Non-denial denial, part 3

(Updated below)

White House denies report on Iraq WMD - Yahoo! News

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The White House on Wednesday angrily denied a newspaper report that suggested President George W. Bush in 2003 declared the existence of mobile biological weapons laboratories in Iraq while knowing it was not true.

"It's reckless reporting. Everybody should be agitated about it," White House spokesman McClellan told reporters of The Washington Post report.

On May 29, 2003, Bush hailed the capture of two trailers in Iraq as mobile biological laboratories and declared, "We have found the weapons of mass destruction."

Two days earlier, on May 27, 2003, the Pentagon confirmed on Wednesday, a Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) team faxed its preliminary report on the mobile labs. This report concluded the trailers had nothing to do with biological weapons, the Post said.

McClellan said Bush made his statement based on the combined conclusions of the CIA and DIA that were given to him in a May 28 white paper.

Shorter version: "We're not liars -- we're just incompetent!" That's somewhat less culpable in the eyes of the law, to be sure, but we are in desperate times indeed when the White House is comfortable having raised its grade to mere negligence.

And note that Scotty says the reporting was "reckless" -- not wrong, not false, just reckless. As pointed out on Monday, we should all feel free to adopt these non-denial denials in our own lives : "Boss, your suggestion that I embezzled $100K from the company is reckless, and I am quite agitated about it."

Update: Just saw John Dean on Olbermann, who echoed my point above, even going so far as to use the word "incompetence."