Let's cut through the crap. No one knows what to do about the war in Iraq. Should we add more troops? We don't have enough troops. And who would volunteer to fight in someone else's civil war? Should we leave? OK, but what happens after we leave? Realistically, our government is not going to leave with the possibility that they will suffer blame if things get worse.

Our troops are turning against the war. The public doesn't like it much, either. Twenty three percent of the American public is happy with President Bush's handling of the Iraq war. Seventy three percent disapprove. These numbers are unprecedented. Normally, the public loves war and will support the president in whatever foreign entanglements he falls into. Not anymore.

This one should have been easy. Everyone hated Saddam Hussein. No one cared that successive Republican administrations in the 1980's and early 1990's supported Saddam and gave him weapons and diplomatic support when he was gassing Kurds and weaking havoc. And no one cares now. This morning's New York Times carries a front page story about a tape recording of Saddam's admission that gassing people would kill thousands. But this liberal bulwark once again omits our government's complicity in these horrible crimes.

I am certain the psychological experts in the Bush administration (they all have public relations people to predict public support for administration policy) believe that Joe Average would support this war for the long haul. Somehow the American people thought Saddam attacked us on September 11. They also thought that Saddam and Osama were friends. Administration propaganda no doubt caused these misconceptions. But the cover has been torn off the ball.

According to the Washington Post, "More than 17,000 Iraqi civilians and police officers died violently in the latter half of 2006, according to Iraqi Health Ministry statistics, a sharp increase that coincided with rising sectarian strife since the February bombing of a landmark Shiite shrine." News like this comes out every day, these days.

Apologists will say that it does no good to look backward, that we should look forward to deal the problem rather than assess blame. I say we can look forward and backward. We do it when we drive (thanks to rear-view mirrors). We can do it in analyzing the war. Someone has to pay for this war.

Congress should immediately schedule hearings and slap subpoenas all over the White House and State Department. They should be called the Downing Street hearings, focusing on the infamous Downing Street Memos, the smoking guns showing that the war was a fraud from the outset. You can't write about this enough. Read one of the smoking guns here. It says in part:

C reported on his recent talks in Washington. There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. The NSC had no patience with the UN route, and no enthusiasm for publishing material on the Iraqi regime's record. There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action.

Did you see that? At at time (summer 2002) when Bush was telling us that war was an absolute last resort, he had already made up his mind. He was not a stateman, he was a liar. And, more important, the memo makes it clear that "the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."

The same memorandum reveals more shenanigans:

It seemed clear that Bush had made up his mind to take military action, even if the timing was not yet decided. But the case was thin. Saddam was not threatening his neighbours, and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran. We should work up a plan for an ultimatum to Saddam to allow back in the UN weapons inspectors. This would also help with the legal justification for the use of force.

But we were kept in the dark about the monumental decision to fight a war in the world's top hotspot, the absolute last place on Earth for this kind of intervention. According to Knight Ridder newpapers,

The public version of the U.S. intelligence community's key prewar assessment of Iraq's illicit arms programs was stripped of dissenting opinions, warnings of insufficient information and doubts about deposed dictator Saddam Hussein's intentions, a review of the document and its once-classified version shows.

As a result, the public was given a far more definitive assessment of Iraq's plans and capabilities than President Bush and other U.S. decision-makers received from their intelligence agencies.

The stark differences between the public version and the then top-secret version of the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate raise new questions about the accuracy of the public case made for a war that's claimed the lives of more than 500 U.S. service members and thousands of Iraqis.

The public is fooled no more. Bush should pay. If the Vietnam War drove President LBJ from office and Watergate drove out Nixon, what's the price for starting a bad war on false pretenses? Here's a solution.