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Thus, Mr. Gore maintains, we were all under the "false impression" that Saddam Hussein was "on the verge of building nuclear bombs," that he was "about to give the terrorists poison gas and deadly germs," that he was partly responsible for the 9/11 attacks. And because of these "false impressions," the nation didn't conduct a proper debate about the war.
What isn't persuasive, or even very smart politically, is to pretend to have been fooled by what Mr. Gore breathlessly calls the Bush "systematic effort to manipulate facts in service to a totalistic ideology."
Today:
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Perhaps even more disturbing than the administration's indifference to the truth or falsity of the various claims it made before the war is the fact that it seemed to believe its own propaganda. President Bush and Vice President Cheney really thought that if they wished it, it would come -- "it" in this case being not only a quick victory in the war but also a rapid rallying of Iraqis to the American standard afterward.
Perhaps even more disturbing than the Post's indifference to the truth or falsity of the various claims it makes about Al Gore is the fact that it seems to believe its own propaganda.
UPDATE: Silly me, for some reason I managed to miss that the latter was an EJ Dionne column. Never Post Before Coffee.