Is how to somehow blame this exclusively on Bush, when the previous administration, and the intelligence agencies of several other nations, all came to the exact same conclusions. The word used in the press conference was "global intelligence failure."

A few uncomfortable facts:

- The Clinton administration and much of the rest of the government leadership at the time came to the same conclusions about Iraq based on the same CIA information, accurate or not. It is difficult to imagine that somehow a Gore administration would have suddenly come to a completely different conclusion based on the same information. Of course, we'll never know.

- It is also difficult to imagine how Kerry is going to be able to fix CIA systemic problems any more than Bush could. Of course, we'll never know. ;)

- CIA failures do not explain the same conclusions drawn by Israel, Britain, Russia, and other nations based on their own gathered data. This whole flap would be a lot more credible if Britain, for example, had come out in 2002 and said, "Hey, we think that Saddam is bluffing and that all this WMD stuff is bullshit."

- Some of Saddam's own generals and other members of his regime were convinced they had weapons of mass destruction. It is hard to see how outside agencies could come to a different conclusion.

How to fix the problem?

You can set up an intelligence protocol where more levels of proof are needed to draw specific conclusions, and even more levels required to take specific actions. This sounds like a good idea on the face of it, but it comes with a down side. If you have to connect twice as many dots to make the picture, or jump through twice as many hoops before you can take action, it means that some things are going to get past you. Some of them bad things.

It's like fighting a war where you have to try and avoid harming civilians. You're going to take more casualties than if you just bomb from the air.

You can't have it both ways.

Of course, I could do a lot better on analysis if I could find the actual report, which does not seem to be on line yet (what else is new.) So I'm working on pre-digested pap from the media, same as everyone else here.

As an aside, now I'm going to have to listen to "I told you so's" from even more of my conservative friends who were adamant in January of 2001 that Tenet should have been instantly canned.