I’m a Father Confessor to Republicans. They write to me to be led to the light, and are often startled when I engage them in a constructive, civil manner. They are, of course, falling for my evil ploy: to dazzle them with the civility and politeness they don’t hear in their GOP households. (“Shut yer piehole, ya Clinton lover!”)

One such lost soul is my faithful correspondent, Alan:

What about the “where’s the WMA’s?…Gotcha!” inanity that has sorta been your umbilical cord lately? A couple weeks ago, you were demanding Bush apologize to every upright-walking mammal on the plant for his decisions and for him to insist upon his own execution.

On the heels of inspector Kay’s report, as a man of principle a was sure you’d devote this wk’s column to ingesting crow for your own miscalculations. Or was was everything in your copy illegible (except the ‘no WMA’s found’?) like it was for most other lefties?

By the way, which one of the illustrious dozen or so democratic hopefuls do think is the one to cure all our ills?

Here we see a standard rightie ploy: the cry of hypocrisy, reflexively uttered whenever one dares to make a point. I admit it: I hold conflicting views. Life is complicated. Here, however, Alan has failed to find one of these conflicts.

Referring to my column deploring “gotcha politics” this week, he says I’ve been doing the “gotcha” thing on Bush concerning WMDs. No, Alan. Wrong.

Attacking Bush because HE FUCKING LIED HIS ASS OFF isn’t “gotcha politics.” When a man claims to KNOW that a nation (a) has dangerous weapons of mass destruction, (b) plans to use them against us and (c) will kill millions of Americans unless we stop them first, he’d better be prepared to face the music when everything that his critics said–that none of this was true–turns out to be the case. Bush murdered hundreds of US servicemen and tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis, and maimed God knows how many more, with his treasonous lies. He deserves to be called to account.

Assuming that Rush Limbaugh is guilty of racist remarks and pill-popping, on the other hand, attacking him for those minor offenses is “gotcha politics.” We can’t nail the guy for being a silver-tongued right-wing demagogue, so we hope he’ll go down on drug charges. It’s BS, pure and simple.

Alan’s clearly doing a little pill-popping of his own on the Kay report, which clearly states that neither evidence of an active weapons program nor weapons themselves have been found in Iraq. Frankly, I didn’t reference the Kay report because it merely confirmed something that right-thinkin Americans knew well before March: there never were WMDs, and Bush was lying all along.

As for the Democratic hopefuls, any of them would be an intellectual, fiscal and moral improvement over George W. Bush. Yes, even Lieberman. Right now, however, my money is on Howard Dean, simply because I think he’s the only candidate who can win. He’s telegenic, fast on his feet and I bet most voters could imagine him as their President. I reserve the right to change my mind, but that’s how I feel now.