Wild Speculation

Is the New York Times passing on political spin? In this article from today's issue of the paper, the Times reports that the CIA neglected to inform President Bush about evidence suggesting that Iraq had abandoned its weapons of mass destruction program. The source of this report are certain "government officials" mentioned by name. It is possible that these officials don't have a political agenda, but then again it could be someone inside the Administration attempting to minimize the damage created by our failure to find Iraqi WND. To some degree the specific charged leveled against the CIA, that they were told my relatives of Iraqi scientists that Saddam had given up on his weapons programs and not informed the President, does not seem all that serious. True, this was important information, but in the grand scheme of things it was unlikely to have made much of a difference when weighed against all the other data the that had been amassed which did suggest that Iraq was building unconventional weapons. So, it is possible that partisan hack from the White House (or Pentagon)simply leaked this story to the Times in order to smear the CIA before the Senate Intelligence comes out with its report on the WMD intelligence failure this week, an event which more than likely bring attention to that issue again.