Is Scotty Admitting The Big Dick Cheney Lied?

It looks to me like Scotty is admitting that Cheney lied to the American people right here. I know they lie so often that it is difficult to discern the truth, but does it look the same to you?

Q When did the administration become aware of the Pentagon report that talks about mobile trailers?

MR. McCLELLAN: The only update I have on that matter is what the Pentagon said yesterday. The Pentagon put out a statement and talked about how that was a preliminary report from a DIA -- meaning Defense Intelligence Agency -- sponsored technical exploitation team, and that information was sent to the DIA. And then they said that the CIA-DIA joint white paper that was released publicly on May 28th reflected the position of the intelligence community at the time, and that the findings that you're bringing up were vetted with other intelligence analysts during the summer of 2003. So that's a statement from the Pentagon, and that's the only update I have at this point.

Q So if it had been vetted then would you have known about them by, say, September 2003?

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, if you'll remember, the view of the intelligence community was expressed in the white paper that was released on May 28th. It was a joint white paper by the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency. And that's what the President's comments were based on. I know that there were still -- and that view prevailed for quite some time period. You can go back and look at that time period, because there's a lot of discussion about it. And then you had the Director of the CIA talking as late as February, saying that there was not a consensus on this issue -- February of the next year. And these findings were incorporated into the Iraq Survey Group, which completed a final report in September of 2004.

So that was a year later, more than a year later when the Iraq Survey Group completed that report. And if you go back to, I think, October of 2003, David Kay was still saying that it wasn't exactly clear, or something along those lines, in terms of what these might be used for.

Q Well, the report had said it was absolutely clear what these could and couldn't be used for, that they couldn't be used for --

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, again, I just pointed out that at the time there was a preliminary report coming in from the field, and that it was evaluated and assessed over a period of time.

Q When was -- one second one. When was Congress briefed on the contents of this?

MR. McCLELLAN: You might want to talk to the Defense Intelligence Agency. It was in the Iraq Survey Group report, which was a public document incorporated into the bipartisan Robb-Silberman Commission report which looked at the intelligence relating to Iraq, and then made recommendations about how to improve our intelligence.

Q The Vice President, as late as January 2004, was still stating that they were weapons labs.

MR. McCLELLAN: There were a number of people who were still talking about that issue for quite some time.