Some Welcome Honesty

Writing in the LA Times, the New Republic's James Kirchik rebuts the leftist rallying cry that President Bush "lied" us into war. Discussing the Senate Intelligence Committee report that was recently issued -- and from whose production Republican staffers were barred -- Kirchick observes:

Rockefeller's highly partisan report does not substantiate its most explosive claims. Rockefeller, for instance, charges that "top administration officials made repeated statements that falsely linked Iraq and Al Qaeda as a single threat and insinuated that Iraq played a role in 9/11." Yet what did his report actually find? That Iraq-Al Qaeda links were "substantiated by intelligence information." The same goes for claims about Hussein's possession of biological and chemical weapons, as well as his alleged operation of a nuclear weapons program.

Facts are inconvenient things. But there's no denying that many Democrats have chosen the most dishonorable way to explain away their once full-throated support for a war that has grown unpopular. Kudos to Kirchick for trying to set the record straight.