Looking back over the RNC one of the clear objectives was to reconstruct the picture of the last four years in which the previous administration left the country vulnerable to the 9/11 attack and President Bush revolutionized our defenses and doctrines in order to combat the threat.

That view of matters was the conventional wisdom until roughly a year ago when it started to be pulled apart by a series of official investigations and belatedly aggressive journalism.

In fact, the president ignored the terrorist threat during his first months in office. After the war in Afghanistan he pulled resources away from the war against al Qaida to fight the war in Iraq -- which played a key role in allowing bin Laden and other key AQ leaders to slip the noose. And along the way he used systematic deception to game the country into the conflict.

(The Senate intel Report tries to work its way around that fact. But I suspect that Report will be taking a bit of a hit in the next few weeks.)

I don't mean to rehash all that's come out in the last eighteen months. But there was an effort to deny all of it through the use of effective rhetoric without rebuttal. The Dems will have to start deconstructing it again now.