Recapping -- and regular readers know the key points, but they bear repeating until we make a damn full-blown federal case out of it -- Bush's own advisors consider him a tool, and are stunningly clear on the point. Iraq was on the drawing board for these people at least five years before 9/11. And that the WMD rationale was exaggerated "for bureaucratic reasons," in Wolfowitz's already-notorious words, leading Powell to present the U.N. with documents later shown to be plagiarized and forged, is now public record.

Bush's own statements on matters essential to our national security (e.g. the alleged proof of Saddam's involvement in WMDs and 9/11) are no better, contradicting all current evidence with soul-numbing constance.

And since the GOP itself taught us that deception is sufficient cause, there's one conclusion: the cooking of the books to make this war happen absolutely should be an impeachment-level scandal.

Tony Blair faces a fresh crisis over Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction, as evidence emerges that two vehicles that he has repeatedly claimed to be Iraqi mobile biological warfare production units are nothing of the sort.

The intelligence agency MI6, British defence officers and technical experts from the Porton Down microbiological research establishment have been ordered to conduct an urgent review of the mobile facilities, following US analysis which casts serious doubt on whether they really are germ labs.

The British review comes amid widespread doubts expressed by scientists on both sides of the Atlantic that the trucks could have been used to make biological weapons.

President George W. Bush has got a very serious problem. Before asking Congress for a Joint Resolution authorizing the use of American military forces in Iraq, he made a number of unequivocal statements about the reason the United States needed to pursue the most radical actions any nation can undertake - acts of war against another nation.

Now it is clear that many of his statements appear to be false. In the past, Bush's White House has been very good at sweeping ugly issues like this under the carpet, and out of sight. But it is not clear that they will be able to make the question of what happened to Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) go away - unless, perhaps, they start another war.

...

Readers may not recall exactly what President Bush said about weapons of mass destruction; I certainly didn't. Thus, I have compiled these statements below. In reviewing them, I saw that he had, indeed, been as explicit and declarative as I had recalled.

That the supremely confident vice president even felt the need, in a room full of loyal Republican officials, to reassert that the administration wasn't lying is an acknowledgment that the as yet undiscovered WMD is emerging as a major problem, even if polls indicate that a majority of Americans still don't seem to care.