It’s really depressing how so many progressive blogs rushed to embrace and propagate the unsupported assertion WaPo made yesterday:

President Bush got the world’s attention this fall when he warned that a nuclear-armed Iran might lead to World War III. But his stark warning came at least a month or two after he had first been told about fresh indications that Iran had actually halted its nuclear weapons program.

This is, of course, what everyone suspects. All the more so because of this president’s, and this administration’s, reputation for playing fast and loose with the truth. But WaPo didn’t report it as a suspicion; they reported it as a fact. It was the opening paragraph in their front-page story.

It would be a huge story, an extremely serious allegation, if there was any evidence to support it.

As I argued yesterday, WaPo‘s Peter Baker and Robin Wright didn’t exactly support their sensational lede. They vaguely claimed that Stephen Hadley had said it:

Still, the administration understood how explosive the new conclusions would be and kept them tightly held. Hadley said Bush was first told in August or September about intelligence indicating Iran had halted its weapons program, but was advised it would take time to evaluate.

There was no direct quote. No mention of an exclusive interview. And the closest public statement Hadley has made about this is:

[W]hen was the president notified that there was new information available? We’ll try and get you a precise answer. As I say, it was, in my recollection, is in the last few months. Whether that’s October — August-September, we’ll try and get you an answer for that.

That is a very far cry indeed from “Hadley said Bush was first told in August or September about intelligence indicating Iran had halted its weapons program”. The only proper response to Peter Baker and Robin Wright’s story is skepticism (and not necessarily of the polite variety, either).

None of this was particularly hard to see. Yet so many respected liberal bloggers decided not to see it. To gleefully propagate WaPo‘s claim because it was so satisfying to believe it. (Isn’t this how the right-wing-nut blogs are supposed to operate, not us?)

But there was Salon’s War Room, pushing the story not once but twice yesterday. AMERICABlog danced a little jig as well. There was TPM, citing a different WaPo front page story that contains the exact same “Hadley said Bush was first told in August or September…” statement. On TPM‘s Horse’s Mouth, Greg Sargent invoked this statement to excoriate WaPo for uncritically reporting Bush’s claim that he had been first briefed on the Iran NIE only last week:

Bush was allowed to skate — even though the paper’s own reporting yesterday suggests that his “last week” claim was false.

And then there’s Shakesville, with a particularly egregious post. They don’t cite WaPo, they give us their own paraphrase of WaPo‘s claim:

Stephen Hadley made matters worse the other day by stating rather clearly that the NIE findings were given to Bush “a few months ago.” For anyone keeping track, this means Bush was already informed about the cease in Iran’s nuclear weapons program while he was claiming that World War III is right around the corner.

That embedded link takes you to:

HADLEY: [W]hen was the president notified that there was new information available? We’ll try and get you a precise answer. As I say, it was, in my recollection, is in the last few months. Whether that’s October — August-September, we’ll try and get you an answer for that.

This is Hadley stating very clearly that Bush was given the NIE findings a few months ago, before he started talking about World War III?

I don’t see how Shakesville lives this down.