for relying on what in hindsight looked like weak or faulty intelligence, stated that it ‘did not find any evidence that administration officials attempted to coerce, influence, or pressure analysts to change their judgments related to Iraq's weapons-of-mass-destruction capabilities.’

The March 2005 report of the equally bipartisan Robb-Silberman commission, which investigated intelligence failures on Iraq, reached the same conclusion, finding ‘no evidence of political pressure to influence the intelligence community's pre-war assessments of Iraq's weapons programs. . . . Analysts universally asserted that in no instance did political pressure cause them to skew or alter any of their analytical judgments.’”

Yet with the left, it’s all nod-nod wink-wink we know better forget the facts my mind is made up.

On Tuesday, in an editorial entitled “Decoding Mr. Bush’s Denials,” The New York Times combed its collectively selective memory and wrote the following:

“Mr. Bush says everyone had the same intelligence he had - Mr. Clinton and his advisers, foreign governments, and members of Congress - and that all of them reached the same conclusions. The only part that is true is that Mr. Bush was working off the same intelligence Mr. Clinton had. But that is scary, not reassuring. The reports about Saddam Hussein's weapons were old, some more than 10 years old. Nothing was fresher than about five years, except reports that later proved to be fanciful.”

If it is true that the Bush administration was working with old intelligence, then we have the Clinton administration to thank for repeatedly authorizing reductions in intelligence spending during its 8 years at the White House.

The editorial goes on:

“It's hard to imagine what Mr. Bush means when he says everyone reached the same conclusion. There was indeed a widespread belief that Iraq had chemical and biological weapons. But Mr. Clinton looked at the data and concluded that inspections and pressure were working - a view we now know was accurate.”

If Mr. Clinton was of this view, his wife sure didn’t agree when she said in October 2002 (as quoted by Podhoretz): “In the four years since the inspectors left, intelligence reports show that Saddam Hussein has worked to rebuild his chemical- and biological-weapons stock, his missile-delivery capability, and his nuclear program. He has also given aid, comfort, and sanctuary to terrorists, including al-Qaeda members.”

How can the Times assert that inspections and pressure were working when we now know that Saddam Hussein had used the United Nations’ scandalous Oil-for-Food program to buy influence with UN members? Had the US not invaded Iraq, had corruption in the Oil-for-Food program not been exposed and had Saddam succeeded in having UN sanctions against Iraq lifted, can The New York Times state with complete confidence that he would not be seeking WMD today?

Go ahead, make my day.