"Now, I have to say, when it came to making the most important foreign policy decision of our generation, the decision to invade Iraq, Sen. Clinton got it wrong," Barack Obama said Sunday in response to a Clinton campaign ad that suggests only Hillary Clinton would be ready to answer a late-night emergency phone call to the White House. "She didn't read the National Intelligence Estimate. Jay Rockefeller (the present Senate Intelligence Committee chairman who endorsed Obama) read it, but she didn't read it.

"I don't know what all that experience got her, because I have enough experience to know that if you have a National Intelligence Estimate and the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee says, 'You should read this, this is why I'm voting against the war,' that you should probably read it. I don't know how much experience you need for that."

Obama is correct that Clinton failed to read the 90-page NIE report before voting to authorize the use of U.S. military force in Iraq in October 2002. But if you watched that clip, you likely would think that Rockefeller read the NIE, then, as a consequence, voted against the war. Wrong. The West Virginia Democrat read the NIE, then voted for the war.

Obama's campaign explains that Obama didn't get his facts mixed up. When Obama referred to the chairman of Senate Intelligence, he was referring to Bob Graham, the then-committee chairman who opposed the war.

CNN aired Obama's remarks more than once Monday without clarifying that Rockefeller actually voted for the war. While the New York Times reported on Rockefeller's pro-war vote, other news stories repeated the Obama quote without setting the record straight.

It seems Clinton has a point when she complains about Obama getting cushy treatment from the media. Because stories that didn't clarify Rockefeller's vote leave the impression that a senator who read the NIE would have voted against the war.

To the contrary, Rockefeller read the NIE and concluded, "There is unmistakable evidence that Saddam Hussein is working aggressively to develop nuclear weapons" -- actually, the NIE language was less conclusive -- and that Hussein's "existing biological and chemical weapons capabilities pose a very real threat to America." Continued...