The High Cost of Bush's Iraq Gambit

Most Americans who have followed the twists and turns of the Iraq War would agree that George W. Bush misled the nation into the conflict with false claims about WMD and Saddam Hussein's links to al-Qaeda. But it's less understood that Bush never stopped deceiving the public.

Indeed, one of President Bush's favorite lines -- telling the American people to listen to what the enemy says and thus to know that al-Qaeda considers Iraq the "central front" in the "war on terror" -- has been every bit as misleading as his earlier false assertions about WMD.