Holy. Crap.

Karl Rove:

In what was a remarkable admission that contradicted - to a large extent - the past statements from his onetime boss, former Bush strategist Karl Rove said on Tuesday evening that had the President known Iraq did not possess weapons of mass destruction, the United States would not have gone to war.

"In the aftermath of 9/11 the concern was about a tyrant accused of enormous human rights abuses," but who also possessed weapons of mass destruction, said Rove. "Absent that, I suspect that the administration's course of action would have been to work to find more creative ways to constrain him like in the 90s."

Wha? What the hell happened to "EVERYONE knew he had WMDs" and "Even the Clintons said he had them" and "We know where they are" and "We found 'em" and "He moved them to Syria" and "Clinton didn't love freedom the way Bush does" and "Hitler-appeasers" and "cheese-eating surrender monkeys" and Saddam's statue and rice & rose petals and "Iraq will be a model democracy" and "making trouble in his neighborhood" and "he supported terrorists" and all that?

At no point was it mentioned that the administration -- specifically Vice President Dick Cheney -- reportedly advanced faulty or poorly sourced information to fit the conclusion that Iraq possessed WMD, or that intelligence reports from the run-up to the war suggested that such a case was flimsy. Later in the event, Rove argued that Saddam Hussein was supporting terrorism, poised a grave threat to the region, and had systematically duped the international community into assuming he was armed.

"He told his interrogators it made him look big in the neighborhood," said Rove, before noting all of the Democratic officials who believed as much.

As such, Rove argued, the Bush administration was justified in the course it chose and the world better off for its actions.

Oh, WELL. Saddam lied about Iraq having WMDs first, so it was all justified anyway! See? See? It was all his fault! Saddam made us invade his country!

And this was all part of Rove's project to establish the "Bush Legacy", i.e. to sift through the wreckage of the last eight years and, if they can't find anything suitable to hold up as a shiny artifact of this worthless Administration, they'll just make some stuff up.