TRYING TO BURY THE TRUTH

Pat Roberts, a Republican senator from Kansas, swore the intelligence committee he chairs would get clear answers on how prewar intelligence on Iraq was so screwed up.

Now he's playing the too-helpful deputy, telling everyone to move along, there's nothing here to see. From Reuters:

Roberts laid out a schedule for completing four of the investigation's five segments by the end of April and pledged to release much of the findings to the public.

The largest segment of the Phase 2 investigation, which has increasingly become a lightning rod for partisan squabbling, promises to examine whether Bush administration officials exaggerated intelligence on Iraq as they made their public case for war in 2002 and 2003.

"Over the next several weeks, the committee's members will work with staff to write the final products," Roberts said in a statement. "This schedule provides a reasonable time frame for member input as we complete the inquiry."

Aides to Roberts said the chairman released the work schedule in a public bid to counter behind-the-scenes efforts by Democrats to expand the Phase 2 probe.

Democrats want to "interview about 20 senior administration officials, including former Secretary of State Colin Powell," according to Reuters. They also want the committee to "press ahead with its probe of former U.S. defense policy chief Douglas Feith, whom Democrats accuse of manipulating intelligence to suggest links between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden."

Douglas Feith: "The f--king stupidest guy on the face of the earth." Or so says Gen. Tommy Franks, an authority on Feith and his intelligence-twisting ways.