Brooks: Wrong Then, or Wrong Now?

David Brooks' Feb 3 column implies that either Brooks never believed in the case for war, or that he's simply inconsistent in preferring the intuition and experience of politictians, Mafia bosses, studio heads and anyone who has read a Dostoevsky novel in the past 5 years (is this to imply that Mafia bosses are behind in their required Dostoevsky reading?) over CIA analyst's conclusions.

Which of the two, depends on whether Brooks believed the case for war based on WMD in Iraq was made by accurate representation of CIA analysts' conclusions by Bush, Cheney, Powell and Rice; or by Bush, Cheney, Powell and Rice's mis-representation of analysts' conclusions -- documented in some cases such as the yellowcake assertion.

If the former, then the case for war in Iraq was never believable to Brooks (columns to the contrary -- Brooks, you backed the war) -- since he believes the methods of CIA analysts to be untrustworthy. Brooks would be guilty of banging war drums -- a mouthpiece for the Bush administration -- while not believing in what he says.

If the latter, it counters Brooks' thesis: that politicians' intuition and experience is more trustworthy than analysts' conclusions -- since we now know that Bush's intution and experience that 'we know WMD are in Iraq, that they are producing them' was profoundly wrong. Brooks would be wrong asserting as he did in the Feb 3 column that analyst's 'scientism' is less trustworthy than the 'intuition and experience' of politicians.

So Brooks: were you wrong then, or are you wrong now?