I think it doesn't mean what you think it means

Speaking of the benefits of the First Amendment, the Downing Street memos are getting lots of press play. It reminds me of an interview I heard earlier this week, probably on NPR, in which one of the Time reporters who had made a big splash with "torture" at Guantanamo Bay said that most of the emails they were getting were along the lines of, "That's it? Why aren't we pulling these guys' fingernails out?"

Here's a key sentence from one of the memos, set forth in an AP story published today in our local paper (unlike LAGuy, there's something wrong with my industry, so I haven't found a link).

The truth is that what has changed is not the pace of Saddam Hussein's WMD programs, but our tolerance of them post 11 September. (March 22, 2002 memo to Jack Straw, published by AP.)

And the press and the Dems consider this a scandal? I realize that what concerns the Dems, getting George Bush and the Republicans out of office, did not change 11 September, but, yes, our tolerance of a great deal changed 11 September.