The central claim at the heart of the Bush administration’s case for going to war was thoroughly discredited by the New York Times yesterday. Before the war, the Bush administration stated without doubt that Saddam Hussein was rebuilding a nuclear weapons program and, as proof, it pointed to the only physical evidence it could find: Iraq’s attempt to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes. We now know, however, that the smoking gun was a fabrication.

Once again, the Onion comes up with the real story — Freshly unearthed public documents, ranging from newspapers to cabinet-meeting minutes, seem to indicate large gaps in George W. Bush’s service as president, a spokesman for the watchdog group Citizens for an Informed Society announced Monday.

On Thursday, President Bush claimed that “nearly 100,000 fully trained and equipped Iraqi soldiers, police officers, and other security personnel are working today.” But last Monday, the Pentagon said that “only about 53,000 of the 100,000 Iraqis on duty have now undergone training.”

To hear President Bush tell it, Iraq is a bed of roses: “Our strategy is succeeding,” he said last week. Yesterday at the U.N., he said Iraq is “on the path to democracy and freedom.” Yet the CIA told Bush recently that the scenarios we’re really facing there range from a quagmire to a bloodbath.