SSCI Phase II

The news from Washington is that Harry Reid outfoxed Bill Frist and Pat Roberts. Calling a closed session of the Senate, Reid made Frist lose his cool and forced the Republicans to name a sub committee of 3 Republicans and 3 Democrats to report on why the second phase of the Senate Select Committee report on WMD intelligence on Iraq never happened. The second phase was the investigation of whether Bush administration political appointees presented a false picture of what they were hearing from intelligence agencies.

I have an explanation. Phase II happened so fast that no one noticed. It should have taken a few minutes with google. I happened on this by Dana Milbank via Kleiman and Yglesias.

President Bush, speaking to the nation this month about the need to challenge Saddam Hussein, warned that Iraq has a growing fleet of unmanned aircraft that could be used "for missions targeting the United States."

Last month, asked if there were new and conclusive evidence of Hussein's nuclear weapons capabilities, Bush cited a report by the International Atomic Energy Agency saying the Iraqis were "six months away from developing a weapon."

[snip]

The White House, while acknowledging that on one occasion the president was "imprecise," said it stands by his words. "The president's statements are well documented and supported by the facts," Bush press secretary Ari Fleischer said. "We reject any allegation to the contrary."

I think that the SSCI can save itself a lot of time by just looking up the article, asking Fleisher, under oath, if he said what Milbank claims he said. Asking him when the White House finally corrected Milbank's very public claim about Fleisher's totally false claim about Bush's totally false claims and, if he doesn't deliver, conclude that the Bush administration chose to lie to the American people about intelligence on WMD.

Case closed. Should take about 10 minutes including Fleisher's oath.