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Exactly what was the screw-up?

Tenet's bad intelligence about the uraninum from Niger.

And what is the appropriate punishment, and for whom?

Whoever cleared it(Tenet or his top assistants, or intel officers) needs to either be fired, resigned, or to use a sports term...'booted upstairs' if they are team players. That is Bush's responsibility as President/CEO. I'd like to see Tenet gone myself, but I'm a little biased against Klinton's people in general.

As near as I can tell, this statement in the speech was correct, and the only reason the CIA feels it should not have been included is because THEY couldn't document it.

Bush was put in a bad situation here. I don't put him in the Klinton league here, and I really don't want to use the term lie for this. Bush said what he thought was right based on the information he had.

As near as I can tell, this statement in the speech was correct, and the only reason the CIA feels it should not have been included is because THEY couldn't document it.

If there is conflicting statements, the best thing to do is to err on the side of caution. Iraq has a history of nuke finding missions, and that should have been enough to go on. I don't care about WMD's personally(I supported the war based on Al Qaieda ties), but I do care about credibility.

As for the English intelligence, I'd like to see the other evidence unless it would compromise their sources.

Let's go over this again. We didn't have "bad intelligence" about Niger. We couldn't verify what Britain had, and for their own intelligence reasons (read Jack Straw's comments in the other article) they did not give us their sources. Britain stands behind its statement.

Now, what President Bush said was that British intelligence tells us that Iraq sought uranium from Niger.

That is true. That is what Britain said. The CIA didn't have independent sources. How is this a screw-up?

The only thing they did was approve a sentence for which they had no independent verification. And the ONLY person who is contradicting this is Wilson, who somehow kept his opinion to himself for several months after the SOU speech.

Now, I am no George Tenet fan, but I fail to see what value will be gained by firing him for a judgement error by an underling, and it seems to me that you are paying way too much attention to the press who is spinning this story without facts.