Yeah, Eric Alterman is pretty much a snob. But when he's right, he's very right:

This is total and complete nonsense. There can be no argument that Bush misled the country and the world. Iraq had no nuclear program to speak of, sought no nuclear weapons parts in Niger, and apparently did not have any so-called “weapons of mass destruction” either. It also appears to have had no significant relations with al-Qaida. Since Bush claimed to know each and every one of these things, and managed to convince much of the country of them in order to sell his war, only two possibilities exist: Either he (and Rice, and Rummy, and Wolfie, and Tenet, and Powell) was just making the stuff up or he did not have “a thorough body of intelligence, good, solid, sound intelligence,” and was, in fact, honestly misled by a “thorough body of intelligence, bad, groundless, unsound, intelligence.”

The words “I take personal responsibility for everything I say, of course” constitute perhaps the single most obvious lie the president has yet told; it would take me pages and pages to enumerate all of the areas in which this president refuses to take responsibility for what he says and does — which is why I’m lucky to be co-authoring a book on the topic. But what of the White House press corps? They simply nod their heads at this nonsense and move on to the next topic, as if Bush’s saying the words, but doing absolutely nothing to demonstrate that they have any meaning, simply closes the matter.

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