Stovepipe blues...

Here’s a good interview with Sy Hersh writer for the New Yorker who has a recent article about how the Bush Administration led the intelligence community on a chase for weapons of mass destruction.

Inside the military, “stovepiping” is slang for the practice of taking a piece of intelligence or a request that should be pushed through the chain of command—checked at levels and sent from one level to another—and bringing it straight to the highest authority.

(...)

The pro-war hawks rigged the system so that negative information about Iraq, no matter where it came from was stovepiped directly to the leadership without any assessment.