Fact Gaps

Now, I don't agree with Friedman on his stance regarding the war with Iraq, I do believe he has a point about not getting much campaign mileage from the WMD issue.

As you pointed out before, "The Point is to Defeat Bush...", and this means that the candidates must pursue Bush at his perceived weakest points. Even though I believe that the American public has been lied to by the Bush administration, that we have been misled at every turn with manufactured evidence, and I also believe that Bush should one day be tried in an international court, I also believe many Americans don't see this as an issue.

Fact:
In a poll conducted by the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland in May of last year, they found that

33% of the American public believes U.S. forces found WMD in Iraq.
22% replied that Iraq actually used chemical or bio weapons
50% reported that Iraqis were among the Sept. 11 hijackers.

Factoid:
"Too many Americans...believe in their guts that removing Saddam was the right thing to do, even if the W.M.D. intel was wrong." - Thomas Friedman

Americans will one day understand the Iraqi war in the same way that we now understand the McCarthy era, the Vietnam War, Watergate, and the Iran-Contra scandal, but not before the Presidential election. If the Democrats are to win, they need to focus on what The Public perceives to be Bush's weakest points. To be sure, when the facts of this scandal see the light of day, it will put to shame all previous presidential scandals combined, but right now defeating Bush is more important than any of that, and this means attacking Bush on what MOST Americans agree to be his weakest policies are (and as Friedman points out this is probably not WMD or Iraq).

Once Bush is defeated, History will expose him and his many criminal acts, and Friedman will be proven wrong; Bush WILL pay a long-term political price for his "faith-based intelligence".