Subtle bias, lazy journalism, or Truth?

Regarding a Mary Kelly piece on Morning Edition last week, I thought it was interesting that only one view was presented, when the entire story begged to be turned on its head. Every person interviewed more or less said, "The president took seriously the 2002 NIE that said that Saddam had WMD, but not the 2004 NIE that says that Iraq is headed toward civil war, and therefore he is cherry picking. NIEs are serious, and therefore the President is a rube for ignoring them."

Okay, but couldn't the opposite be said? "The current NIE is being treated as Revealed Truth because it counters the Administration's claims, but none of the people cheerleading for it are willing to say that the President went to war on the best information available at that time (the 2002 NIE). Therefore they are cherry picking." Of the two groups - the administration and its critics - who is standing on firmer ground?

The 2002 NIE was tragically wrong, and it seems that the President is justified in his skepticism of their consultations with the crystal ball. Yet his detractors are insisting that he is a rube for not believing the same people who were dead wrong! Why should he? Simply because the new NIE squares with their world view? Do they, like John Kerry, get their intel from TV news? In that case, the NIE is irrelevant and the Prez need only consult with his detractors to find out what to do. Of the two groups, the President believed the NIE when the authors had no track record (actually, their track record vis-a-vis Soviet economic performance was not good), while his detractors believe the authors now that they have a dismal record. Who is the real cherry picker?

I say this as an opponent of the war. I am less interested in listening to such shallow criticisms of the President than in finding (1) the truth (what is or what was), and (2) a reasonable approach to foreign policy when the actual truth can only be expressed in probabilities (what is going on in North Korea? In Iran? How should we approach those problems?). Personally, I don't think the President is cherry picking in this case (I think he is optimistic, perhaps overly so), but then neither do I think he was justified in going to war even if the 2002 NIE had turned out to be correct. He should have viewed that NIE as skeptically as he views this one. Stories as poorly reported as this overlook part of the truth, do nothing to help us understand how to think about the issues, and give credibility to those who accuse NPR of a subtle left-wing bias.