Dissociative Press
Charles Duelfer's 1,000-page report on the work of the Iraq Survey Group is out now ---and everyone is taking from it what they need to score their points. But, as the Power Line tells it, such partisan interests are finding their way into what should be the standard for America's wire services: the Associated Press.

This is how AP reporter Scott Lindlaw opens his "report" (emphases mine):

President Bush and his vice president conceded Thursday in the clearest terms yet that Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction, even as they tried to shift the Iraq war debate to a new issue -- whether the invasion was justified because Saddam was abusing a U.N. oil-for-food program.

Ridiculing the Bush administration's evolving rationale for war, Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry shot back: "You don't make up or find reasons to go to war after the fact."

Keep in mind that this is a news story about the findings of the Duelfer Report. Thousands of newspapers all across the country and world will run this report verbatim, yet it reads like a Kerry campaign press release.

This is what the President actually said:

The Duelfer report showed that Saddam was systematically gaming the system, using the U.N. oil-for-food program to try to influence countries and companies in an effort to undermine sanctions.

He was doing so with the intent of restarting his weapons program once the world looked away.

Therefore, the Power Line's ire:

So Lindlaw grossly mischaracterizes President Bush's statement. Bush did not invent a "new" rationale for toppling Saddam, or suggest that we went to war simply because Saddam was abusing the oil for food program. The point of Bush's reference to the oil for food program was that Saddam was abusing it for the specific purpose of regaining his WMD capabilities. This is exactly what the ISG report says. Bush correctly characterized the report; Scott Lindlaw incorrectly characterized Bush's point.

Lindlaw's anti-Bush bias is notorious and well-documented. In fact, until Dan Rather decided to ruin his credibility forever in the now-forgotten Killian Forgery Scandal, the boys at the Power Line had already jumped on Lindlaw's ass for another one of his lies.

Go check this out. And remember to not believe everything you read.