Cheney's Facts

These are extraordinary revelations. Many Bush administration officials have long maintained that the intelligence community deliberately shaded and slanted its reports in order to produce the policy outcomes that it wanted to see.  Intelligence officials have always heatedly denied this. One is tempted to say that Woodward’s reporting presents a slam dunk case that those Bush administration officials were right all along.

In any event, contrary to Woodward’s account, Vice President seems to have considered the facts very carefully. What he looked past was the intelligence community’s shaded assessment of those facts. Based on Woodward’s own reporting, Cheney appears to have been the only person in the room to have based his judgment solely on the known facts and nothing more. 

Michael Anton served in National Security positions in the Bush Adminitration.