THE PUSHBACK CONTINUES: N.Z. Bear has posted Bush’s latest remarks on revisionist history. Key bit: “Some of our elected leaders have opposed this war all along. I disagree with them, but I respect their willingness to take a consistent stand. Yet some Democrats who voted to authorize the use of force are now rewriting the past. They are playing politics with this issue and sending mixed signals to our troops and the enemy. That is irresponsible.”

UPDATE: Dan Froomkin offers pushback on the pushback, but Paul Mirengoff calls Froomkin’s piece “deeply misleading,” and notes an important omission.

ANOTHER UPDATE: I should have linked this column by Fred Hiatt earlier. Excerpt:

“Iraq’s is a life-or-death agenda — how to build a democracy,” Mahdi said. “Others’ are political agendas.”

Whether Iraqis are in fact committed to a life-or-death struggle for democracy will become clear as its army does, or does not, continue to shoulder a greater burden. But the aptness of Mahdi’s view of the United States is already evident in Congress, which pours most of its Iraq-related energy into allegations of manipulated intelligence before the war.

“Those aren’t irrelevant questions,” says Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.). “But the more they dominate the public debate, the harder it is to sustain public support for the war.”

What Lieberman doesn’t say is that many Democrats would view such an outcome as an advantage. Their focus on 2002 is a way to further undercut President Bush, and Bush’s war, without taking the risk of offering an alternative strategy — to satisfy their withdraw-now constituents without being accountable for a withdraw-now position.

Yes.