So the tactic du jour from the White House regarding the war is to say, “Congress– and the Clinton administration — had access to the same intelligence. And the Israelis, the French…. Why, Democrats voted for the war.” I hear this every day now, which I guess is the idea. The more I hear it, though, certain aspects of its core begin to come into focus like one of those hidden eye images:

• Isn’t it interesting that all of these other countries and presidents were seeing the same things Bush saw, but none of them tried to go to war after seeing them? I’m not sure I would be bringing that up right now. “Both Clinton and I saw what kind of threat Saddam was, but only I marched in there to confiscate his nothing. Clinton was too preoccupied with his handjobs and his eight straight years of economic growth. Why, he acted as though Saddam was no WMD threat at all.”
• As for the findings of the crack French intelligence squad, didn’t you just spend two years telling me those guys were a bunch of idiots? After all that ‘freedom fry’ crap, are you really going to come to me now and tell me the French thought Saddam was the Deathbringer? Is that the actual implication being made?
• For that matter, as long as we’re bringing up who said what before the war, I seem to recall hearing Colin Powell, Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld, and Condi Rice all spending the years before the war saying over and over again that Saddam Hussein was a harmless old crank who was no threat to us. Did I imagine that? No, it seems I did not.
• As for Democrats (or anyone else) voting “for the war,” I don’t recall anyone getting an up-or-down, yes-or-no vote on the war. I do remember people voting on giving the president the authority to use force as a last resort, after every other option had been thoroughly tried and exhausted, but I may have been confused by the warmongering French.
• Just for the sake of bringing logic briefly back from vacation: even if half the Democrats do vote for your mischief, that doesn’t make your mischief right.