Again, you ignore the central point, which is that despite the controversy over the tubes, even the Energy Department agreed that Saddam was actively pursuing nukes. It did not all hinge on the tubes.
Here are a couple of quotes from the Hersch piece I had already selected through another site, with comments:
The former intelligence official went on, “One of the reasons I left was my sense that they were using the intelligence from the C.I.A. and other agencies only when it fit their agenda. They didn’t like the intelligence they were getting, and so they brought in people to write the stuff. They were so crazed and so far out and so difficult to reason with—to the point of being bizarre. Dogmatic, as if they were on a mission from God.” He added, “If it doesn’t fit their theory, they don’t want to accept it.”
Comment: This implies ideological rigidity, not lying, per se. Someone else, not hostile, said:
A Pentagon adviser who has worked with Special Plans dismissed any criticism of the operation as little more than bureaucratic whining. “Shulsky and Luti won the policy debate,” the adviser said. “They beat ’em—they cleaned up against State and the C.I.A. There’s no mystery why they won—because they were more effective in making their argument. Luti is smarter than the opposition. Wolfowitz is smarter. They out-argued them. It was a fair fight. They persuaded the President of the need to make a new security policy. Those who lose are so good at trying to undercut those who won.” He added, “I’d love to be the historian who writes the story of how this small group of eight or nine people made the case and won.”
Comment: The reason for the review of intelligence was that the intelligence community had grossly underestimated Saddam's programs at the time of the first Gulf War.
Comment: By the way, it turns out that the Lieutenant Colonel you quote is a libertarian with an ideological bias against intervention, currently associated with paleoconservatives such as Llew Rockwell. Of course she was antagonistic to the neocons.
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