Presidential Commission on Prewar Intellegence

It seems beyond yesterday's news but the findings of the presidential commission on intelligence gives more evidence about the deeply-flawed U.S. prewar intellegence on iraq.

Here's the New York Times' analysis on the report

"It is hard to deny the conclusion that intelligence analysts worked in an environment that did not encourage skepticism about the conventional wisdom," the commission said. But that understated indictment is about the extent of the commission's effort to explain the responsibilities of the nation's highest officials for one of the worst intelligence failures of modern times.

So the latest and presumably the last official review of such questions leaves unresolved what may be the biggest question of all: Who was accountable, and will they ever be held to account for letting what amounted to mere assumptions "harden into presumptions," as Judge Laurence H. Silberman, chairman of the commission, put it.

Here at Nonviolence.org, we just wish we had a dollar for every yahoo who sent nasty emails insisting weapons of mass destruction were about to be found. Even more disturbing is that all this may not be yesterday's news. As the Times also reported, the report says that the U.S. "knows disturbingly little about the nuclear programs of many of the world's most dangerous actors.