<President Bush, speaking to the nation this month about the need to challenge Saddam Hussein, warned that Iraq has a growing fleet of unmanned aircraft that could be used “for missions targeting the United States.”

There are currently any number of American military targets in range of these planes, even if the continental U.S. isnt. And Israel is certainly in range. Whether or not Bush misspoke or didn't know about the range, these planes are a threat.

As for the nuclear issue, other sources, including Iraqi nuclear scientists, said that Saddam was within six months of building a nuclear weapon when the Gulf War interrupted in 1991. He's had a lot of time since then. You can take that with whatever grain of salt you like.

And if the worst they can come up with is that bit about the radiation detectors, or using industry figures instead of independent government ones, well, gosh.

Presidential embroidery is, of course, a hoary tradition. Ronald Reagan was known for his apocryphal story about liberating a concentration camp. Bill Clinton fibbed famously and under oath about his personal indiscretions to keep a step ahead of Whitewater prosecutors. Richard M. Nixon had his Watergate denials, and Lyndon B. Johnson was often accused of stretching the truth to put the best face on the Vietnam War. Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy, too, played with the truth during the Gary Powers and Bay of Pigs episodes.



"Everybody makes mistakes when they open their mouths and we forgive them," Brookings Institution scholar Stephen Hess said. Some of Bush’s overstatements appear to be off-the-cuff mistakes. But, Hess said, "what worries me about some of these is they appear to be with foresight. This is about public policy in its grandest sense, about potential wars and who is our enemy, and a president has a special obligation to getting it right."



So only Bush is held to account here. The rest are "forgiven." Apparently none of the other Presidents were dealing with "public policy in its grandest sense," whatever the hell that means.

What is obvious here is that Bush's enemies are really reaching for something to hang on him. Heck, the DNC blows enough smoke out of its ass every day to give Mount Vesuvius an inferiority complex, and this doesn't seem to bother anyone.