You don't get to use the phrase "it may have been true" as a way to hide an outright falsehood.

It may be true that the decision to invade Iraq was partly based on faulty intelligence, that information the United States and other nations believed to be accurate regarding Saddam Hussein's intentions to develop chemical, biological and, particularly, nuclear weapons was not, in fact, accurate.

Yes, and it "may be true" that monkeys were flying out of our wingnut's butt!

We already know that the decision to invade Iraq was made long before anybody worried about WMDs. Only rubes and liars still cling to the story about "faulty intelligence". Indeed, we've already known for a couple years that the CIA had good intel saying that

a) there was no link between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda

b) Iraq's WMD program was non existent.

(see James Risen's book for details.)

Problem is that Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld had already decided to invade. So they ignored the good intel and put people in place to stovepipe up reports telling them what they wanted to hear. This later became the "faulty intel" that rubes like our anonymous wingnut use as a pathetic excuse for Bush.

Bush may have been incorrect, but that is different by many degrees from engaging in a deliberate falsehood, as more than a few historians now believe occurred with President Lyndon Johnson following the Gulf of Tonkin incident, which led to a major increase in the U.S. commitment to the defense of South Vietnam.

More than a few historians believe Bush was deliberately lying.

And really, "I know you are but what am I" only works when Pee Wee Herman says it.

As a liberal who thinks LBJ's legacy will always be tarnished by Vietnam, my jaw drops at this tactic. The only way Bush compares to LBJ is that he did the worst thing LBJ did, but did it to a greater extent. And that's a defense??

Salon, please stop this "feature"! Why does this anonymous wingnut deserve anonymity?

Why is Gallup playing along with the Bushian newspeak?

"Harsh interrogations" are not illegal. Torture is.

It's not useful or informative for a polling firm to play along with a propaganda campaign. Isn't the purpose of polling to find out what people actually think?

I thought conservative American Catholics spoke for all Catholics!

Isn't that what Dobson and his ilk keep telling us?

Why is the Democratic leadership not concerned about the backlash from their own constituents, who want Gitmo closed?

Apparently her job is to not do anything.

I didn't see the word "evolution" mentioned in his answer.

Look, when you talk about science, you have to accept all of the implications.

The so-called missile defense system is not science. It's engineering. And the discussion of it shows exactly what is backward about the wingnut's understanding of science. The wingnut approaches the subject already knowing what the answer is supposed to be. Evidence to the contrary (like two and a half decades of failures) are rejected in favor of dogma.

A similar dissonance is apparent on the subject of climate change. In spite of the fact that the widespread consensus of actual scientists contends that human activity is causing global warming, the wingnut has the chutzpah to offer up his narrow understanding of the topic as evidence of science, while the body of work represents "global climate change extremists".

See, if somebody disagrees with his pre-set thinking, that person must be an "extremist".

As for the NIH, it's really sad to see that the credit for the increase in spending is given to Newt Gingrich, the man who closed the Office of Technology Assessment because he, like our wingnut, thought his own half-assed understanding of science was better than what actual professionals in the field might tell him.

When the topic of the NIH budget is discussed, we might as well give credit to President Clinton as Gingrich. But the truth is that it's not like anybody was opposed to incresing the NIH budget at the time.

For that kind of anti-science attitude, we would have to wait for George W. Bush, who froze the NIH budget in recent years, not even allowing for growth based on inflation.

But I have to get back to evolution. Evolution, even more than climate change or stem cell research, is the one issue where the conservatives embarrass themselves time and time again. They pander to anti-intellectual creationists while endorsing the notion that scientific "theories" that were discarded centuries ago need to be taught as if they were on an equal footing with evolution.