The transcript from President Bush’s speech yesterday at the Woodrow Wilson Center indicates, here and there, that the president got “applause.” If so, it can only have been for sheer effrontery. Take this:

When a unanimous Security Council gave [Saddam] one final chance to disclose and disarm, or face serious consequences, he refused to comply with that final opportunity. At any point along the way, Saddam Hussein could have avoided war by complying with the just demands of the international community. The United States did not choose war -- the choice was Saddam Hussein's.

Now, how exactly could Saddam have avoided war? By ridding himself of weapons that he didn’t have? Iraq delivered a massive volume, tens of thousands of pages of documents, detailing everything about its nonexistent WMD program to the UN in December, 2002. He allowed UN inspectors access to every nook and cranny of the country. I think we know which party chose war.

Or this:

It is true that much of the intelligence turned out to be wrong. As President, I'm responsible for the decision to go into Iraq -- and I'm also responsible for fixing what went wrong by reforming our intelligence capabilities. And we're doing just that.

Well, that’s easy. To find out what went wrong, Mr. Bush, ask your vice president, who pressured the CIA to find what couldn’t be found, namely, Iraq’s WMD. Again and again, Cheney insisted that the CIA go back and sift the same data. Or ask Rummy, whose Feith-based intelligence shop cherry-picked tidbits to support the obsessive desire to go to war.

Or this nonsense:

[The terrorists’] stated objective is to drive the United States and coalition forces out of the Middle East so they can gain control of Iraq and use that country as a base from which to launch attacks against America, overthrow moderate governments in the Middle East, and establish a totalitarian Islamic empire that stretches from Spain to Indonesia.

That may be their stated objective. But the Symbionese Liberation Army that kidnapped Patty Hearst believed it could create a new Symbionese state on the ruins of America, too. Does Bush actually think he can scare America with the specter of some imaginary Evil Caliphate? Oh, right. He does.