IRAQ HAD NO WMDs!!!!!

MVG: Hello and welcome to "Mudville Tonight". Our guest this evening is CNN. Hi, CNN, thanks for being here. What's news?

CNN: Iraq had ended its weapons of mass destruction programs by the mid-1990s and did not pose an immediate threat to the United States before the war, according to a report released Thursday.

MVG: Wow, a report. Can't argue with a report. Who wrote it?

CNN: The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace -- a nonpartisan, respected group that opposed the war in Iraq -- conducted the study.

MVG: Well I'm sure it's fair and balanced then. Who's fault was the war then?

CNN: Bush administration officials likely pushed U.S. intelligence assessors to conform with its view the country posed an impending danger.

MVG: Damn that Bush administration! This must have been a result of exhaustive study.

CNN: It follows a nine-month search in Iraq for weapons of mass destruction -- nuclear, biological and chemical -- the key reason the administration cited in its decision to invade Iraq.

MVG: Wow. Tell me more.

CNN: "We looked at the intelligence assessment process, and we've come to the conclusion that it is broken," author Joseph Cirincione said Thursday on CNN's "American Morning."

MVG: So you did all this inspecting and investigating all by yourselves and reached these conclusions?

CNN: The Carnegie report based its conclusions on information gleaned from declassified U.S. intelligence documents about Iraq from U.N. weapons inspectors and the International Atomic Energy Agency, the nuclear watchdog for the United Nations.

MVG: Ohhhhh.. gleaning the UN. Impressive. Well, what should we have done? What was so effective that we should have kept doing rather than invade?

CNN: Iraq's "programs were crippled by years of [U.N.] inspections and U.S. military strikes," he said, "and the sanctions that prevented them from getting anything going at all."

MVG: Really? But the inspections had ceased altogether due to Saddam's refusal to cooperate. Are you suggesting that continued US military strikes alone would have kept everything in check?

CNN:

MVG: And weren't people dying because of the sanctions? Or was that because of Saddam dropping them into shredders?

CNN:

MVG: I see. What headline did you put over this story?

CNN: "Report says Iraq didn't have WMD" with a sub header "Author: Political pressure influenced intelligence before war"

MVG: Did you display this story prominently on your website or bury it like some sort of pointless self-serving idiotarian blather?

CNN: It was our top story on the "More top stories" list on the international edition.

MVG: Well, that settles that. I guess we'll just "move on" then. Thanks for stopping by!