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Fighting words
In this year's State of the Union address, President Bush made no compelling case that he spoke the truth about Iraq last year. Nor did he apologize.

A year ago, President Bush used his State of the Union address to sound a frightening alarm about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. The president told the nation that Iraq had amassed 25,000 liters of anthrax, 38,000 liters of botulinum toxin and 500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX nerve gas. He also charged that Saddam Hussein's regime had sought to acquire "significant quantities" of refined uranium and special aluminum tubes whose only practical use was as part of a program to develop nuclear weapons.

And he offered a chilling warning that only one vial from those vast stockpiles of weapons could "bring a day of horror like none we have ever known."

That dire, detailed warning of a looming threat to our national security served as the Bush administration's justification for war in Iraq. Of course, no weapons of mass destruction of any kind have been found there. No anthrax. No botulinum. No VX. In fact, U.S. weapons inspectors have not even found significant evidence of programs that might eventually have led to the development of weapons. And the allegations concerning Iraq's efforts to develop a nuclear weapons program were proved to have been based on fraudulent evidence.

Yet, having staked the reputation of our government on his allegations against Iraq, President Bush hasn't even tried to explain, much less apologize for, the utter lack of evidence to support the stark charges he made a year ago. Instead, the president talked in this year's State of the Union address of Iraq's "weapons of mass destruction-related program activities."

Would the nation have been so quick to support the president's call to war on the basis of vague references to Iraq's "weapons of mass destruction-related program activities"?...