President Bush gave a long speech today, in which he took on Democrats who have accused him of misleading the nation into war. Basically, he called Democratic critics of the war hypocrites, since many of them believed the same flawed intelligence about Iraq that he believed. Strategy: Spread the blame around. But as the president frequently reminds us, he is a “war leader.” Doesn’t he, then, have more responsibility than the average legislator for making sure the intelligence on which his war is based is correct? His long list of rationales for the Iraq war has now been reduced to: “Well, even some of my critics believed me when I was wrong.”

But that aside, there are a few parts of Bush’s speech that liberals will find agreeable:

Evil men obsessed with ambition and unburdened by conscience must be taken very seriously, and we must stop them before their crimes can multiply.

And this, provided one substitutes “religious right” for the phrases “new enemy” and “the terrorists”:

Our new enemy pursues totalitarian aims. Its leaders pretend to be an aggrieved party representing the powerless against imperial enemies. In truth, they have endless ambitions of imperial domination, and they wish to make everyone powerless except themselves. Under their rule, they have banned books and desecrated historical monuments and brutalized women. They seek to end dissent in every form, to control every aspect of life, to rule the soul itself. While promising a future of justice and holiness, the terrorists are preparing a future of oppression and misery.