LIES AND THE LYING LIARS WHO TELL THEM

Former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean criticized Vice President Dick Cheney for berating CIA operatives because he did not like their intelligence reports. "It seems to me that the vice president of the United States therefore influenced the very reports that the president then used to decide to go to war and to ask Congress for permission to go to war," Dean said.

Problem is, Governor...it doesn't appear that that ever happened.

One of Dr. Kay's most important observations cut the legs out from under those who insist the president and his subordinates — in particular, Vice President Dick Cheney — manipulated the intelligence they received from the CIA and other agencies.

"In the course of [his work in Iraq], I had innumerable analysts who came to me in apology that the world that we were finding was not the world that they had thought existed and that they had estimated.

Reality on the ground differed in advance.

And never — not in a single case — was the explanation, 'I was pressured to do this.' The explanation was very often, 'The limited data we had led one to reasonably conclude this. I now see that there's another explanation for it.'"