Bush and company were shilling the WMD line for months before this supposed meeting of Tenet with Bush ever took place. The implication is they were tossing out WMD as a reason for war without ever having received from the CIA a presentation of the case that Iraq even HAD WMD. The Daily Howler takes a look at this.
http://www.dailyhowler.com/dh050304.shtmlAs in Lear, it took a fool, a comedian—a village non-idiot! Several readers noted the irony—that only Stewart, a working comedian, was willing to ask the key question:
E-MAIL Don’t know if you watch The Daily Show, but Jon Stewart got it right about Bob Woodward’s book. In his interview with Woodward tonight he mentioned the December WMD briefing and pointed out that Bush and Cheney had already been flogging the issue for months. Perhaps he reads your site (or maybe he’s intelligent enough to know these things without it), but at least maybe Stewart gets it. At least there’s a semi-sane voice—on the made-up comedy news! That says something about the press corps, doesn’t it?
Yes, it does say something about the press corps! We don’t know if Stewart reads THE HOWLER, and we’re sure he is intelligent enough to ask this question on his own. (So is every Washington pundit.) But here’s what this says about the press corps. It says that your “press corps” will stick to Approved Pundit Scripts, ignoring even the most obvious questions. Many readers wrote to say how “f*cking pathetic” this is:
E-MAIL Did you see The Daily Show last night? It was (sadly) the first real interview with Woodward about his book. Stewart is the first guy who didn’t just sat there mesmerized with awe while Woodward cooed about Bush saying that John Q. Public wouldn’t buy the story about WMD and telling people not to stretch anything to make the case. Instead, Stewart sat through that and asked, Yeah, but that was in December, right? Weren’t they pushing this intelligence for months before that?
It’s pretty fucking pathetic that I have to turn to The Daily Show for real interviews when there are so many clowns in the Washington press corps making millions for their brand of “journalism.”