I missed this article in the Washington Compost yesterday by Shankar Vedantam (sounds like a lead guitar in a fusion jazz band) on the mistaken clarity of hindsight thinking in the now famous NIE about Iraq.

The lede:

Antiwar liberals last week got to savor the four most satisfying words in the English language: "I told you so."

This was after a declassified National Intelligence Estimate asserted that the war in Iraq was creating more terrorists than it was eliminating. For millions of people who opposed President Bush’s mission in Iraq from the start, this was proof positive that they had been right all along. Yes, they told themselves, we saw this disaster coming.

Only . . . that isn’t quite true.

Read on.  

Meanwhile, there are rumors this morning that the Foley page scandal may widen to implicate other members of Congress in inappropriate behavior toward pages. These things tend to go in waves: remember Bob Livingston having to retire rather than become Speaker in 1998 in the midst of the Clinton-Lewinski affair? And then Henry Hyde confessed to an ancient affair? I do know that during the Packwood sex scandal ten years ago, another Senator (since retired, so I won’t name him) told Packwood, "Bob--I’m glad it’s you and not me in the dock. If they investigated me, they could fill up RFK stadium and just say, "Section A, please stand up.’"