That's our Bush. It is clear that, among conservative Republican Americans, Republican politicians are perceived as somehow more honest than their Democratic counterparts, and more sane than their third-party detractors. Republican leaders like Bush, while mostly appearing to be blathering idiots, are in fact (deep down) full of wisdom and integrity; honesty and chivalry. The current administration may be swimming with old Nixon appendages, but that doesn't mean that they have a habit of dishonesty. Nor do we have any reason to mistrust the old Iran/Contra conspirators who are still hanging around the Pentagon... In a CNN.com column, John Dean presents a collection of Bush quotes concerning the supposed WMD in Iraq:

"We know that the regime has produced thousands of tons of chemical agents, including mustard gas, sarin nerve gas, VX nerve gas." - Oct. 7, 2002. "Our intelligence officials estimate that Saddam Hussein had the materials to produce as much as 500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agent." - Jan. 28, 2003.

Okay, one last time: how many communists are working in the Defense Department? In his column, Dean for the most part echos my own position, which had been to give the President the benefit of the doubt. But it is getting much later in the day and there is no sign of WMD. There are more signs of manipulated intelligence. Dean has this to say:

Presidential statements, particularly on matters of national security, are held to an expectation of the highest standard of truthfulness. A president cannot stretch, twist or distort facts and get away with it... Perhaps most troubling, the president has failed to provide any explanation of how he could have made his very specific statements, yet now be unable to back them up with supporting evidence. Was there an Iraqi informant thought to be reliable, who turned out not to be? Were satellite photos innocently, if negligently misinterpreted? Or was his evidence not as solid as he led the world to believe? The absence of any explanation for the gap between the statements and reality only increases the sense that the President's misstatements may actually have been intentional lies. [CNN]

Perhaps Dean interprets the role of President differently from Bush. In Bush at War, George W said this to Bob Woodward during an interview:

"I'm the commander. See, I don't need to explain why I say things. That's the interesting thing about being the president. Maybe somebody needs to explain to me why they say something, but I don't feel like I owe anybody an explanation."

Oh. Meanwhile, the rally effect is slipping and Bush's approval ratings are in gradual decline. In particular, his rating on the economy is below 50% (I'm suprised that Americans aren't excited about the totally sweet tax break on their dividends). As for Iraq and WMD:

And most Americans, 57 percent, do not believe the Bush administration purposely misled the public about weapons of mass destruction to build support for the war, while 36 percent think it did. Forty-four percent do not think the Bush administration misinterpreted or misanalyzed the intelligence reports they said indicated Iraq had banned weapons; 36 percent of those polled think it did. [NewsMax... ech]

Call me crazy, but it seems to me that 36% is a huge number when the question is whether the President lied to the public to start a war. Dean and others feel that this is a very grave issue:

To put it bluntly, if Bush has taken Congress and the nation into war based on bogus information, he is cooked. Manipulation or deliberate misuse of national security intelligence data, if proven, could be "a high crime" under the Constitution's impeachment clause. It would also be a violation of federal criminal law, including the broad federal anti-conspiracy statute, which renders it a felony "to defraud the United States, or any agency thereof in any manner or for any purpose."

So, effectively, 36% of Americans believe Bush is potentially impeachable. In the mean time, though, at least he's doing a crackerjack job in Israel:

President Bush says he is going to appoint a coordinator to "ride-herd" Middle East leaders along the peace trail. You would be forgiven for not understanding what he meant. Its meaning most likely eluded the leaders from the Middle East who he was meeting. [BBC]