Bush's Big Blunder: Chalabi

Be still my beating heart. It's actual critical reporting about Bush from a major media outlet:

In January, when President Bush delivered his State of the Union speech to Congress celebrating the success of the "pre-emptive" war against Iraq, a controversial Iraqi exile named Ahmad Chalabi sat in a place of honor behind First Lady Laura Bush.

The symbolism was no accident: Despite being a fugitive from Jordan for a conviction in absentia on bank fraud charges, this darling of neoconservative hard-liners was the Pentagon's and White House's favored and well-paid advisor on all things Iraq -- including weapons of mass destruction, ties with al Qaeda and the odds for a post-invasion insurgency. As is now apparent, he and his cronies seemed to have lied spectacularly about it all.