Dems: “We Voted to Load the Gun, Not Shoot Ourselves in the Foot”

Why aren’t Bush and Cheney begging our forgiveness for lying us into war? Hell, after the mountain of irrefutable evidence presented that they knowingly lied about the aluminum tubes, lied about the yellowcake and lied about the connection between Saddam and al Qaeda, you’d think they’d at least be a tad contrite.

Instead Bush and Cheney have ramped up into campaign attack mode. No matter how ridiculous it sounds, they and the RNC still trot out that old dog, “You Democrats saw the same intelligence we did and voted to go to war.” Please Democratic leadership come back at them hard and often. I’ve written before that you could say (if you’re looking for a snappy rejoinder), “We saw the same books, but didn’t know that the books were cooked.”

But I think you should also acknowledge that the build up to war and threatening Saddam if he didn’t allow the inspectors carte blanche were reasonable positions. Authorizing the President of the United States to use force to make a dictator comply with international law was not wrong. However the rush to war, virtually alone, the lying about the reasons to go to war, the Pollyannish assumptions about what would happen after the war, are a concatenation of mistakes, lies and blunders that have had unforgivable and bloody consequences. To that end I would urge all Senators and Congresspeople who voted to authorize the use of force in Iraq to tell the President: “We voted to load the gun, not shoot ourselves in the foot.”