Kevin Drum, the centrists blogger who supposedily represents a liberal point of view, posts about the revelations of intelligence cherry-picking by the Bush administration regarding WMD in Iraq:

I continue to think that the issue of Iraq's WMD is a difficult one. As I've noted before, there's no question that the administration manipulated the WMD intelligence. At the same time, though, it also seems clear that they, along with the intelligence community, really did believe Iraq was actively producing chemical and biological weapons. (Not nukes, though. The "mushroom cloud" talk was pretty clearly just for show.)

Here's the GOP logic of this that Kevin swallows whole. If they really believed in WMD, then we should give them a pass on making this itsy bitsy mistake called Iraq. Because, after all, they're good guys who were doing what they believed in.

Yes Kevin, of course they believed there were WMD in Iraq. But doesn't that word "believe" bother you a little? Decision makers are supposed to make judgements based on other than belief. How about facts? And in this case, the contrary facts were systematically filtered out. So of course, when they looked at the available information, they decided to believe there were WMD.

Kevin continues to be an apologists on this issue, likely because he believed there were WMD in Iraq. Indeed, that was the conventional wisdom at the time for most people, myself included. But our conclusions were based on a completely incompetent and sometimes outright manipulating press and government. There were plenty of credible people questioning the WMD conventional wisdom who were shunted aside as "shrill" and on the fringe. Just like now when some of us talk fascism.

Belief is a funny thing. Many elements form belief and often they don't include accurate information.