President George W.

President George W. Bush is more and more resembling Bill Clinton. He's just as eager as Clinton was to avoid responsibility and accountability, and he's just as fond of parsing the English language to confuse the issues.

Please note, for example, that the Bush administration now talks about weapons "programs." Well, of course, 15 years ago Iraq had programs to develop nuclear, biological and chemical weapons. The United States even assisted in some degree. But we didn't go to war because Iraq had programs 15 years ago, we went to war because Iraq allegedly had "stockpiles" of chemical and biological weapons ready to deploy and use and was actively pursuing nuclear weapons.

It's becoming increasingly clear that it was all bull. There are no stockpiles, unless Harry Potter's Invisibility Cloak covers them. There is no nuclear-weapons program. There are no hidden long-range missiles. There never was any connection between Iraq and al-Qaida. Iraq was not an "imminent threat" to Kuwait, much less to the United States and the rest of the world. Gulf War I, arms inspections, 13 years of cruel economic sanctions and periodic bombings had reduced Iraq to a shell of its former strength.

Bottom line: The Bush administration, on false pretenses, took Americans to war. I don't mean by that that the president was lying. I think he chose to believe what he wanted to be true and disregarded all the evidence to the contrary. He wanted to get Saddam. To do that, Saddam had to have weapons of mass destruction. Bush was apparently unwilling and still is unwilling to believe that they simply didn't exist.

And the world is not better off without Saddam in power, because whether Saddam was in power or not had no effect on the world one way or another. Iraq is not and never was a major player in the world. It has far too few people and too few resources, despite its oil. But the United States is much worse off.

After Sept. 11, 2001, most of the world was united in support of the United States. Today most of the world regards the United States as a rogue nation and a danger to peace. Today, thanks to U.S. policy, a new arms race is under way, the United States is projected to have an all-time record deficit of $455 billion, unemployment is at a nine-year high, and American troops are bogged down in Iraq, Afghanistan, the Balkans, the Middle East and apparently will soon be in Africa. More importantly, the credibility of the United States is nose-diving.

Instead of seriously reassessing the administration's policies, the Bush people have circled the wagons. Instead of answering legitimate questions, they call them partisan politics. Instead of accepting responsibility, they blame the CIA or the media. Instead of conducting an honest investigation into the intelligence agencies, they are concerned that some CIA people are leaking things to the press to discredit the president. These leaks are attempts to set the record straight. If the truth discredits the president, it's because he bent it out of shape.

But it is not a partisan issue. It is of the utmost importance that when the president speaks to the American people on matters of war and peace, they be able to trust him to be truthful and factual. Given the president's new policy of pre-emptive wars, it is of the utmost importance that the intelligence on which such wars will be based be dead-on accurate. Those two statements are true regardless of who is in the White House.

The fact is, the president and his staff blundered, and they don't want to admit it. They took the country to war on false pretenses; they had no sound plan for postwar Iraq and are now stuck for an indefinite period of time. The occupation is costing American lives and $4 billion a month. They don't know what to do about North Korea or Iran or the Middle East.

It looks like the president is going to learn the hard way that a snappy comeback to a reporter's question is no substitute for a sound, well-reasoned policy. Unfortunately, the country will have to pay for his education. Let's pray it's not too high a price in blood and treasure.