More Truth from the Strib

Here:

Bush is wrong. He's trying to spin what Cheney said. It's true that the vice president didn't come right out and say the Iraq-Sept. 11 link exists. But he certainly implied it in ever so many ways. He said he wasn't surprised that 70 percent of the American people believe the link exists. He said, "We don't know" if there is a link, when he could and should have said, "We have no evidence of such a link." That would have been so much more honest.

Cheney also said that success in Iraq would strike a blow at the "geographic base" of the terrorists behind Sept. 11, a statement that left people asking, "Huh?" He was clearly trying to have it both ways: avoid an explicit statement that could be proven wrong while still spinning the question with all he had -- which was very little.

Defenders of the administration want to label those who have doubts about the truthfulness of the White House as "liberals" or "anti-American" or "unpatriotic." Those labels are just so much name-calling. There's nothing liberal or conservative, unpatriotic or anti-American about being upset that those who hold the highest offices in the land somehow find it impossible to level with the American people on such serious matters as national security and foreign policy.

If lies about private, consensual, albeit adulterous, sex can bring the impeachment of a president, it's not remotely wrong to raise questions about misstatements on issues that go to the very survival of this nation