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To believe — as the Center for Public Integrity recently charged — that President Bush and members of his administration, including Colin Powell, a natural born hero of the left, lied more than 900 times to promote and prolong the Iraq war is to concede that each and every member of Congress, along with assorted members of the Clinton administration, were complicit in that lie.

Every dog in this hunt believed the intelligence. Bush didn't get there alone. Not by a long shot.

We learned after Saddam Hussein's fall that votes by U.N. Security Council members Russia, France and Germany not to enforce U.N. Resolution 1441 were more about covering up their roles in illegally rearming Iraq than some higher purpose. Additionally, France was up to its neck in an "oil-for-food scandal" exposed only after Saddam's overthrow.

That much of the post-regime change war plan has been poor is absolutely true. But that's not what this is about. Nor is this about 16 words in one of the president's pre-war addresses that — despite what the Senate Intelligence Committee termed Joe Wilson's "misleading information" — were validated by David Kay and the Iraq Study Group, the British government, the Senate Intelligence Committee and, curiously enough, Wilson's own oral reports.

Nope. This is about the big lie — the granddaddy of them all: Bush stole the election.

Fueled by George Soros' MoveOn.org and embraced by nearly every Democratic leader, this lie established a foundation for a chillingly corrosive disinformation campaign.

Created almost before the votes in Florida were cast, Bush-stole-the-election served solely — as Rev. Jesse Jackson said proudly during the "hanging chad" debacle — to delegitimize Bush, discredit him, do whatever it takes but never accept him.

From the get-go there have been so many lies and half-truths from the left that no single "independent" group could begin to register them all.

Today, there is never any mention of the U.S. Supreme Court's 7-2 ruling that the Florida Supreme Court's recount plan — the one Al Gore had pinned his hopes on — was unconstitutional. Still, Gore pressed on and established the divisive vote I suspect he longed for.

Fast forward to Bush's "Axis of Evil" speech. This is so regularly misquoted and twisted by Democratic leaders today that it should be deep-fried, salted and served with mustard. Take the alleged you're-for-us-or-you're-against-us phrase. Shortly after the war started, George Soros likened it to a Nazi slogan.

But here is what Bush actually said: "You are either with us, or you are with the terrorists." That came at the end of a lengthy description of the task at hand, the coming war against state-sponsored terrorism.

And the beat goes on.

Suffice it to say that this orchestrated campaign to delegitimize Bush is as impressive as it has been effective. It's also proved the most damaging to our country's well-being.