This principle holds true even if you are guilty of precisely the same thing as those you accuse (talking up Saddam's WMDs) and your complicity is conclusively demonstrated on audiotape and videotape.

When your obvious duplicity in this affair is illuminated by reference to the uncontroverted fact that when you made similar claims about Saddam's WMDs you had access to the same intelligence as the administration, you simply say the president pressured the intelligence community to doctor the data.

When this specious assertion is contradicted by unequivocal findings of bipartisan investigative commissions, you simply demand, with righteous indignation, more investigations.

In the meantime, you also charge that President Bush cherry-picked certain intelligence and deliberately relied on other discredited intelligence in order to bolster his case for war against Iraq. And you do that knowing that it is you who are retrospectively cherry-picking the evidence and presenting it as irrefutable proof that Bush lied.

For example, you triumphantly cite a Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) document dated February 2002, stating it was probable that an Al Qaeda informant had fabricated his claim that Iraq trained Al Qaeda in the use of biological and chemical weapons. You smugly point out that since this DIA document predated, by months, public statements by President Bush and his team in which they referenced the "impeached" terrorist's claim in support of their assertion of an Iraq/Al Qaeda connection, Bush had to have lied. What neither you nor your New York Times enablers divulge is that the CIA manifestly didn't agree with the DIA's assessment. (According to "The Weekly Standard's" Stephen Hayes, CIA Director George Tenet, a year after the DIA report, testified to the Senate Intelligence Committee that Iraq trained Al Qaeda in document forgery, bomb making, poisons and gases.)

As another example, you figure if you obfuscate artfully enough, the public will not realize that the infamous 16-word assertion in the president's State of the Union address that the Brits learned Saddam tried to buy uranium yellowcake from Niger is as true today as when he uttered it.

When confronted with the annoying detail that Bill Clinton likewise made bold assertions about Saddam's WMDs, you shrewdly calculate that this fact can actually be twisted in your favor. After all, though Clinton knew Saddam was hell-bent on acquiring nuclear weapons, using them against us and distributing them to our terrorist enemies also to use against us, he chose -- in his infinite wisdom -- not to invade Iraq -- apart from his cosmetic cruise missile volleys. And, since the Iraq War has proven to be such a delightful failure in your eyes, you declare that Clinton is vindicated for having chosen not to take out Saddam. Thus, those sour lemons are converted to lemonade.

Though you insist your foreign policy is guided both by humanitarian and national security interests, you are nevertheless unmoved by the remarkably positive developments that have occurred in Iraq as a result of our intervention. You essentially pooh pooh our deposition of the murderous dictator Saddam and even more so the Iraqi people's historic progress toward constitutional self-rule. And, despite the terrorists' single-minded focus on preventing the democratization of Iraq, you still deny it's part of the War on Terror. The fact that we've sustained casualties apparently negates in your mind any good that has accrued, giving rise to the obvious question: Is any foreign policy cause worth dying for?

You also must conveniently ignore that no matter what 20/20 hindsight may reveal after the fact, reasonable people agree that Saddam had WMDs, used them on his own people, had a legal obligation to prove he'd disposed of them and failed to meet that burden, choosing instead to submit a 12,000-page document of lies. You must flagrantly disregard the inconvenient, but undeniable fact that Saddam could have prevented an American attack if he'd complied with his treaties, cooperated with weapons inspectors and proven he'd disposed of his WMDs as required. By flipping us off instead, he invited the War. You must also ignore that virtually all the world's intelligence agencies believed Saddam still had WMD stockpiles. Did Bush trick all of them, too?

You must steadfastly maintain the Libby indictment directly taints Dick Cheney, Karl Rove and the entire administration, even though Special Prosecutor Fitzgerald did not issue any indictments on underlying crimes and explicitly denied the indictment speaks to the propriety of the war. Indeed, using liberal logic you are utterly undeterred by the lack of indictments as you clamor for a presidential "housecleaning." Such a disingenuous, nonsensical strategy might just fool people into believing your false claims that the administration "outed" Valerie Plame to punish her "useful idiot" husband and advance your fantasy of criminalizing the war and, ultimately, impeaching President Bush.