Saturday, February 07, 2004

On ABC's news broadcast last night, there was deep skepticism about Bush's new commission:

PETER JENNINGS: ...President Bush signed an executive order today which many people believed as of yesterday was going to have as its prime mission an investigation of prewar U.S. intelligence in Iraq. The president used that intelligence to justify attacking Iraq, and much of it turns out to be flawed. Tonight, the official mission of this new commission is much less about Iraq than anticipated, and it is clearly the president's commission. Terry Moran is at the White House, and Terry, this afternoon -- late this afternoon, on a Friday -- you've had a chance to look at the finer print.

TERRY MORAN: Indeed, Peter, and under this executive order, which the president just signed, the main job of this commission is not to look at that flawed intelligence on Iraq, and there's nothing in this order directing the commission to investigate how the Bush administration used that intelligence to justify war. Instead, the president wants this commission to look at the much broader question of gathering intelligence on weapons of mass destruction, and only secondarily to look at what went wrong in Iraq....


Moran concluded by noting this interesting factoid about the commission's report, which is due next March:

...there’s nothing in this order that would require that report to be made public.

(Not available as text only; video available here.)

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