This article from the Associated Press fleshes out the theory that Saddam had actually shuttered his WMD programs 
but intentionally kept the world guessing to produce the deterrent effect of having people believe he still had them.
He may even have put out disinformation to get people to believe the programs were still underway. Actually, it's more than a theory. The story is based on the testimony of a close aide who says this is what happened.
According to the aide, by the mid-1990s "it was common knowledge among the leadership" that Iraq had destroyed its chemical stocks and discontinued development of biological and nuclear weapons.
Who knows if this true? But I will say that it jibes with a lot of chatter I've heard back from Iraq in the last couple months. And it explains some key questions -- in particular, some supposed evidence of WMD from just before the war which it's been clear for some time was disinformation from the Iraqis. Frankly, it accounts for more potential questions than almost any other theory I've heard.
Frankly, it shows that, if nothing else, Ken Pollack was right about one thing: Saddam could be a pretty big idiot. Remember, one of Pollack's main arguments was that Saddam had a propensity to miscalculate. So I think you can say that Pollack had that one pretty much right -- only perhaps with slightly different consequences than expected.
Apparently Saddam was the only person in the universe last Spring who didn't know the fix was in on regime change.
And, I've gotta ask. Those uranium document forgeries? Could they have come from ...? No, couldn't be.
--Josh Marshall
"[A]n official who has read the [9/11] report tells The New Republic that the support described in the report goes well beyond [support for charities]: It involves connections between the hijacking plot and the very top levels of the Saudi royal family. 'There's a lot more in the 28 pages than money. Everyone's chasing the charities,' says this official. 'They should be chasing direct links to high levels of the Saudi government. We're not talking about rogue elements. We're talking about a coordinated network that reaches right from the hijackers to multiple places in the Saudi government.'"
That's the key passage in a new piece up at the TNR website by John B. Judis & Spencer Ackerman. Take a look.
Meanwhile, we're working on a very interesting piece of news about the WMD search in Iraq.
Let's hope TPM can nail it down before the bigs get to it.
--Josh Marshall
We're happy to announce our new numbers for July, as well as our continued growth. During the month of July 2002, TPM had 53,000 individual readers ("unique visitors"). This last month, July 2003, the number was 235,000.
A special thanks to all the TPM regulars who've helped spread the word.
--Josh Marshall
An investigation into the Valerie Plame affair does appear to be underway at the CIA.
--Josh Marshall
Republicans constantly complain that Democrats play the "race card" whenever blacks or other minorities are involved in some political 
question or nomination or the like. And certainly the charge is sometimes valid.
The striking contrast, however, is with Republicans who now do this in virtually every case, even in the most preposterous instances, without a hint of shame, and usually without garnering much of any criticism at all from the capital's self-styled arbiters of political sportsmanship.
So far Senate Democrats have stalled three of the president's appeals court nominees: Miguel A. Estrada , Priscilla R. Owen, and today William H. Pryor, Jr.
Of those three, Republicans accused Democrats of opposing two on the basis of religious and/or racial prejudice.
That's a pretty high percentage, don't you think?
Democrats supposedly opposed Estrada because of anti-Hispanic bias and now they're purportedly opposing Pryor because of anti-Catholic bias.
According to a July 7th article in Roll Call, the group that spearheaded the claim that opposition to Pryor was based on anti-Catholic bigotry plans to do the same thing with the next controversial nominee who's coming down the pike, Carolyn Kuhl. She happens to be Catholic too. So, what the hell. Run it up the flagpole and see what happens.
No one with a shred of intellectual honesty thinks that this is really the case in any of these cases. It's understood by everyone that this is merely another political cudgel thrown into the mix to raise the heat on Democrats. In fact, it's done precisely because Democrats have large constituencies of Hispanic and Catholic voters.
It's entirely cynical, entirely obvious, everyone knows what the score is, and yet these hacks manage to get pretty much a complete pass.
--Josh Marshall
One more house-keeping note. A few readers have written in fearing that I'm about to turn TPM into some whacked-out imitation of the MTV website or something else with 
long-downloading graphics or annoying pop-up ads or perhaps other similar terribleness.
Not to worry. The redesigned site should look very much like the current one and to outward appearances should look more or less unchanged. The changes that I do plan on having made are things like making it easier to print out individual posts, an RSS feed, the ability to adjust the size of the text. That's for all of you archeo-TPMers out who've written in to tell me of the perils of reading your daily TPM with that not-what-it-used-to-be eyesight.
Other changes won't be visible to readers but will make it easy and less time-consuming for me to update and maintain the site, which I'll appreciate a great deal. Up until now I've designed and run TPM from the ground up, doing all the coding by hand, which is something like writing an article with a decently sharpened piece of charcoal.
I've always been a fan of web design minimalism. And that feature of the site won't change.
--Josh Marshall
Okay, one more round. If you've read the previous few posts you know that TPM reader Bryan M. wrote in to tell me that if I want the president to fire the "senior administration officials" who blew the cover of CIA agent Valerie Plame then I am obligated to first ascertain who these as-yet-anonymous officials are. I published the letter because this struck me as a ridiculous argument.
Now some readers thought I was saying it was a sound criticism -- a misunderstanding I don't understand.
But a few other hawk-eyed readers pointed out that the grammar I used in my column was actually imprecise and clumsy.
Jon G. wrote in to say ...
When I originally read it, I thought it was some grammar joke. Your statement:"the president should find out who they are, reprimand them or, preferably, fire them."
could be read as the president should find out who they are OR reprimand them OR fire them. I.e., finding them out is one option, but firing (or reprimanding) them without finding out who they are is another.
I think what you meant is, "the president should find out who they are and then reprimand them or, preferably, fire them."
OK, it's kind of a weak joke, but maybe that's where Bryan M. was coming from.
Ouch. I think he's got me. And there's nothing worse than being hoisted on your own mockery, believe me.
Here I was thinking Bryan M. was making a boneheaded criticism, when actually the jokes on me because he was knocking me for my dopey grammar. Now I'm feeling better though because Bryan M. has written back in to confirm that it actually was the boneheaded criticism he was making, not the grammatical point ...
I see I have become a subject of your current post. Evidently, we have both been too subtle for our respective reader(s). As you must know, my comment was directed to the fact that it may not be very easy for Mr. Bush to "pick up the phone" and "get to the bottom" of these anonymous statements. It seems to me that before you criticize the President for failing to fire these unknown employees you ought to be sure that he is able to tell who he should fire. Do you know which "senior Administration officials" he should fire for this transgression? Do you know that the President has not already attempted to discover the identities of these persons?Since you decided publish my original comments aren't you obligated to provide your readers with my explanation as well?
As it happens, I don't think this is true. In Washington reporterese, "senior administration official" can only refer to a fairly small group of people. So I don't suspect it would be that hard, if he was determined to get to the bottom of it.
In any case, I know this is probably getting a touch tedious for regular readers. So, I promise, no more.
--Josh Marshall
Okay, I need to be more clear. Last night I printed a letter from a reader (Bryan M.) calling me to task. He said that if I wanted the president to fire the two anonymous "senior administration officials" who blew Valerie Plame's cover at the CIA, it was incumbent on me to identify them first. As he said ...
If you think the President should fire someone aren't you obligated to tell him who it is he should fire? Or does it matter to you? If he fired two people at random would that be ok?
A slew of readers wrote in asking why I had agreed with the reader's criticism when his point seemed so ridiculous. After all, if the idea is that the president should dispense with the need for an investigation by getting to the bottom of the mess himself and disciplining the culprits, how am I supposed to be either able to or obligated to identify them for him in advance.
As I said, sometimes mockery can be too understated: Bryan's criticism seemed ridiculous to me too.
As it happens, a few readers have written in to say that firing a couple aides at random might marginally improve the situation as well. But I'm not yet willing to go that far.
--Josh Marshall
Oh that's classic. Remember Mahdi Obeidi? 
The nuclear scientist who dug up the centrifuge parts from his backyard and turned them over to the CIA?
Great guy, did the right thing, came clean, straight-shooter, never liked Saddam, didn't want the hardware to fall into the wrong hands.
A real mensch, as my people would say.
Only one problem: he says the aluminum tubes were for artillery rockets, not centrifuges.
Oops.
This from Thursday's Post ...
The sources said Obeidi also disputed evidence cited by the administration -- namely Iraq's purchase of aluminum tubes that various officials said were for a new centrifuge program to enrich uranium for nuclear bombs. Obeidi said the tubes were for rockets, as Iraq had said before the war.CIA analysts do not believe he has told the whole truth, said one Bush administration official. Obeidi has left Iraq under CIA auspices after being arrested briefly by U.S. Army troops.
I think I'd like to hear directly from the analysts on this one.
--Josh Marshall
Here's another example of how hazardous it can be to start typing on your keyboard without first putting the key in the ignition of your brain.
Yesterday in my column in The Hill, I noted that two "senior administration officials" blew the cover of CIA agent Valerie Plame in their effort to discredit her husband Joseph Wilson, the retired diplomat who went on the mission to Niger. We know they were two "senior administration officials" because they leaked the information to Robert Novak and that's the phrase Novak used to describe them in his column.
In the column I said "the president should find out who they are, reprimand them or, preferably, fire them."
This evening I got this edgy email from Bryan M.
If you think the President should fire someone aren’t you obligated to tell him who it is he should fire? Or does it matter to you? If he fired two people at random would that be ok?
A mind, as they say, is a terrible thing to waste. Just not using it can be pretty bad too.
--Josh Marshall
TPM is looking for an intern.
No, this isn't some lead-in to humor at the expense of our former president. TPM is really looking for an intern.
TPM is in the process of an upgrade that will add a number of features many readers have long requested: a printer-friendly function, an RSS feed, easier-to-read text, ads, a whole bunch of stuff.
The intern will assist with this upgrade and then with on-going site maintenance.
Applicants should be well-versed in basic web design skills and be familiar with current web design technologies. ('Current' would mean unlike TPM who is well-versed in circa 1996 web design technologies.) They should be interested in both the technical and political aspects of the website. Living in the Washington area is ideal, but not required.
The commitment of time should be fairly light, certainly an amount that could easily be accommodated while working in a full-time job or academic program.
If you apply you should know that the internship will probably be profoundly non-remunerative. But you will get the opportunity to have hands-on experience working with a widely-read and influential political blog during what promises to be an exciting election season.
To apply, please send a resume, a brief description of your relevant experience and why you're interested in the position, and two references with email addresses provided. Send them to talk@talkingpointsmemo.com with the subject heading 'TPM Intern.'
--Josh Marshall
Read this column by David Ignatius from July 18th. I don't think it got enough attention. Saddam Hussein's science adviser, Amir Saadi, was one of the less loathsome of the ex-regime's public faces. He was the liaison with the inspectors. He wasn't a Baath party member, had lived a good bit of time abroad, and he was the first guy to turn himself in.
That was on April 12th and he's apparently been in solitary ever since.
Here are two of the key grafs ...
Saadi's friends say there has been quiet discussion about his case with the Coalition Provisional Authority headed by L. Paul Bremer. Believing that Saadi is "clean," some officials of the authority have recommended three times to higher officials at the Pentagon that he be released, according to Saadi's friends. Each of these requests has been rejected, they say....
What's bothersome about these cases is that they reinforce the impression that the Bush administration has something to hide. Why not disclose the testimony of people the coalition worked so hard to catch? The only convincing explanation, argues a former CIA official, is that their accounts would "directly refute the Bush administration's insistence that WMD still exist somewhere -- an assertion that we all know is growing more questionable every day."
Take a peek at the whole column.
--Josh Marshall
This is the statement that jumped out at me from the president's press conference this morning. (And, for what it's worth, I was surprised and impressed that he held one just now.)
We gathered a lot of intelligence. That intelligence was good, sound intelligence on which I made a decision.And in order to, you know, placate the critics and the cynics about intention of the United States we need to produce evidence. And I fully understand it, and I'm confident that our search will yield that which I strongly believe: that Saddam had a weapons program.
I want to remind you, he actually used his weapons program on his own people at one point in time, which was pretty tangible evidence.
You can see where this is going, can't you? This is really great-moments-in-goal-post-moving.
Saddam had a weapons program.
And how can you believe he didn't have a weapons program, when he actually used the weapons from his weapons programs, albeit fifteen years ago.
This isn't just a slip of the tongue or a Bushism. This is where we're going. As the White House now wants to define it, the question is whether Iraq ever had a weapons program. Or, to put it more precisely, whereas some people are foolish enough to believe that the standard is whether Saddam actually still had the weapons programs we know he once had, the real standard is whether Saddam actually once had the weapons programs we know he once had.
This is too silly to even talk about. Everybody knows that's not what we're talking about.
--Josh Marshall
As if we didn't have enough signs that the administration's priorities on the war on terrorism are seriously out of whack, now this.
The same day we hear of a renewed threat of 9/11-style hijackings, we also find out that our new air marshal program is being scaled back because of tight budgets at the Department of Homeland Security.
The number of screeners is being cut too.
Transportation Security Administration spokesman Brian Turmail wouldn't get into the specifics of what changes were being made. But he did tell an MSNBC reporter that all programs at TSA are “subject to ongoing review.” He went on to say, “TSA’s current task is to balance the need to meet changing threats with the need to live within the agency’s budget. The federal air marshal budget is under review to determine how best to meet these two objectives.”
Can someone talk to this guy? Or maybe his boss?
I don't think these guys quite understand the 'task.'
Forget balance. As nearly as I can figure it, the 'task' is to do everything possible to prevent anyone from flying another one of our jets into a building.
Another TSA spokesman told the Washington Post that the marshal's program "is not exempt from budget realities facing the TSA."
Really? Can we make it exempt?
Here's some helpful information from that article in Wednesday's Post ...
Just one day before the [terrorism warning] memo was distributed, an official with the undercover Federal Air Marshal Service canceled what are considered some of the most vulnerable flight missions because they required marshals to spend nights in hotels, as well as cut training for Washington-area agents next month. The official cited "monetary considerations," according to an e-mail obtained by The Washington Post.
I'm sitting here at my keyboard just before two in the morning and I'm literally at a loss. I seldom like it when people make what are often facile comparisons between what we're spending in Iraq and this or that priority at home. But, in this case, how can you not? We're spending $4 billion a month in Iraq in what we're now being told is the "central battle in the war on terror." Can't we pop for these hotel rooms? I know budgets are always complicated matters in every government agency, no matter how sensitive or vital their mission. But you back up and look at the big picture here and it really defies comprehension.
I recently had a talk with an editor of mine when I had to make a tough call about whether or not to include a particular piece of information in an article. Journalism has all sorts of established rules for when you really have a story nailed and when you don't -- this or that number of sources, statements on the record or off the record, and so forth. But a lot of the toughest calls just come down to judgment, your gut feeling. During that conversation I told him how I usually make these decisions.
When I find myself in these situations the reasoning I use with myself goes something like this: 'Let's say I run with this story. And let's say it goes bad. And then I have to explain my reasoning to my editor. How is that conversation going to go? Am I going to have a good story to tell? Or am I going to have a why-was-I-such-a-friggin-idiot story to tell?'
It's a very clarifying mental exercise.
If something terrible happens with a plane, aren't a lot of people going to have a lot of why-was-I-such-a-friggin-idiot stories to tell?
--Josh Marshall
Now, that's classic. A month or so after the Texas House Democrats hightailed it to Oklahoma to prevent the Tom DeLay re-redistricting, a state court ruled that the attempt to use the Department of Public Safety to track them down had in fact been illegal.
Since Gov. Rick Perry (R) and crew insist on knocking down every precedent in the state to get it done, the state senators have now gone to New Mexico in replay of the earlier saga. (New Mexico was apparently the choice because one of the abscondees recently had a heart attack and there were better or more convenient medical facilities nearby.) The most recent precedent down the drain is the one which requires a 2/3 vote in the state senate to bring a bill up for debate -- thus the senators' departure.
In any case, without the ability to use the state police, Republican state officials are now considering sending bounty-hunters across state lines to bring them back -- an idea you can certainly understand since bounty-hunters are such an upstanding and constitutionally-minded group of characters. Attorney General Greg Abbott (R) has helpfully obliged by issuing an opinion okaying the bounty hunter idea.
Bill Richardson, Governor of New Mexico, has provided the Dems with a state police detail to protect them and, reportedly, has vowed to press kidnapping charges against any bounty hunters who try to take them into custody.
Meanwhile, House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, the ultimate author of all this ridiculousness, is off on a tour of the Middle East where, one would imagine, he'll fit right in.
--Josh Marshall
Joe Conason nicely tracks the Republicans' new "So Sue Me" defense on intel manipulation. Also, don't miss this nice piece by Fred Kaplan in Slate, detailing how the president's actions on how well things are going in Iraq are speaking louder than his words. Note to my neocon friends: I think your "flypaper" line may be about to be withdrawn by HQ. Just a heads-up. Don't be the last one to find out.
--Josh Marshall
"The Pentagon," according to the Associated Press, "is setting up a commodity-market style trading system in which investors would be able to bet on political and economic events in the Middle East — including the likelihood of assassinations and terrorist attacks ... A graphic on the market's Web page showed hypothetical futures contracts in which investors could trade on the likelihood that Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat would be assassinated or Jordanian King Abdullah II would be overthrown."
Maybe this is a hot idea. But somehow I'd imagine we'd probably want to set this up as a front company, no?
On the other hand, progress is progress.
In the old days, all you could accomplish with mass-casualty terrorism was physical destruction, human suffering and death on a massive scale. Now, through effective market manipulation, you can achieve those ends and reap immense profits. Maybe even enough to fund the next terrorist attack.
Will there be derivatives?
--Josh Marshall
As you know, Texas is a whole 'nother country. And they ain't kiddin'.
A little while back Texas Governor Rick Perry (R) called a special session of the Texas State legislature to reconsider re-redistricting. The effort couldn't be stopped in the Texas House. So now it came down to the state Senate.
There is a long-standing tradition in Texas that bills have to clear a super-majority (2/3) vote to get to the floor for a vote. And Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst (R), who runs the Senate, had promised he'd abide by that rule. Democrats had only barely enough Senators to block that two-thirds vote. So they'd have to hold very tight if they were going to have any shot at stopping this power-grab for a second time.
Now, it turns out they did hold tight. Improbably, they even got one Republican to come over to their side.
Then Dewhurst thought up a way to wiggle out of his pledge. It turns out he'd been misunderstood. He didn't say he'd never break the 2/3 rule. He just said he'd never break it in this special session. If the governor wanted to call yet another special session ... well, then all bets would be off.
This afternoon Perry called another special session (see the proclamation, with the time hastily marked in with felt-tip pen, here.).
Eleven of twelve Texas Democratic senators just grabbed a flight for Albuquerque.
--Josh Marshall
The trio of quotations listed below called attention to the growing popularity of what conservatives are now calling the "flypaper" theory of our presence in Iraq.
The thinking goes something like this. These guerilla engagements we're seeing in Iraq may not be such a bad thing. What we're doing is attracting all the terrorists to Iraq (i.e., like "flypaper") so that a) they won't be attacking us in America and b) we can fight them there on our own terms. As Andrew Sullivan put it early this month, "Continued conflict in Iraq, in other words, needn't always be bad news. It may be a sign that we are drawing the terrorists out of the woodwork and tackling them in the open."
Now I can imagine a number of problems with this approach -- moral, tactical and strategic.
But isn't the main fallacy that there isn't some finite number of "terrorists" out there whom we can draw to one place, kill or arrest, and then be done with it? I mean, let's be honest: Is there really any shortage of these dudes? Are they gonna run out?
Do you remember Afghanistan? Not this 'Afghanistan', but the last 'Afghanistan.' The US-Pakistan-backed jihad against the Soviets made Afghanistan into a sort of jihad Club-Med where young Saudis could go for a few weeks or months of firing guns and fighting for God. (Of course, some stayed on rather longer.)
The idea is supposed to be to drain the swamp, not create a new swamp and spend all your time swatting all the mosquitoes that come to hang out and breed.
As a reader (Tom R.) wrote last night in an email to TPM, the "flypaper" theory makes about as much sense as a public health director saying "By creating a dirty hospital, we're going to create a place where we can fight the germs on our terms."
--Josh Marshall
An interesting progression ...
But doing it as the Bush administration now intends is something like going outside and giving a few good whacks to a hornets' nest because you want to get them out in the open and have it out with them once and for all.
Being based in Iraq helps us not only because of actual bases; but because the American presence there diverts terrorist attention away from elsewhere. By confronting them directly in Iraq, we get to engage them in a military setting that plays to our strengths rather than to theirs'. Continued conflict in Iraq, in other words, needn't always be bad news. It may be a sign that we are drawing the terrorists out of the woodwork and tackling them in the open.
Separately, Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, commander of coalition ground forces, told CNN that "we still have a long way to go" before eliminating resistance.Iraq had become "a terrorist magnet," drawing some anti-American extremists from abroad to "a target of opportunity."
"But this," General Sanchez added, "is exactly where we want to fight them."
"U.S. Must Act on 'Murky' Data to Prevent Terror, Wolfowitz Says"
International Herald Tribune
July 27th, 2003
Are we all straight now on what the plan is?
--Josh Marshall
Is Dick Morris a closet proponent of the Judis-Teixeira thesis? Look at this line from his July 23rd column in The Hill ...
Bush seems to have no firewall to arrest his drop. His ratings seem to depend on yesterday’s news. Because the empowerment of the Republican Party in all three branches of government masks the demographic shift to the Democratic Party, when things get rough, there is nothing to hold up the ratings of a Republican president.
John, Ruy, seriously, give the guy a call. He's changed sides before!
--Josh Marshall
I just re-read the Rice piece in the Post again and it's really pretty devastating. You read it and it's hard not to come to the conclusion that Rice is either really incompetent or really ... well, less than honest in a few of the answers she's given on the Niger debacle. Or maybe it's fifty-fifty? In any case, it ain't good.
The only serious beef I have with the article is that the authors -- Dana Milbank and Mike Allen -- mocked a line I'd been planning to mock for several days. But they mocked it in a sufficiently understated manner that, if you'll indulge me, I'm going to try to get a little more mileage out of it.
Back during Steve Hadley's ritual sorta-kinda defenestration last week, White House Communications Director Dan Bartlett, who was there to oversee the event, piped in to dispute one of the alleged instances in which the CIA tried to warn the White House off the Niger claims.
He said ...
There is a conspiracy theory out there that there was some protracted negotiation, or that this was information that was in a clandestine way being forced into the speech by various factions of the administration. It's simply nonsense.
Now, as I've said before a number of times, calling something a 'conspiracy theory' has become what amounts to the lazy man's way of discrediting an argument. In fact, I recently experienced this myself.
Just before the war, I wrote an article ("Practice to Deceive") which claimed that the administration wasn't leveling with the public about its real reasons for going to war. Out of nowhere a gaggle of giddy smear-meisters popped out of the woodwork accusing me of hatching a conspiracy theory and smearing all manner of upstanding gentlemen to boot.
Now, maybe I was right; maybe I was wrong. But it was never quite clear to me how any of this amounted to a conspiracy theory.
As it happens, one of these smackdowns came on the Wall Street Journal editorial page website. And, interestingly enough, last week the same folks ran an OpEd saying more or less exactly what I said four months ago. Only now they're celebrating the deception as key to success.
Why did President Bush play the WMD card rather than just level with the American people about the real reason for the war, asks Steven Den Beste. Simple, he says ...
Honesty and plain speaking are not virtues for politicians and diplomats. If either Mr. Bush or Mr. Blair had said what I did, it would have hit the fan big-time. Making clear a year ago that this was our true agenda would have virtually guaranteed that it would fail.
It's always bracing to see how quickly the party line can change, ain't it? It sort of reminds of Gene Genovese's line about getting kicked out of the Commnunist Party when he was in college "for having zigged when I was supposed to zag."
But, alas, I digress. Back to Mr Bartlett.
Bartlett was talking about the conversation between CIA officer Alan Foley and NSC staffer Bob Joseph about the uranium line in the State of the Union speech. Foley says the two haggled about the line after he raised the Agency's concerns with Joseph. (Bear in mind too that he apparently also said this before a congressional committee; thus, presumably, under oath.) Joseph, a lot less convincingly, says he has no recollection of Foley raising these concerns.
In any case, according to Bartlett, believing Foley rather than Joseph amounts to a buying into a 'conspiracy theory.'
Hey, weren't we going to get lunch?No.
Yeah, remember, I called. We were going to meet at noon at ...
Stop with your conspiracy theories!
In any case, if Bartlett is going to live up to true Fleischerian standards of press browbeating and intimidation, won't he have to learn how to pull off the bullyboy tactics without sounding like such a goof?
--Josh Marshall
Sheesh! Sometimes a meme's time has really come. A couple hours ago I quoted a blurb in US News' Washington Whispers column about how Condi Rice might end up taking the fall for the recent intel unpleasantness. (And not a Tenet/Hadley style fall. I mean a real fall, as in losing her job.) I said that jibed with a lot of what I'd been in hearing in recent weeks and months, though I thought the complaints about Rice went far beyond the uranium flap. Now I hop over to the Washington Post website and see this article ("Iraq Flap Shakes Rice's Image") on the front page of tomorrow's paper.
--Josh Marshall
