Lies and the Lying LIARS That Tell Them

Here is a follow up to Bush's revisionist history:

NYT: "To avoid having to account for his administration's misleading statements before the war with Iraq, President Bush has tried denial, saying he did not skew the intelligence. He's tried to share the blame, claiming that Congress had the same intelligence he had, as well as President Bill Clinton. He's tried to pass the buck and blame the C.I.A. Lately, he's gone on the attack, accusing Democrats in Congress of aiding the terrorists. Yesterday in Alaska, Mr. Bush trotted out the same tedious deflection on Iraq that he usually attempts when his back is against the wall: he claims that questioning his actions three years ago is a betrayal of the troops in battle today."

"It all amounts to one energetic effort at avoidance. But like the W.M.D. reports that started the whole thing, the only problem is that none of it has been true." [NYT]

The scary thing is that Bush had the same intelligence data that Clinton had. Clinton believed (correctly) that the sanctions and the inspectors were working in Iraq. Apparently, Bush read the same info, and decided that we were in mortal danger.

From the Center for American Progress, here are some questions that we should be asking to every member of Congress, but we aren't:
1. Was intelligence on Iraq exaggerated, manipulated or misused?
2. What is your strategy for Iraq?
3. Knowing what you know now, would you still vote for the war in Iraq? (At least John Edwards had the balls to say that he was wrong.) [CAP]

This pretty much sums it up...even the New York Times gets it right sometimes:
"The president and his top advisers may very well have sincerely believed that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. But they did not allow the American people, or even Congress, to have the information necessary to make reasoned judgments of their own. It's obvious that the Bush administration misled Americans about Mr. Hussein's weapons and his terrorist connections. We need to know how that happened and why. Mr. Bush said last Friday that he welcomed debate, even in a time of war, but that "it is deeply irresponsible to rewrite the history of how that war began." We agree, but it is Mr. Bush and his team who are rewriting history."