You know those political statements you hear sometimes in which the sheer number of lies and inaccuracies embedded in such short utterance just overwhelm you?

GIBSON: You’ve always said there’s no do-overs as President. If you had one?

BUSH: I don’t know — the biggest regret of all the presidency has to have been the intelligence failure in Iraq. A lot of people put their reputations on the line and said the weapons of mass destruction is a reason to remove Saddam Hussein. It wasn’t just people in my administration; a lot of members in Congress, prior to my arrival in Washington D.C., during the debate on Iraq, a lot of leaders of nations around the world were all looking at the same intelligence. And, you know, that’s not a do-over, but I wish the intelligence had been different, I guess.

The “intelligence failure.” You have to sometimes wonder if Bush, at this point in time, truly believes the line of BS that he has been spinning all these years about Iraq. Maybe, like Reagan, he actually does; it’s hard to tell. But if you recall what actually happened, the intelligence failure was not at the CIA end, it was at the executive end. Or has everyone forgotten that the Bush administration, fully intent on steamrolling forward into a new Gulf War, (a) completely and intentionally ignored evidence given to them by the intelligence community that said Iraq was not a threat (just as they ignored terror threats before 9/11), (b) spun intelligence reports like political talking points so as to emphasize the propaganda they felt best helped their established political goals, and (c) completely made up crap as the metaphorical whipped cream with a cherry on top–you know, like Cheney’s assertion that our intelligence not only told us that Hussein was 6 months away from completing a nuclear weapon, but that we knew exactly where the Iraqi nuclear facilities were.

There was no “intelligence failure” in the traditional sense, or if there was, it was far less significant than the fact that the Bush administration, as with everything else they were involved in, politicized the intelligence information that came their way, just as they politicized scientific data, the Constitution and our laws, the bureaucracy and the entire legal system, so on and so forth.

The problem with politicized intelligence data: it fails.

“A lot of people put their reputations on the line and said the weapons of mass destruction is a reason to remove Saddam Hussein”? Yeah, because you told them so. You were the head cheerleader in that propaganda assault, remember? You were the one releasing only information that led people to that conclusion, remember? You were the one sanitizing even data being given to Congress, and then claiming they made an independent decision on the matter because they saw the same data you did. And, it “wasn’t just people in my administration”?? Listen to this guy cast the blame on others, as if it was everyone but himself–world leaders, the Congress, people in his administration–everyone and anyone but himself. All Bush has to do is utter the phrase “the buck stops here,” and he’ll break irony but good.

As for everyone else having the “same intelligence”? That part is pure fiction.

But Bush didn’t stop there:

GIBSON: If the intelligence had been right, would there have been an Iraq war?

BUSH: Yes, because Saddam Hussein was unwilling to let the inspectors go in to determine whether or not the U.N. resolutions were being upheld. In other words, if he had had weapons of mass destruction, would there have been a war? Absolutely.

I can’t find an emphatic enough synonym for “unbelievable.” Either Bush really is buying into his own line of crap, or he believes that everyone else has. Bush said this years ago and keeps saying it, even though the facts are so blindingly clear they hurt: Hussein did let the inspectors in, Hussein’s claims that he did not have WMD were true, and it was Bush who yanked the inspectors out.

But note Bush’s re-writing of the question: the question clearly intended to ask, “if the intelligence had been right and shown that Hussein was not a threat”–a question that makes sense. But Bush did not answer that question. Instead, he assumed that the question was, “If the intelligence had been right in that the WMD were actually there, would there have been an Iraq war?” And that question makes no sense–after all, the war was completely predicated upon the fiction that the WMDs were present; if the “intelligence” had been correct, it would have been no different than what happened. Here, Bush must be (a) an idiot, (b) so entrenched in his lies that he literally cannot imagine anything else, or (c) both. My vote is for “c.”

But Bush gets the Academy Award for irony when he answers this question:

GIBSON: Greatest accomplishment? The one thing you’re proudest of?

BUSH: I keep recognizing we’re in a war against ideological thugs and keeping America safe.

Do I even have to explain that one?