"ALMOST ALL WRONG" REDUX

The Los Angeles Times covers a CIA report entitled "Iraq: No Large-Scale Chemical Warfare Efforts Since Early 1990s":

In what may be a formal acknowledgment of the obvious, the CIA has issued a classified report revising its prewar assessments on Iraq and concluding that Baghdad abandoned its chemical weapons programs in 1991, intelligence officials familiar with the document said.

The report marks the first time the CIA has officially disavowed its prewar judgments and is one in a series of updated assessments the agency is producing as part of an effort to correct its record on Iraq's alleged weapons programs ***

The report is based largely on findings by the Iraq Survey Group, a CIA-led team of weapons experts that searched the country for more than a year without finding clear evidence of active illegal weapons programs.

U.S. intelligence officials have long acknowledged that the prewar assessments were flawed. David Kay, the former head of the search team, told Congress last January, "We were almost all wrong." ***

The new report from the CIA, which is dated Jan. 18, retreats from the agency's prewar assertions on chemical weapons on almost every front. It concludes that "Iraq probably did not pursue chemical warfare efforts after 1991."

Thank goodness the CIA confirmed the link between Saddam and 9-11 -- or the Bush invasion of Iraq wouldn't make any sense.

Uh... nevermind.