If you watched any network news broadcast last night, you saw the fundamental inconsistency in the argument made by those who are now accusing the Bush Administration of “hyping” the case for war. Amid the pictures of Saddam’s sons and Kobe Bryant gossip were two telling stories: the political scuffle surrounding the infamous sixteen words, and the report on the intelligence lapses prior to the September 11th attacks.

Many of the same people fault the administration in both cases, unaware that their arguments are incompatible or that they demonstrate little understanding of the way intelligence data is processed and filtered.

In the case of the September 11th report, critics say intelligence analysts missed signals and failed to evaluate the threat thoroughly. Had the analysts been more vigilant, the argument goes, perhaps the September 11th attacks would have been prevented. And in the case of the pre-war intelligence on Iraq, the criticism is that intelligence analysts put too much credence in a few suspect pieces of data. In other words, the analysts were overly vigilant in assessing the threat. Of course, it is not possible to be too vigilant and insufficiently vigilant at the same time—but to the president’s critics, that’s beside the point. A political trap has been set that allows the carping to continue under all possible scenarios. Too hot, too cold...to some, it seems the porridge is always the wrong temperature as long as President Bush is serving it.

Because it is often difficult to distinguish suspicious intelligence reports from iron-clad information, human interpretation is required; inferences must be drawn. That’s why there are often disagreements in the intelligence community: different people looking at the same set of data can draw different conclusions. Such disagreements are not evidence of fraud, they’re evidence of varying levels of risk tolerance. That the Bush Administration is now less willing to accept a risk that was tolerated before is a direct result of the lessons learned on September 11th.

One particular item was deemed unreliable (the claim that Iraq tried to buy uranium yellowcake from Niger), leading the president’s political opponents to impugn the entire basis for war. But the case for war was also built upon a foundation of truth that cannot be denied. For example, when the U.N. inspectors left Iraq in 1998, they left with an extensive catalog of banned weapons that remained in Saddam’s arsenal. Despite a seemingly endless string of last chances afforded by the U.N., Iraq never accounted for this material. Nor have any of the president’s critics answered this vital question: where did those weapons go? Because if Iraq had such weapons in 1998 when the inspectors left, and Iraq didn’t have those weapons at the outset of the war, then the weapons were either destroyed, or they remain hidden in Iraq or elsewhere.

Perhaps some people put enough faith in the integrity of Saddam Hussein to believe that he disarmed voluntarily while nobody was looking, but I’m grateful we have a president unwilling to take that risk.

Since September 11th, President Bush has made it very clear that his administration would do everything possible to prevent another such attack. The Bush Doctrine is to eliminate threats before they become too grave: a threat need not be fully formed to be confronted. With porous borders, unconventional weapons and sleeper cells living among us, by the time a threat becomes imminent, the opportunity to eliminate it may be gone. With rogue states as the manufacturers and terrorist networks as the couriers, the threat isn’t from al Qaeda alone, but any state that shares its list of enemies.

After the towers fell, there seemed to be a national consensus supporting the Bush Doctrine; most Americans agreed that it is better to end potential threats that may never materialize than to ignore potential threats that could lead to another massive attack. Today’s political environment indicates that the argument isn’t settled, however. Some in this country still want our intelligence analysts to err on the side of caution, because doing so could thwart future attacks and would therefore save lives. Others believe that no action should ever be taken unless every scrap of intelligence data is unimpeachable and unambiguous. The struggle between these competing views will define the future prosecution of the Terror War, and could determine the outcome of presidential elections for a generation.

Unfortunately, this important national discussion is being obscured by those who—for purely partisan reasons—are trying to have it both ways. If you complain that the administration wasn’t vigilant enough in interpreting pre-September 11th intelligence, you can’t credibly claim that the administration was too vigilant in interpreting the data pertaining to Iraq. Then again, considering that many of the president’s opponents supported action against Iraq in 1998 when one of their own was in office, credibility is not their strongest attribute. Besides, to someone campaigning for the Democratic nomination, credibility is useless if President Bush’s popularity makes him invincible. Hence the ceaseless criticisms, however self-contradictory they may be. They’re designed to erode confidence in the president, and in turn erode his poll numbers.

Some may say that the president hyped the case for war. But to many of us, he simply assumed the worst-case scenario and confronted the threat it posed, thereby ensuring that the worst wouldn’t happen. That isn’t deceptive, it’s prudent.