The Prez hit the stump again today to lash out at war critics in a vain attempt to regain some credibility and pull up his poll ratings which have sunk below 40%. Here's the kernel of his speech:

While it's perfectly legitimate to criticize my decision or the conduct of the war, it is deeply irresponsible to rewrite the history of how that war began. Some Democrats and anti-war critics are now claiming we manipulated the intelligence and misled the American people about why we went to war. These critics are fully aware that a bipartisan Senate investigation found no evidence of political pressure to change the intelligence community's judgments related to Iraq's weapons programs.

Here's the problem: While Bush claims that a "bipartisan Senate investigation found no evidence of political pressure" the truth that so-called bipartisan investigation run by Sen. Pat Roberts of Kansas has yet to even investigate the motivation that might or might not have lead to faulty intelligence. This is the so-called Phase II of the investigation which, until recently, Mr. Roberts was stonewalling saying there wasn't really anything to investigate. That was until Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid forced the Senate to meet in a closed session to compel discussion of Phase II.

So either the President is less aware of events in Congress than I (hard to believe) or he's lying again to cover more lies. It's sad and pathetic and I'd be laughing at him if I didn't feel that this president is responsible for irreparable harm to the country.

Here's the always interesting take of the Rude Pundit:

If this is the opening salvo in a fight to regain the credibility Bush has lost, it was limp, like when you've had too much cocaine and you've told the hooker you paid good money for that you're gonna fuck her so hard she'll forget every other john she's ever fucked, but after you drop your pants you realize you can't get it up any more and you just end up flaccidly slapping the hooker in her face with your dangling dick until she just gets tired and leaves. What's more pathetic? That you couldn't get it up? That you had to hire the hooker? Or that the hooker got bored with your limp prick?

The best Bush could offer was the same shit he's been flingin' since the campaign: "Hey, Democrats said I could go to war." In other words, Congress gave him the cocked gun; blame them if he shoots it. He pronounced that "Congress approved with strong bipartisan support" the authority for Bush to wage war, and that now it's "irresponsible to rewrite the history of how the war began." Which is odd, since Senator Jay Rockefeller and now John Edwards are saying not that their votes for the war didn't happen, but that they were wrong. That ain't revisionism. It's an apology for a grave error, a way of saying let's find out why we made such a stupid decision. Bush continued the lie that Congress saw the "same intelligence" that he saw, even quoting John Kerry (who he would not name) about the vote for the war. It's his last fig leaf before his tiny, raisinette balls are revealed.