Responding to a restrained rant

Mark Evanier writes:

I haven't written anything political here for a little while because every time I try, things quickly descend into the Painfully Obvious. Does anyone not know that Bush is in trouble? That the torture scandal is a no-win game for him?

Actually, yes. The conservative Bush-supporters don't know any of that, or they're pretending they don't, which isn't much better from my POV. They think Bush's troubles are just bad press, and they're trying like mad to win the torture scandal game for him.

Mark goes on to say something similar to what I've said here about not understanding how "Bush is an idiot" is a defense against "Bush is a liar." Then:

But I also don't get why Democrats keep harping on this "lie" thing and saying he "misled us into war." Some people will buy that it was deliberate but others will write it off to good intentions and bad sources, and we shouldn't tolerate that, either. Seems to me, Democrats would be better off (and perhaps more accurate) saying, "Our Iraq policies have been a mixture of faulty intelligence, misleading intelligence, cherry-picked intelligence and intelligence slanted to justify what this administration already intended to do. It doesn't matter how much of this was done intentionally. None of these are acceptable, especially when sending Americans off to war."

I think it's the "keep it simple, stupid" rule, myself. Lying or misleading us into war is so basic that almost anyone can understand it. Especially since the Republicans don't seem to be able to make a very convincing case that it's not what happened.

If Democrats said something like what Mark suggests, well, I agree with almost every word of it but I fell asleep halfway through the sentence. And I think most Americans would, as well. I also worry that once we get into "cherry-picked" and "slanted" instead of "lied" and "misled" we're doing that thing that George Carlin has done jokes about: Using language to separate ourselves from the reality of a situation.

Also, like a lot of Democrats, I'll admit I get some joy out of shoving the word "lie"--which is what Republicans claimed impeaching my president was about--down their throats. I also think it does matter how much of it was done intentionally, but that doesn't mean any of it is acceptable if it wasn't.

ETA: Kevin Drum asks

Did the Bush administration mislead the country during the runup to the Iraq war? It's true that they turned out to be wrong about a great many things, but that doesn't answer the question. It merely begs it. Were they sincerely wrong, or did they intentionally manipulate the intelligence they presented to the public in order to mask known weaknesses in their case?

The case for manipulation is pretty strong. It relies on several things, but I think the most important of them has been the discovery that the administration deliberately suppressed dissenting views on some of the most important pieces of evidence that they used to bolster their case for war.