I realize that a lot of ground was covered in Bush's press conference yesterday. But his repeating of the absurd twin claims that Iraq hadn't "disclosed" and hadn't disarmed (not to mention the claim of having "denied" the inspectors) as his central justification for going to war even though "no President wants war" surely warranted comment. You'd think. The New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and San Francisco Chronicle didn't agree; not one of them mentioned it.

Jim VandeHei writing in the Washington Post even added his own rewriting of history to Bush's:

Moments later, [Bush] said the reason U.S. forces went to Iraq was to "make sure we didn't allow people to provide safe haven to an enemy." Since the invasion, Bush has emphasized different rationales for the Iraq invasion, such as the need to topple a dangerous dictator and to eliminate weapons of mass destruction, which have yet to be found.

Not only does VandeHei not point out that the "not providing safe haven" reason was primarily a "post-facto" reason, and only a secondary issue advanced by Bush before the war, he makes the astonishing claim that the need to eliminate WMD was a rationale that Bush has emphasized "since the invasion." Perhaps he needs to reread Bush's address to the nation on March 19, 2003, which began: "American and coalition forces are in the early stages of military operations to disarm Iraq, to free its people and to defend the world from grave danger." Or his statement of March 17, 2003, which began "For more than a decade, the United States and other nations have pursued patient and honorable efforts to disarm the Iraqi regime without war," and continued "Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised." Or his statement of March 16: "The dictator of Iraq and his weapons of mass destruction are a threat to the security of free nations."

"Disarming" Iraq (in quotes since it was impossible to disarm an already disarmed country) was the reason the U.S. "officially" went to war. U.N. Resolution 1441, on which the U.S. based its completely invalid "legal" claim for the invasion, talks about only one thing - disarming Iraq of WMD. It doesn't talk about safe havens, or "toppling dangerous dictators," or anything of the sort. Only disarmament.