Iraq Stuff

Juan Cole has a brief analysis of the Irbil bombing, in which he with probable accuracy blames Ansar al-Islam. Ansar al-Islam is a terrorist group with known links to al-Qaeda. During the run-up to the Iraq war, its presence in Iraq was listed with evidence of Saddam's supposed al-Qaeda links, even though it was actually based in the Kurdish territory. And speaking of questionable administration arguments, here is yet another example of the sudden blaming of the CIA for the WMD intelligence failures. I'm surprised no one has gotten whiplash from all this yet. True, the CIA did overestimate the Iraqi weapons programs, but the conservative attack on them was that they actually underestimated it, which is why the administration set up the Office of Special Plans to produce their own conclusions. Hopefully people will remember all this and not fall for these attempts to murk up the truth.