Try to remember...

Pie directed me to this, in comments at Eschaton.

From the Newshour with Jim Lehrer:

JIM LEHRER: What about Mark's point, also, the point of the commission that things are still not in very good shape in the intelligence community and makes you wonder about North Korea and Iran and other places?

RICH LOWRY: Absolutely. I mean, it's a serious worry. My biggest complaint when it comes to the Bush administration in this regard, it should have happened Sept. 12, 2001. It was clear we had a dire intelligence failure and instead they really dragged their feet on this thing.

But also -- sorry, Mark, one last thing. Intelligence is inherently an uncertain business and it's always going to be built to some extent on assumptions and in Iraq the assumption were much too aggressive. The next mistake, I guarantee you, will be that in exactly the opposite direction.

MARK SHIELDS: Two quick things: Defense intelligence agency relied in 100 separate reports on a man whom his own handlers called unreliable and insane, all right. Second, Jim, Zbigniew Brzezinski sat at this very table with you and told the story about Dean Acheson at the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis going to Gen. DeGaulle, as an emissary from President Kennedy, and telling him about the Cuban missiles there and offering him photographic evidence, the president's eyes only, and Gen. DeGaulle said the word of the President of the United States is all that I need. I don't know if that would ever be the case again.