EJ Dionne has got to be kidding

I can’t believe he had the nerve to write this:

The bad faith of Bush’s current argument is staggering. He wants to say that the “more than a hundred Democrats in the House and Senate” who “voted to support removing Saddam Hussein from power” thereby gave up their right to question his use of intelligence forever after. But he does not want to acknowledge that he forced the war vote to take place under circumstances that guaranteed the minimum amount of reflection and debate, and that opened anyone who dared question his policies to charges, right before an election, that they were soft on Hussein.

By linking the war on terrorism to a partisan war against Democrats, Bush undercut his capacity to lead the nation in this fight. And by resorting to partisan attacks again last week, Bush only reminded us of the shameful circumstances in which the whole thing started.

Dionne would have you believe that the Democrats were intimidated into voting yea or nea on invading Iraq in 2002, before the elections.

Good lord, that is disingenous – I’m no history student, but even I recall that during the Summer of 2002 the Democrats were clamoring for a vote, were INSISTING on a vote on Iraq before the war, because they wanted it on record that they were FOR it.

Next, perhaps Dionne will suggest that President Bush handed them scripts to read during the Democrat’s stirring admonishments against Saddam.

Seems like Dionne and his ilk are going to be keeping the GOP busy making videotapes to refute their bold and craven attempts to literally re-write history, and how things were before the invasion. After this video has run its course, the GOP will have to make another one, showing one Democrat after another – on all the Sabbath Gasbag shows – saying, “we need to hold this vote…”

Dionne needs to stop making it up as he goes along, and it does not exactly serve the Democrats to make them look like they are completely mindless, “forced into voting as they would not have if only the elections were not looming”…all it does is make them look politically expedient and shallow. Ahem.

UPDATE: Ponnuru concurs: DIONNE REFIGHTS 2002
E. J. Dionne Jr. thinks it was “shameful” to force congressional Democrats to vote on Iraq before the 2002 elections. The poor things were “intimidated” into voting for the war. So: Democrats spent the summer of 2002 demanding a vote. Once their wish was granted, they were forced to vote for a war they thought was against the national interest. Forced, that is, to sacrifice those interests and the lives of American service members in order to win re-election. But it’s Bush’s conduct that was “shameful.”