Brother, can you spare some credibility?

It might be useful to take a moment to note whom the administration is quoting to lend credibility to their misadventure in Iraq:

Echoing Bush's stance that the administration was not alone in believing Iraq posed a threat, Rumsfeld quoted former President Bill Clinton and senior Clinton administration officials as warning in 1998 that then-Iraqi President Saddam Hussein planned to use weapons of mass destruction.

Rumsfeld also quoted then-Vice President Al Gore as saying later that year that "if you get someone like Saddam Hussein to get nuclear weapons, ballistic missiles, chemical weapons, biological weapons, how many people is he going to kill with such weapons?"

It appears that Bush's handlers finally realize that nobody in the administration has any credibility, so they decided to support the administration's position by citing people who aren't considered serial liars -- their political opponents. "If Clinton and Gore said it, you know it must be true" is an interesting and apparently desperate strategy. Maybe asking Clinton or Gore to appear publicly with Bush is their next move.

It also might be useful to the administration if we overlook the fact that Clinton said what he did "after he ordered limited military action against Iraq in response to Baghdad's decision to expel U.N. weapons inspectors." Of course, U.N. weapons inspectors were in Iraq again before Bush invaded, and left only because they knew the invasion was immiment.

And, by the way, they didn't find any weapons of mass destruction.

So even when they're trying to set the record straight, administration officials are misleading the American public. That's the thing about cherry-picking information to support a predetermined conclusion: Once you start, it's a hard habit to break.