What You Saw When You Voted

Seems like it was just yesterday, Bush was saying:

Some of the most irresponsible comments - about manipulating intelligence - have come from politicians who saw the same intelligence I saw and then voted to authorize the use of force against Saddam Hussein, These charges are pure politics.

Whoops! It was yesterday! Ha ha ha ha ha! What a difference a day makes, eh? Because today from Knight Ridder, we have:

WASHINGTON - President Bush and top administration officials have access to a much broader range of intelligence reports than members of Congress do, a nonpartisan congressional research agency said in a report Thursday, raising questions about recent assertions by the president.
...
The Congressional Research Service, by contrast, said: "The president, and a small number of presidentially designated Cabinet-level officials, including the vice president ... have access to a far greater overall volume of intelligence and to more sensitive intelligence information, including information regarding intelligence sources and methods."
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The CRS report identified nine key U.S. intelligence "products" that aren't generally shared with Congress. These include the President's Daily Brief, a compilation of analyses that's given only to the president and a handful of top aides, and a daily digest on terrorism-related matters.

Surprisingly, the White House refused to comment on the issue.

We can only hope some fightin' Dems come out tomorrow with plenty to say.

That last statement is crucial: "We can only hope..." The Dems still have to step up to these challenges. Here we've got a president who has completely been turned around by John McCain from saying he'd Veto an anti-torture bill to actually endorsing a version of it; it has been uncovered that he began spying on American citizens in America's borders; seemingly every branch of conservative support is under threat of indictment or investigation; and nearly every facet of The Administration's go-to promotable policy, the war on terror and the war in Iraq, have been exposed as corrupt, visionless, enacted with poor intelligence at worst and manipulated intelligence at best. Absolutely every justification given for the war has fallen away as incorrect or irrelevent. Every attempt the President has made to say that Democrats were involved in his awful decision making in the lead up has been exposed as a sham.

This is a Presidency that, at the moment, seems to be corroding from the inside unlike what we thought was possible. The Democrats still have yet to propose an alternative and still have yet to fully capitalize on this. They're not a viable alternative party at this point- they're still confused as to what people want them to do- they need to work it out - we've got to figure out how to communicate the needs of this country to them again...

It needs to happen...