Everyday last week, on Capital Hill, even as it became increasingly clear that “there wasn’t any ‘there’ there,” Congressional Democrats called for Karl Rove’s resignation. Yesterday on The McLaughlin Group, John McLaughlin again invoked the discredited Johns Hopkins report, in claiming that “112,000 Iraqi civilians have died” since the beginning of hostilities. Now, Gregory Djerejain thoroughly buries Josh Marshall, who won’t divorce himself from the “Bush lied, people died” fantasy:

It’s one thing to state the obvious, which is that the state of U.S. intelligence regarding Iraq was abysmally wrong on many scores indeed. But Ivo Daalder’s post is quite disingenuous, of course. The whole Niger/Africa/uranium hullabaloo had at its very core the hysterical leftist shrieks (Bush lied, People died!) that the ’16 Words’ of the SOTU were purposeful lies pronounced by POTUS so as to help drag the so gullible, Murdoch-fed ranks of the jingo-fied public into Mesopotamia. So whether the Iraq Survey Group turned up no uranium or such once in Iraq is wholly besides the point vis-a-vis establishing the bona fides of the President’s honesty or lack thereof in relation to the contents of the SOTU. It’s a total straw man really. But look, we are all capable of Daalder’s rather breezy moving of the goal posts to score a partisan point now and again. It happens to the best of us. What really bothers me, however, more than anything Daalder writes, is Josh Marshall’s treatment of this matter. He totally impugns the integrity of both the SSCI and the Butler reports (“This is but one example of how the Butler Report and the Senate intel report are political documents. From start to finish.”) That’s quite a statement, and it well showcases Josh’s abject hackery on this issue. No, it’s worse. I simply can’t avoid the conclusion that Josh Marshall is, very probably, being flat-out dishonest on this issue. He’s ignoring so much evidence that disproves his treatment of the matter, and he is too smart to just innocently be ‘missing’ it, that I must reluctantly conclude he is likely purposefully lying.

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Hat Tip: InstaPundit