Why is "dubious Iraq intelligence" being treated as news?

The big story in the blogosphere today is a new report [pdf] from the Pentagon's inspector general, which states in no uncertain terms that undersecretary of defense Douglas Feith used "dubious" military intelligence to push for war in Iraq.

Most dubious of all, according to the internal report, was the administration's assertion of a connection between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda, as the Washington Post reports:

Feith's office "was predisposed to finding a significant relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda," according to portions of the report, released yesterday by Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.). The inspector general described Feith's activities as "an alternative intelligence assessment process."

[T]he inspector general concluded that Feith's assessment in 2002 that Iraq and al-Qaeda had a "mature symbiotic relationship" was not fully supported by available intelligence but was nonetheless used by policymakers.

It's certainly encouraging to see the Pentagon confess that intelligence was manipulated and of questionable "quality or reliability."

But why did it take so long? I remember in October 2002, while Congress was debating the Iraq war resolution, faxing the following Knight-Ridder Tribune news story to the office of Sen. John Edwards, a month after Edwards gave the green light for invading Iraq:

WASHINGTON -- While President Bush marshals congressional and international
support for invading Iraq, a growing number of military officers, intelligence professionals and diplomats in his own government privately have deep misgivings about the administration's double-time march toward war.

These officials charge that administration hawks have exaggerated evidence of
the threat that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein poses -- including distorting his links to the al-Qaida terrorist network -- have overstated the amount of international support for attacking Iraq and have downplayed the potential repercussions of a new war in the Middle East.

They charge that the administration squelches dissenting views and that intelligence analysts are under intense pressure to produce reports supporting the White House's argument that Saddam poses such an immediate threat to the United States that pre-emptive military action is necessary.

"Analysts at the working level in the intelligence community are feeling very strong pressure from the Pentagon to cook the intelligence books," said one official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

A dozen other officials echoed his views in interviews. No one who was interviewed disagreed.

By October 2003 -- a year later -- Iraq's WMD's hadn't materialized and no politician had yet apologized for voting in the war (and no newspapers had yet apologized for their rapturous recitations of administration intelligence claims). But we had yet more evidence of cooked intelligence, this time from Seymor Hersch in The New Yorker:

In interviews with present and former intelligence officials, I was told that some senior Administration people, soon after coming to power, had bypassed the government's customary procedures for vetting intelligence.

A retired C.I.A. officer described for me some of the questions that would normally arise in vetting: "Does dramatic information turned up by an overseas spy square with his access, or does it exceed his plausible reach? How does the agent behave? Is he on time for meetings?" The vetting process is especially important when one is dealing with foreign-agent reports—sensitive intelligence that can trigger profound policy decisions. In theory, no request for action should be taken directly to higher authorities -- a process known as "stovepiping" -- without the information on which it is based having been subjected to rigorous scrutiny.

There have been a steady stream of such reports since -- which, like the above stories, were often woefully under-reported in major media outlets.

The bottom line: we've had strong evidence that Iraq intelligence was "cooked" for 4 1/2 years -- during which time, the Iraq war has claimed countless dollars and lives.

Is the fact that the Pentagon has belatedly made this discovery now a cause for celebration -- or evidence of further failure? And will the major media acknowledge their role in keeping questions about Iraq intelligence largely under wraps?

UPDATE: TPM Muckraker reminds us that DoD officials were openly distancing themselves from Feith's Iraq intel as early as November 2003.