Washington Post analysis is headlined, “As Rationales for War Erode, Issue of Blame Looms Large“, while the New York Times says, “Senate Report Does Little to Still Debate on C.I.A.’s Prewar Data“. Here is the full text of the report (New York Times). From the beginning it was clear that the dysadministration would try to limit the scope of the inquiry to avoid any focus on the uses to which the intelligence was put and scapegoat the CIA. The explicit conclusion of the report — that evidence for Bush & Co’s main rationale for the war, the hope to find WMD to which they absurdly continue to cling to this day, has been utterly lacking and intelligence to the contrary was a failure — has been unsurprising to anyone who has been anywhere near a news outlet for the past sixteen months. But The Times knows how to read between the lines. Here is its editorial:

“…The report is a condemnation of how this administration has squandered the public trust it may sorely need for a real threat to national security.

The report was heavily censored by the administration and is too narrowly focused on the bungling of just the Central Intelligence Agency. But what comes through is thoroughly damning. Put simply, the Bush administration’s intelligence analysts cooked the books to give Congress and the public the impression that Saddam Hussein had chemical and biological weapons and was developing nuclear arms, that he was plotting to give such weapons to terrorists, and that he was an imminent threat. “

Not that the committee made it easy:

“Sadly, the investigation stopped without assessing how President Bush had used the incompetent intelligence reports to justify war. It left open the question of whether the analysts thought they were doing what Mr. Bush wanted. While the panel said it had found no analyst who reported being pressured to change a finding, its vice chairman, Senator John Rockefeller IV, said there had been an “environment of intense pressure.” But the issue was glossed over so the report could be adopted unanimously.”