WMD Propaganda: TNR has the most comprehensive, and compelling, political analysis yet of the Where's Waldo of Mass Destruction flap. It's particularly damning in light of TNR's hawkishness in the run up to the war (though TNR argued in favor of the war on more general grounds to begin with, and never put all its stock into the WMD argument). I think the criticism is fair, and I wouldn't oppose a hearing on the matter. But TNR and the Democrat establishment can be trusted to paint this in the bleakest terms. I think the administration, at the very least, took liberties with inconclusive intel data. I also think they marketed the war well. I'm not convinced they crossed the line into outright fabrication, even though TNR's analysis clearly lobbies for that conclusion.

I'm not going to play the "everyone does it" game, since that's an excuse and not a defense, but I do think you have to admit that this kind of policy marketing happens all the time. It was done with the "genocide" in Kosovo, which, after the inflated figures and comparisons to Nazi Germany passed, was toned down to "ethnic cleansing" and turned out in fact to be rather brutal, if incompetent, forced deportation with awful human rights violations -- but not genocide. (Coincidentally, Daniel Pearl was the point-man, with Robert Block, for the WSJ on Kosovo and investigating the genocide claims. Their work is constantly cited by those, left and right, who opposed Clinton's Balkan policy.) More recently, the international community and the major media colluded to sell us the story of 170,000 missing artifacts in Iraq (actual count came in around 30-ish). This isn't the big deal Bush's critics want it to be, but it could be a real distraction, particularly if the Dems can spin out the hearings into 2004.

More: Stephen Hayes's reply at the Weekly Standard is equally worth reading. With two biased sources, I would guess the truth falls somewhere between.