The Wall Street Journal's Bret Stephens used the possibility of military intervention in Syria to rewrite the history of the Iraq war, falsely claiming the Bush administration's case against Iraq was supported by solid evidence.

Stephens, the Journal's foreign-affairs columnist and deputy editorial page editor for international opinion pages, criticized the Obama administration's case for intervention in Syria by comparing it to Bush's decision to invade Iraq, which he claimed was made based on “highly detailed” intelligence revealing weapons of mass destruction. Stephens claimed the “testimony of U.N. inspectors like Hans Blix” supported the Bush administration's case for war, and accusations that the Bush administration lied were “libel” and “cheap slander”:

Then there's the intel. In London the other day, Mr. Kerry invited the public to examine the administration's evidence of Assad's use of chemical weapons, posted on whitehouse.gov. The “dossier” consists of a 1,455-word document heavy on blanket assertions such as “we assess with high confidence” and “we have a body of information,” and “we have identified one hundred videos.”

By contrast, the Bush administration made a highly detailed case on Iraqi WMD, including show-and-tells by Colin Powell at the Security Council. It also relied on the testimony of U.N. inspectors like Hans Blix, who reported in January 2003 that “there are strong indications that Iraq produced more anthrax than it declared,” that his inspectors had found “indications that the [nerve agent VX] was weaponized,” and that Iraq had “circumvented the restrictions” on the import of missile parts.

The case the Bush administration assembled on Iraqi WMD was far stronger than what the Obama administration has offered on Syria. And while I have few doubts that the case against Assad is solid, it shouldn't shock Democrats that the White House's “trust us” approach isn't winning converts. When you've spent years peddling the libel that the Bush administration lied about Iraq, don't be shocked when your goose gets cooked in the same foul sauce.

So what should President Obama say when he addresses the country Tuesday night? He could start by apologizing to President Bush for years of cheap slander. He won't.

But Hans Blix told CNN in 2004 that the Bush administration “chose to ignore” his team's concerns about the lack of solid evidence in favor of war, and that prior to the invasion the evidence of WMDs in Iraq was revealed to be “shaky”:

“I think it's clear that in March, when the invasion took place, the evidence that had been brought forward was rapidly falling apart,” Hans Blix, who oversaw the agency's investigation into whether Iraq had chemical and biological weapons, said on CNN's “Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer.”

Blix described the evidence Secretary of State Colin Powell presented to the U.N. Security Council in February 2003 as “shaky,” and said he related his opinion to U.S. officials, including national security adviser Condoleezza Rice.

“I think they chose to ignore us,” Blix said.

Furthermore, an investigation into the lead up to the Iraq war found that statements President Bush made about Iraq misled the American people and Congress by inaccurately depicting the available intelligence. The 2008 Senate Intelligence Committee's report found that “policymakers' statements” in particular misrepresented the nature of contacts between Iraq and Al Qaeda, and that Bush's allegations “that Iraq and al-Qa'ida had a partnership” were “not substantiated by the intelligence.” The report also found that statements by Bush and Vice President Cheney indicating that Saddam Hussein was prepared to give WMDs to terrorists for use against the U.S. “were contradicted by available intelligence information.”

While there are serious questions about the wisdom of using military force in Syria, any debate must include the facts -- not the Journal's fanciful rewriting of history.