Yes, David Kay’s report on intelligence failures re: WMDs in Iraq is harsh. But it’s not as if mistakes like this are unheard of in the intelligence community. Anyone who wants to treat the whole issue as an opportunity to bash the White House ought to sit down and read Intelligence Wars, a collection of essays/reviews by Thomas Powers.
In particular, the chapter “Soviet Intentions and Capabilities” yields the following money quote:
“Our answer,” said Sherman Kent, [chairman of the CIA’s Board of National Estimates], “is to say nothing is going to happen in the foreseeable future, and say it in the most alarming way possible.”
The history of intel/cointel is a map of misreadings, to misapply Harold Bloom. Just because you think the president is an ignoramus doesn’t mean that this particular instance of misreading was malicious. After all, he did run on the least interventionist platform in 75 years.