I agree that the Democrats will need to find something else to run on, but that's not the issue for me in this case.

"The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

If, as you say, all intelligence is guesswork, the accurate way to put this is: "The British government has guessed that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." Not as powerful, but considerably less misleading. Would we have gone to war based on a guess? Would Mr. Bush have predicated his desire to topple Saddam on humanitarian reasons alone, and succeeded, had he not chosen to base his appeal on guesswork that is now beginning to appear feeble?

The Congressional Record is, I reiterate, an official document and is preserved forever. It's a significant, though not pristine, source. Are you suggesting that, because the Congressional Record has been edited for PR purposes, and because speeches are entered into it so they can be "on the Record" even though they were never delivered from the floor, that it's OK to fudge on the State of the Union Address?

Re: lying vs. mistakes:

In Libraryland we have a little limbo called "Claims Returned". Sometimes people are absolutely certain they have returned an item, but we can't find it. Sometimes they are mistaken, and find it later, and sometimes it turns up in a transit bin from another library or put on the shelf without having cleared the operating system properly. These are all honest mistakes which we chalk up to human error, and are not considered lies. However, if our number of "Claims Returned" entries rises to a significant level, or spikes on particular days, we will look into our operations and training, and review who has been working at Circ. If a particular patron has a large number of "Claims Returned" items of which we find no trace after a diligent search, we begin to suspect that person of carelessness at least, and possibly of larceny. Their privilege is rescinded, because our trust in their ability and willingness to uphold their end of the contract has been compromised.

I don't think that Mr. Bush set out to lie in the State of the Union Address. I don't think he's that brazen. However, my suspicious nature, tutored by experience, has been alerted by the exaggerations and mistakes. A certain number of mistakes can be chalked up to honest human error, but after one reaches a critical level, the question must be raised: How many mistakes constitute a pattern of at least carelessness, and possibly something more?