He Said, They Said

This Ryan Lizza piece on The New Republic online will augment some of what Marc has been saying and also brings about an interesting potentiality: Even if Bush did not lie per se to get us into war, he sure as hell is lying now in his defense of what he has and has not done. Bush is misrepresenting what Democrats have said in the past in a shoddy, campaign-material sort of way. Lizza's conclusion:

Are there quotes from Democrats that look bad in hindsight? Of course. Several senators talked about Saddam's nuclear weapons program with a level of certainty not justified by the facts. They should also be held accountable. But no Democrat exaggerated the threat that Saddam posed to America in the way Bush and Cheney did. Just because Bush says so doesn't make it true. In fact, these days, just because Bush says so is a good sign it may not be true.

The President is simply lying when he says the Congress has the same access to intelligence as the president. This is manifestly untrue, and so it pits two accusations agsainst the President that I normally oppose (liar, stupid) against one another -- either he honestly believes that he does not and did not have access to more intelligence, in which case he is dumb. I do not think he is dumb. Which leaves only one other possibility -- he is lying.

My main hope in all of this is that for once Congress will learn what one might have thought it would have learned in the wake of the Tonkin Gulf fiasco -- either vote to wage war or do not. Blank checks are an irresponsible way to run foreign policy. If this leads to a conflict over whether the President has the power to wage war on his own, so be it. But next time around, perhaps Congress should either shit or get off the pot, because right now we're knee deep in droppings and it is all starting to stink.