Bureaucratic Smackdown!
It's a former CIA analyst going toe-to-toe with the Executive Branch! Pillar's got the folding chair of careerism and he's smashing it right on the the administration's shoulders of ideological zealotry!
[The administration] went to war without requesting -- and evidently without being influenced by -- any strategic-level intelligence assessments on any aspect of Iraq. [...] Congress, not the administration, asked for the now-infamous October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iraq's unconventional weapons programs, although few members of Congress actually read it. (According to several congressional aides responsible for safeguarding the classified material, no more than six senators and only a handful of House members got beyond the five-page executive summary.) As the national intelligence officer for the Middle East, I was in charge of coordinating all of the intelligence community's assessments regarding Iraq; the first request I received from any administration policymaker for any such assessment was not until a year into the war.
He's taking on all comers! Even Congress gets the turnbuckle of experience and a roundhouse of hindsight! It's a President's Day Massacre!
Intelligence, Policy, and the War in Iraq [Foreign Affairs]