There's been a subtle change in the White House message lately. George W. Bush has begun speaking about being certain we'll find an Iraqi weapons program.

Finding Iraqi weapons of mass destruction proved to be difficult for a couple of reasons. They haven't existed in any threatening quantity in the past few years. The incompetent attempts by the Bush government to facilitate the manufacture of evidence for their existence have been a failure.

The Bush government's PR strategy is admirable in that it is breathtakingly bold. It depends to a high degree on adaptability, and it shows a high dependence on flexibility. These are the qualities that made the successful early armored thrusts of the German army so distinctive in World War II.

Rather than construct set-piece PR campaigns, the Bush government notion is to throw a number of tactics at the wall, see what sticks and go with that. If the facts aren't there, it doesn't matter. Shout them down. If confronted with obvious evidence that the facts don't support their assertions, throw the assertions themselves into the memory hole and attempt to change the original assertions.

Those of us with functioning memories can go all the way back to fall of 2002 and remember that the Bush government repeatedly stated that Iraq was an imminent threat to the United States because of its weapons of mass destruction and only war could end its threat to these shores.

It was repeatedly stated that we had plenty of evidence, and that the threat was so great that the United States had to use violence immediately to destroy it.

But now, those of us who had dared doubt that a desperately poor third world country, under constant attack by the world's greatest military power would choose to invade the U.S. home territory or attack it with chemical weapons, have been proved correct.

The Axis of Good has proven incompetent at manufacturing believable evidence (the Nigerian nuclear documents and British Prime Minister Tony Blair's plagiarized "dossiers").

However, the Bush government has proven very competent at infuriating its own intelligence service, thus ensuring a steady supply of embarrassing leaks.

So what to do? It's simple. It's nuance. It's adaptive. The first strategy is to announce, with the means of the television and the right-wing talk radio echo chambers, that weapons of mass destruction were never that big a deal. This war was all about liberation. We're the Axis of Good -- we free oppressed people. It's just what we do.

Unfortunately for that particular marketing campaign, the Iraqi people have an unusual way of showing their gratitude. It's almost as though every ambush, every rocket-propelled grenade, every sullen look from the street says, "You are invaders. Get out of our country."

So that's not going to work, and we're back to answering questions about the non-existence of weapons of mass destruction.

The Bush government chooses to handle it with nuance. Manufacturing physical evidence can be tricky. Experts can be brought in and show that items have been faked. How much more elegant to change the emphasis slightly. We'll find a weapons of mass destruction program.

Turns out that's easy to do, because all anyone has to do is find a few poor, scared scientists and bureaucrats and offer them the right combinations of threats and money. It's even easier when the administration controls the printing presses that churn out Iraqi dinar (even if they do still bear Saddam's portrait).

Suddenly, there can be piles of testimony that "prove" that Iraq under Saddam had a weapons of mass destruction program. There's just one problem: That's not the reason the U.S. taxpayers and the Congress were told that they were going to invade a sovereign nation. Ninety billion dollars later, there are 10,000 to 20,000 people who are now dead as a result.

There was no imminent threat. Which means we went to war under false circumstances. Which means we were lied to -- repeatedly. In a true constitutional government, lying is, and should be, an impeachable offense.

Are we up to it?

Norman Read lives in Seattle.

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