The Center for Public Integrity, in what appears to be a liberal conspiracy to stop our politicians from lying, has created a new website for tracking Bush administration officials’ pre-Iraq war statements and their intra-Iraq war veracity.  It appears that the cite is being bombarded by “folks… who are interested… in this.. kinda… thing [read with best Bush accent],” so I have not yet been able to test it out.  According to the New York Times’ John H. Cushman, Jr., who now deserves to be listed as one of the top enemies of freedom,

Warnings about the need to confront Iraq, by President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, the national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, and two White House press secretaries, among others, can be combed line by line, and reviewed alongside detailed critiques published after the fact by official panels, historians, journalists and independent experts.

There is no startling new information in the archive, because all the documents have been published previously. But the new computer tool is remarkable for its scope, and its replay of the crescendo of statements that led to the war. Muckrakers may find browsing the site reminiscent of what Richard M. Nixon used to dismissively call “wallowing in Watergate.”

Of course, such tools cannot help us determine the intentional lies from their unintentional counterparts.  While I do believe that we went into Iraq for the sake of convenience (Iran was too big and too difficult, even though the Iranians have clear links to terrorism, unlike Saddam, who was more likely to be assassinated himself by terrorists than to work with them.), I also believe that our officials really thought that Saddam had WMD, just as Saddam thought he was on route to obtaining them.

Yet, it will be interesting to see what type of impact efforts of this nature will have on our political system, and in particular, such events as the presidential primaries.  I’m a ‘newby’ to the web in regards to the primaries, mostly because I don’t need to listen to people like Hillary and Barak toss recriminations back and forth in order to determine who I will vote for.  But even in the few minutes that I do sit down and watch them bitch, it’s quite difficult to determine who is bitching with more accuracy.   One site that I have found useful is the Washington Posts’ Fact Checker.  Perhaps we at the Democratic Piece can create a list of some of our top fact checking websites… (your welcome, Jack).