The next time someone (like, say, the President) trots out the notion that attacking Iraq was OK because "everyone saw the same intelligence" on WMD, you can now comfortably call them a rude name.

Here's a report from the Congressional Research Service that explains exactly what the executive branch shares with Congress, and what they don't. It seems highly unlikely that the intelligence could reasonably be called "the same."

Now, if our steely-eyed fighter pilot feels comfortable with spreading that sort of manure for the American public, consider for a moment how much credulity we should bring with us when we listen to him assure us that he's not stomping all over the Constitution.

Especially when we learn things like this:

President Bush signed a secret order in 2002 authorizing the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on U.S. citizens and foreign nationals in the United States, despite previous legal prohibitions against such domestic spying, sources with knowledge of the program said last night.

The super-secretive NSA, which has generally been barred from domestic spying except in narrow circumstances involving foreign nationals, has monitored the e-mail, telephone calls and other communications of hundreds, and perhaps thousands, of people under the program, the New York Times disclosed last night.

So not only does Bush contemptuously lie to us about his decision to go to war, he also unilaterally erases our civil liberties with secret orders.

But people like him because he's a "straight shooter." Go figure.

CRS report link from Eschaton.