What many Americans don’t know is that the Bush administration was fixing the facts around the policy, not the other way around.

This past Veterans Day, President Bush made a strong charge: that Democrats criticizing his handling of the war have rewritten history.

While it’s true that many of the Democrats who are now criticizing him initially supported the war, it is Bush who should take a step back and think before he is so fast to accuse.

George W. Bush entered us into this war based on misinformation. That much we know. It’s hard to blame him for that — given the same information he had, many Democrats voted to give him full authority in dealing with Iraq.

What many Americans don’t know is that the Bush administration was fixing the facts around the policy, not the other way around.

Many of us who know what the Downing Street Memo was have since put it aside, forgetting what it really tells us. It has been over six months since it was leaked, but that doesn’t make it any less important.

To review, the memo was actually the minutes of a meeting between Tony Blair and his cabinet that was held on Downing Street in Britain at the offices of the Prime Minister.

The minutes said the Bush administration was after Iraq from the get-go, cherry-picking facts they could use to justify the invasion of Iraq. The policy, it was said, was made before all of the facts were collected.

A second item President Bush seems to forget is that, according to former anti-terrorism adviser Richard Clarke, Bush asked immediately after 9-11 to find a correlation between Iraq and al-Qaeda.

Bush asked Clarke to compile these findings, despite Clarke already telling him that there wasn’t any connection between the two. Yet Bush still sold his war to America based on the fear of al-Qaeda terrorists training in Iraq — along with the fear of a mushroom cloud.

The history behind this war in Iraq is indeed troubled. And now it is becoming even more troublesome for the Bush administration.

The Senate has now voted for monthly reports to be given on the progress of Iraq. They shouldn’t have to do that; the president should have enough character and stature to have confidence within the Senate. But this president lacks such standing.

This president lacks accountability. Far from taking any responsibility for his mismanagement of the war, he blames Democrats for rewriting history.

I do not believe they are rewriting history. They are merely changing their stance on Iraq, which I praise. If I was wrong about something, I would want to admit it. I would not want to continue pushing forward with something I know to be a lie.

This president seems to disagree, without having a single regret for his actions.

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