Important Stuff Folks

Now we are getting to the nub of it.

I have yet to read the 1000 page Iraq Survey Group report, but there are two (obvious?) trends:

1) The Left is terrified of its contents and is spinning its contents madly, and
2) W and those of us who care, need to spread the word, and fast.

Instapundit Glenn Reynolds notes this is "the complete collapse of John Kerry's foreign policy case."

As Charles Johnson at LGF notes, "Mainstream media is universally spinning the Duelfer Report against George Bush, but the report is far more damaging to John Kerry."

Why?

First, here is an AP story titled "Bush Defends Iraq Invasion Despite Report." We are not left confused about their spin after the first paragraph:

Faced with a harshly critical new report, President Bush conceded Thursday that Iraq did not have the stockpiles of banned weapons he had warned of before the invasion last year, but insisted that "we were right to take action" against Saddam Hussein.

PowerLine's John Hinderaker (aka Hindrocket) has a different take.

If Saddam could produce mustard gas within a few days, or at most a few months, then the existence or non-existence of stockpiles is a moot point.

This item is tantalizing:

[D]uring the mid-to-late 1990s Saddam issued a presidential decree directing the IIS [Iraqi Intelligence Service] to recruit UNSCOM inspectors, especially American inspectors. To entice their cooperation, the IIS was to offer the inspectors preferential treatment for future business dealings with Iraq, once they completed their duties with the United Nations. Tariq ‘Aziz and an Iraqi-American were specifically tasked by the IIS to focus on a particular American inspector.

I can't see that the report ever says whether the Iraqis were successful in bribing the American weapons inspector. The obvious candidate, of course, is Scott Ritter. We do know that Saddam succeeded in penetrating the U.N.'s inspection teams, so that he had advance knowledge of the inspectors' intentions:

IIS personnel were directed to contact facilities and personnel in advance of UNMOVIC site inspections, according to foreign government information. Former Regime officials state that the IIS developed penetrations within the UN and basic surveillance in country to learn future inspection plans.

Keep that in mind next time someone tells you the inspections were working.

Indeed.