Those poor saps in the White House

I'm having just a bit of a problem swallowing this.

The existence of a secret prewar C.I.A. operation to debrief relatives of Iraqi scientists — and the agency's failure to give their statements to the president and other policymakers — has been uncovered by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. The panel has been investigating the government's handling of prewar intelligence on Iraq's unconventional weapons and plans to release a wide-ranging report this week on the first phase of its inquiry. The report is expected to contain a scathing indictment of the C.I.A. and its leaders for failing to recognize that the evidence they had collected did not justify their assessment that Mr. Hussein had illicit weapons.

I don't really doubt the facts the reporter, James Risen, lays out. But didn't his story require just a scant mention that Cheney & Co. were riding herd on the Company to find the goods on Iraq? Didn't Rumsfeld set up his own intelligence-gathering group in the Pentagon, headed by Doug Feith? Weren't the neocons complaining that the CIA had no credibility when they said Iraq was not a threat?

The real saps appear, once again, to be the editors at the New York Times. TPM and Tapped have their own takes.