Bush the misleader

Bush Tuesday:

``Almost 220 days after switching positions to declare himself the anti-war candidate, my opponent has found a new nuance,'' saying he ``now agrees it was the right decision to go into Iraq,'' Bush told several thousand cheering supporters in the Florida Panhandle, a heavily military area.

``After months of questioning my motives and even my credibility, Senator Kerry now agrees with me that even though we have not found the stockpiles of weapons we all believe were there ... he would have voted to go into Iraq and remove Saddam Hussein from power,'' Bush said.

Well, not really(from ABC NEWS Noted Now)

WHAT KERRY SAID MONDAY: "I would have voted for the authority -- I believe it's the right authority for a President to have -- but I would have used that authority ... effectively. I would have done this very differently form the way President Bush has."

He did not stop there:

And unlike Bush, who never mentioned Kerry by name during his New Hampshire campaign stop, the Massachusetts senator said, ''My question to President Bush is: Why did he rush to war without a plan to win the peace? Why did he rush to war on faulty intelligence and not do the hard work necessary to give America the truth? Why did he mislead America about how he would go to war? Why has he not brought other countries to the table in order to support American troops in the way that we deserve it and relieve a pressure from the American people?

''There are four not-hypothetical questions -- like the president's -- [but] real questions that matter to Americans, and I hope you'll get the answers to those questions, because the American people deserve them," Kerry said.

I'm sure Bush will extend the same courtesy and answer Kerry's questions for him.

The confusion here arise because Bush continues to refer to the vote as "for the war in Iraq" when all it did was authorize the use of force if needed. Once again Bush misleads the people, and it seems that the news media has managed to sell it to the public with relative ease. Maybe not a winning point for Kerry, but I think it would help if the public knew what it was he actually voted for.

*UPDATE* It seems Dave Pell has more:

By indicating that he would still vote the same way today, Kerry has reduced this issue to a matter of styles. Kerry essentially admits this when he says: "I would have done this very differently from the way President Bush has." That matters. But does it create enough of a distinction to make undecideds decide?

How about narrowing it down to one question: How can the President send U.S. troops into battle based on a massive distortion and then not admit any regret over that decision once that distortion becomes clear? Or to turn that into a campaign soundbite: The President wants you to believe he can do jumping jacks in quicksand.