Incompetent or Corrupt

As regular readers know, this question comes up regularly about liberals in politics and the media. Hugh Hewitt uses a similar formulation to describe the stupid/ignorant/dishonest reactions from liberals after the president's speech. In this post he has a long quote from an excellent summary of the reasons for war which was written by Nicholas Lemann in the New Yorker in February, 2003. After which Hewitt writes:

That Brownstein, Canellos, et al refuse to acknowledge the set of arguments that --combined-- led Bush to order the invasion is an admission either of their ignorance or their duplicity.

This is the only way to describe those, like David Gergen, who say they are offended by the use of 9/11 to justify war against Saddam or those, like Ron Brownstein, who say that the president is somehow using arguments that weren't used before. Are they incompetent (stupid/ignorant) or corrupt (knowingly dishonest)?

Either way, reasonable people need not bother paying attention to them for they have long since forfeited their credibility.