Wednesday, November 09, 2005

Judy Miller's farewell letter (posted at her new blog) says:

At a commencement speech I delivered at Barnard College in 2003, a year before that note was published, I asked whether the administration’s prewar W.M.D. intelligence was merely wrong, or was it exaggerated or even falsified.

Er, not exactly. Here's what she said:

I think there are other questions, too, that the Bush administration will now have to answer: Will the weapons hunters find the weapons of mass destruction programs that were cited repeatedly as the major justification for the invasion? Could inspectors have uncovered the dual use equipment that was hidden – sometimes in plain sight – throughout the country without a war? Were the concerns about anthrax clouds over our cities exaggerations? Were they justified by what we knew then, as opposed to what we know now? Was the intelligence that produced them politically distorted? Were those who wanted to go to war deceiving themselves about Saddam’s capabilities? Was the war really necessary, not just for Iraq, but to protect American national security?

Now she says that at Barnard she "asked whether the administration’s prewar W.M.D. intelligence was merely wrong, or was it exaggerated or even falsified." I read that as "Clearly the intelligence was wrong -- was that deliberate?" But the Barnard speech makes clear that in May 2003 she still wasn't sure the intelligence was wrong -- WMDs might still be found, material that had been located unquestionably was, in her opinion, dual-use, and anthrax fears might or might not have been well founded. Maybe I'm hairsplitting, but I say she's distorting what she said back then. Not that I'm surprised.

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