Dan was posing a hypothetical question in which I was Bush (shudder) and the intelligence agencies told me everything on that list. My reply was I didn't accept that the intelligence agencies were saying those things.

Tenet's speech compared to Drezner's analysis of what was said indicates there was a lot of fudging between the intelligence agencies saying there was a chance of non nuclear WMD's being a threat later on and the Bush administration saying they were a big threat (mushroom clouds, etc) in the near future.

The UN inspectors were told to leave because it was supposed to be too dangerous to even wait a few months for them to finish. There was no evidence for any of this, there couldn't have been because they didn't exist. Who said they did exist and why? That's what an enquiry needs to determine.

The main problem is throughout this whole saga Rumsfeld and co were saying the CIA, etc were too conservative with their analysis and now they are trying to make out the CIA dragged them into this.

I think what is going to be quite clear in the coming months is the intelligence agencies will not be fall guys for Bush. They'll leak their side of the story, that they didn't advise an invasion as needed, that they didn't say there was a short term threat, and they didn't believe most of what Chalabi said. That's a pretty big difference from what the Bush administration said, so where did they get their information if not from the analysts?