Bowing to pressure from lawmakers, the White House reverses its opposition to an independent investigation of intelligence failures. —Washington Post. Right now, administration strategy is all about damage control; Bush’s team appears divided over whether it would be worse to acknowledge that the data on which it based its decision was wrong, or to remain ‘publicly agnostic’ about the quality of the intelligence. The thing to watch will be how the administration limits both the scope (will the inquiry address not only generation but administration consumption of intelligence data?) and duration of the investigation. Rather than making this go away quickly, an effort that the White House reversal seems to acknowledge has failed, they may try to draw this out so any damaging allegations do not come out until after November. Expect the White House to drag its feet mightily in cooperating with requests for crucial data from an independent commission.