THERE HE GOES AGAIN-- BUSH LIED HIS ASS OFF ABOUT PRE-WAR INTELLIGENCE FRIDAY

Nearly 60% of Americans, according to the latest polling, think Bush is a liar. Specifically they feel he has been dishonest about getting us into a war with Iraq and about the cover-ups and scandals plaguing his party, many of them because of the original lies about pre-war intelligence. As though to add gasoline to the already raging fire, Bush got up in front of a crowd of veterans in NEPA yesterday and... lied and lied and twisted and twisted. He came off as really pathetic, deceptive, weasely and clueless.

Today Dana Millbank and Walter Pincus dissect Bush's lies in the WASHINGTON POST. They also dealt with the bullshit that's been spewing forth from thus-far unindicted TreasonGate figure Stephen Hadley, Bush's seriously ill-equipped National Security Advisor. Bush and Hadley are trying to convince the shrinking number of Americans who are still open to hearing their deceptions that Democratic Senators and Representatives, who are finallystanding up and saying "We were tricked into voting for his war because he manipulated the intelligence," saw the same intelligence the Regime did before the war, and that independent commissions have determined that BushCo did not misrepresent the intelligence. Millbank and Pincus state flatly that "Neither assertion is wholly accurate."

They're not accurate because Bush and Hadley are still lying and twist, twisting and lying. "Bush and his aides," as The Post points out, "had access to much more voluminous intelligence information than did lawmakers, who were dependent on the administration to provide the material. And the commissions cited by officials, though concluding that the administration did not pressure intelligence analysts to change their conclusions, were not authorized to determine whether the administration exaggerated or distorted those conclusions."

Yesterday one of the Regime's attempts to spread around the blame was mouthed-- badly-- by Bush when he asserted that "more than 100 Democrats in the House and the Senate, who had access to the same intelligence, voted to support removing Saddam Hussein from power."

Millbank and Pincus point out that "Bush does not share his most sensitive intelligence, such as the President's Daily Brief, with lawmakers. Also, the National Intelligence Estimate summarizing the intelligence community's views about the threat from Iraq was given to Congress just days before the vote to authorize the use of force in that country. In addition, there were doubts within the intelligence community not included in the NIE. And even the doubts expressed in the NIE could not be used publicly by members of Congress because the classified information had not been cleared for release.... Even within the Bush administration, not everybody consistently viewed Iraq as what Hadley called 'an enormous threat.' In a news conference in February 2001 in Egypt, then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said of the economic sanctions against Hussein's Iraq: 'Frankly, they have worked. He has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction.'"

Bush's main point in his pathetic speech was that "it is deeply irresponsible to rewrite the history of how that war began." And that is precisely what he and his rogue regime are trying to do. One example Millbank and Pincus give of how Bush is still trying to manipulate reality to fit his ideological delusions was when he asserted yesterday that "When I made the decision to remove Saddam Hussein from power, Congress approved it with strong bipartisan support." That was news to all the members of the Senate and House since the joint resolution did authorize the use of force in Iraq, but did not directly mention the removal of Saddam Hussein from power.