The president stood next to Tony Blair and said, “I would remind you that when the inspectors first went into Iraq and were denied ? finally denied access [in 1998], a report came out of the Atomic ? the IAEA — that they were six months away from developing a weapon. I don’t know what more evidence we need.” We need more, because that evidence doesn’t exist, as an IAEA spokesman told Curl. The story gets funnier, in that dark Washington way, when the reporter calls the White House for comment. Would the president “mislead” the public about war, as Rep. Jim McDermott said so bluntly over weekend from Baghdad? Perhaps not, but the only other explanation is that he has been badly misled himself. (If Bush knows how to surf the Web he should stop relying on Condi and start looking up this information himself. There’s almost always an executive summary. For example, the IAEA’s actual reports and other information about Iraq’s efforts to build an atom bomb are available here.) [Salon]