Reply #19: I think most of you aren't quite getting Kinsley (though he CAN be more...

[Brotherjohn]

... than a bit obtuse).

Michael Kinsley is no defender of Bush. Michael Kinsley is an unabashed liberal and full-on Bush critic. He is just a rather dry, intellectual one (The George Will of the Left?). Read his past columns.

Of course, if you DO read his past columns, you find he can really get off into minutiae and use satire to such an extent that you aren't really sure what he means. Which is not to say he's a bad writer. He just often uses very dry satire that's hard to get.

I think what he is basically saying is this:
"So the DSM (based on a Bristich government official's characterization) says Bush was set on war months before it started, and was fixing the facts and intelligence to support it? Well, DUH!"

That being said, he does seem to harp on the "intended to go to war" aspect too much at the expense of the "fixing the facts and intelligence" aspect. But he also explicitly state that the latter is the Bush administration's M.O. for everything they do (thus, the "Duh!")

He provides quite a few (off-handed) compliments to the left, in that the extreme perhaps NEEDS to engage in these kinds of cohesive, aggressive, stay-on-point, tactics that the right has benefitted so much from.

But he also denigrates those calling the DSM a "smoking gun". Frankly, I agree, although I wouldn't be so hard on those who do cast is as a "smoking gun". In large part, it's all a matter of your definition. It in and of itself is not a smoking gun. It does not give specifics as to when, where, or how "intelligence and facts" were fixed, but only gives Rycroft's characterization of Dearlove's characterization that this is what was happening.

But of course, that's a LOT. And I would add, "How much frickin' more do we NEED?!"

So it doesn't PROVE it is what was happening (so no smoking gun). BUT if authentic (and every indication is that it IS), what it DOES is show that at the highest levels of British government, THEY at least THOUGHT that the Bush administration was guilty of everything its critics have charged.

And THAT, as they say on Letterman, is "something".

More, it provides context for those who failed to do so before (most of the country and MSM) to go back and look at all of the massive amounts of accumulated evidence that the Bush administration WAS set on war and DID in fact "fix facts and intelligence" to gain support for that war.