Ms. Avedon over at The Sideshow notes this excellent, pithy article by Eric Alterman(" Team B")at the Center for American Progress website. here's an excerpt:

Many of the very same people who deliberately created the misimpression about Iraq to goad the American people into supporting a war had already executed a run-through of the same strategy in the 1970s. Back then, establishment hardliners associated with the now defunct “Committee on the Present Danger” heaped scorn upon the professional intelligence services for their alleged underestimation of Soviet military capabilities. They succeeded in convincing then-CIA Director, George H.W. Bush, to appoint a now infamous "Team B" to go through the same material and come up with an answer that would justify a vast increase in U.S. defense spending...

Never heard of the Center for American Progress before, but it looks interesting. MSNBC, The Nation. Where else does Alterman write? Me, in my slothfulness, am heap embarassed...