Sharp Cheese

Frank Rich:

If Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney believe they were truthful
in the run-up to the war, it's easy for them to make
their case. Instead of falsely claiming that they've
been exonerated by two commissions that looked into
prewar intelligence - neither of which addressed
possible White House misuse and mischaracterization
of that intelligence - they should just release the rest
of the President's Daily Briefs and other prewar
documents that are now trickling out. Instead,
incriminatingly enough, they are fighting the release
of any such information, including unclassified
documents found in post-invasion Iraq requested from
the Pentagon by the pro-war, neocon Weekly Standard.

Michael Kinsley:

Interestingly, the administration no longer claims that
Hussein actually had [nuclear or chemical] weapons at
the time Bush led the country into war in order to
eliminate them. "The flaws in the intelligence are plain
enough in hindsight," Cheney said on Monday. So-
called WMD (weapons of mass destruction) were not
the only argument for the war, but the administration
thought they were a crucial argument at the time. So
the administration now concedes that the country
went to war on a false premise. Doesn't that mean
that the war was a mistake no matter where the false
premise came from?