In an interview with Wolf Blitzer, Senate intelligence committee chairman Pat Roberts, R-Kansas repeated the Saddam-refused-inspections lie:

"But, in regards to Saddam Hussein, if in fact he didn't have them, why on earth didn't he let the U.N. inspectors in and avoid the war? That is a real puzzlement to me."

This is the same senator who refuses to investigate the illegal warrantless spying on Americans by this president.

Blitzer, of course, let this slide by without challenge. (http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0401/25/le.00.html)

It should be noted that this press continues to carry water for this president even after the president attacks them for the bad news out of Iraq. Contemptible.

I felt sick listening to that press conference on NPR. The White House press corps, chuckling at every lame attempt at humoring them that comes out of the president's mouth, seems to pride itself that they are finally asking "tough questions." But the only real tough questions came from Helen Thomas, and the answer she was given was a spew of bullshit. I am not an expert on these matters, but when Bush told his like about the weapons inspectors, I was screaming at my radio. Given that no reporter is allowed a follow-up question, why didn't someone back Thomas up and ask one? Why didn't someone ask the president if he'd ever heard of Hans Blix? Are they all so intent on asking their own pre-decided question that they can't see an opening and run with it?

Afterwards, the main story the media told about the conference was that Bush seemed to enjoy the "spirited debate," when actually he sounded petulant and pissy. Bush had also said, indirectly, that the troops would be in Iraq in 2008 and beyond, and this was seen as a newsflash to the dimwits with microphones.

The press is incompetent, which is frightening enough, but what is really terrifying is that it honestly seems to think it's doing a good job. It is like President Bush in that regard.

Why does the president get away with such "lies?" In part because they're grounded in just enough actual truth that his critics look stupid when they accuse him of "lying." There were, in fact, enough instances of interference or hindrance of weapons inspectors here and there that Bush can indeed credibly claim that Saddam "chose not to disclose" something or other. That's not an excuse for war, of course, nor is it the whole story, and the whole affair was a bungled joke since 1991, but part of that bungling consisted of liberals and Democrats who couldn't get a coherent and credible message out, and still can't.

Here's a hint, Mr. Conason: focus on present-day mismanagement and malfeasance, not on "winning" last year's moot arguments. You'll sound more relevant that way.

Did Saddam 'deny the inspectors'? In the most technical sense, he did. Saddam was not 100% compliant every day at every site. This is how Bush gets away with misleading the public, he wraps a blatantly false premise which conveys his message around a miniscule piece of the truth.

We can endlessly debate the logics and semantics of this but I think the simplest thing to do is look at the intent and effect of Bush's rhetoric. Bush's obvious intent is to lead his audience to a conclusion not supported by the facts. Ergo, he is a best a spin doctor.

Personally, I'm not inclined to give him the benefit of being labelled a spin doctor. Listening to his other Iraq rhetoric, how many times have we heard Bush say something along the lines of, "We were attacked on 9/11, so we had to do something about Saddam Hussein." He doesn't state outright that Saddam was behind 9/11, which we know to be untrue, but his implication is clear. As a result, we have a bizarre reality where 20-30% of the American public believes Saddam was behind 9/11 but Bush can claim he never directly linked the two.

In Bush's mind, it may not be a lie at all, because he may have been told by his "trusted advisers" that Saddam refused to allow the inspectors in.

Cheney/Wolfowitz/etc. could have easily fed this to the President. He would believe that this was true since he never reads the newspapers or hears opposing views. And this would make his resolve even more "steely" since it makes an excellent justification, whether or not it is actually true.

As long as it fits his simple world-view...

Given Conason's article and the occasional rightist defense among the responding letters, I think there's a further question of significant interest: where do these vague, repeated phrases come from?

Bush himself does not seem to be a calculating off-the-cuff verbalist. In accord with this, he tends to fall back on the same repertory of phrases, or close to, again and again, as Conason's quotes show.

So there's got to be someone back there inside the apparatus, concocting and assaying the phraseology. One imagines intense debate:

--"Is this a lie?"

--"No, because under some non-obvious parse, it can be assigned a metaphorical reading under which it is nearly true."

-- "OK. Start the POTUS on his training schedule."

Or so one imagines. But there literally must be something like this going on, with real people, real training sessions and so on. Who are they? When do they take place? This would seem to be an important aspect of understanding how the administration functions.

Among all the falsehhoods of this maladministration, these have nearly driven me to distraction. The fact that Bush -- "leader of the free world" and commander-in-chief of the most powerful military force in the history of the world -- had twice, in public, in the presence of foreign dignitaries, uttered these statements without any consequences, without any evidence that the media and other national leaders were troubled (or even that very many of them had noticed)was simply intolerable. It's also frustrating beyond belief that we the people have allowed this man to be so completely insulated withint his cocoon, that even compulsive news junkies who are far better informed than the public at large simply have no way of knowing whether this was the most blatant of lies or the most conclusive evidence of criminal negligence imaginable. Not that it matters, really. But thank you for the documentation. I was beginning to wonder if I had imagined this.

And I am completely serious about my inability to determine if Bush lied. Of course I know that he has lied, will lie, and feels entitled to lie if it seems convenient to him. But we also know, from the Downing Street memo and other sources, that Bush was hoping to provoke Sadaam into providing an excuse for the invasion that had been decided upon in advance. I think the inference is inescapable that Bush hoped that Sadaam would not let the U.N. inspectors into Iraq. Is he so out of touch that he never knew what was going on? I don't buy that. But I do wonder if his ingrained habits of self-justification are so strong that he quickly came to believe that what he had wished for -- Sadaam defying the demand to let inspectors in -- was what had actually happened.

Surely even at this late hour it is possible for some Republican politicans who used to have integrity, used to believe the nostrums about putting the country above all else, used to have some principles, to rise to the defense of the Constitution and of real national security and rein in this horror show. Can't any of them see that stopping the Cheney cabal is necessary to avoid multiplying the calamaties we have already produced?

IMPEACH CHENEY FIRST.