Saddam Was Ready to Bomb Washington!

At least that's what the Bush White House told the Senate in a confidential briefing just before they voted to authorize the military take-over of Iraq.

That's right: not only was Saddam Hussein in league with al-Quaeda (oops, there's no actual evidence of that, and it never made sense anyway), not only did he have weapons of mass destruction ready to use (oops, turns out there's no sign of them, and the fact that he never used them suggests he never got them built), but he had unmanned drone aircraft capable of delivering those weapons to the east coast of the USA (oops, there's no such thing to be found anywhere in Iraq)!

Hell, if I'd been given this information (without the parenthetical hindsight), even I might have voted to authorize an invasion, on the grounds that Iraq posed a clear and present danger to American soil. But it was all (at best) low-probability speculation, and (at worst) a pack of impeachable lies to the U.S. Congress. There wasn't actually enough there to issue a search warrant, let alone a declaration of war.

Now, I'm not quite ready to let Congress off the hook for going along with Bush's invasion. But the revelation of just how badly Bush deceived them about the situation does give them "cover" if they want to turn around and admit that it was a mistake. They can use the excuse that they were lied to, rather than admitting that they caved in to political pressure, public hysteria, or whatever. Let the backpedaling begin. The sooner the better.