All Intensive Purposes

I hesitate to call Judge Posner obtuse, but it seems to me nothing short of obtuse to write an entire column about the CIA's failures vis-a-vis 9/11 and Iraqi WMD without discussing just what it was the White House asked the CIA to do. Unlike Article III judges on the Seventh Circuit, the CIA serves the President. We already know that the Bush Administration was concerned with other things -- missile defense, for example -- besides Al Qaeda in the months before September 11, 2001. We already know that the Bush Administration leaned on the CIA in various ways as it built support for the war it planned with Iraq. So it is, quote simply, obtuse to ignore what the CIA's boss wanted, and how that might have affected what it produced.