He's a Truth-Teller.

The President would like us to believe that he doesn't deserve the epithet "Leaker-in-Chief", that he has the utmost respect for the American people, and will do what he can to keep us well-informed. Mr. Bush just wants us to know the truth. He told us so on April 10:

I wanted to see -- people to see what some of those statements were based on. So I wanted to see -- I wanted people to see the truth and thought it made sense for people to see the truth. And that's why I declassified the document.

You can't talk about -- you're not supposed to talk about classified information, and so I declassified the document. I thought it was important for people to get a better sense for why I was saying what I was saying in my speeches. And I felt I could do so without jeopardizing ongoing intelligence matters, and so I did.

See, the President didn't want us getting the wrong impression because we didn't have all the information. He's a truth-teller. He'd never want us to think something that wasn't true, when he had information to the contrary that he could declassify and give us access to. And he's certainly not the kind of guy who would manipulate the classification or release of documents to bolster political support for his policies, or to keep the failure of said policies from getting wide coverage during his re-election campaign.

Much.

On May 29, 2003, 50 days after the fall of Baghdad, President Bush proclaimed a fresh victory for his administration in Iraq: Two small trailers captured by U.S. and Kurdish troops had turned out to be long-sought mobile "biological laboratories." He declared, "We have found the weapons of mass destruction."

The claim, repeated by top administration officials for months afterward, was hailed at the time as a vindication of the decision to go to war. But even as Bush spoke, U.S. intelligence officials possessed powerful evidence that it was not true.

A secret fact-finding mission to Iraq -- not made public until now -- had already concluded that the trailers had nothing to do with biological weapons. Leaders of the Pentagon-sponsored mission transmitted their unanimous findings to Washington in a field report on May 27, 2003, two days before the president's statement.

The three-page field report and a 122-page final report three weeks later were stamped "secret" and shelved. Meanwhile, for nearly a year, administration and intelligence officials continued to publicly assert that the trailers were weapons factories.

The authors of the reports were nine U.S. and British civilian experts -- scientists and engineers with extensive experience in all the technical fields involved in making bioweapons -- who were dispatched to Baghdad by the Defense Intelligence Agency for an analysis of the trailers. Their actions and findings were described to a Washington Post reporter in interviews with six government officials and weapons experts who participated in the mission or had direct knowledge of it.

None would consent to being identified by name because of fear that their jobs would be jeopardized. Their accounts were verified by other current and former government officials knowledgeable about the mission. The contents of the final report, "Final Technical Engineering Exploitation Report on Iraqi Suspected Biological Weapons-Associated Trailers," remain classified. But interviews reveal that the technical team was unequivocal in its conclusion that the trailers were not intended to manufacture biological weapons. Those interviewed took care not to discuss the classified portions of their work.

"There was no connection to anything biological," said one expert who studied the trailers.

Now, there are some who say that there is a pattern of the administration saying things that weren't true, despite having access to reports that told them the facts. There are some that would like you to think that all of these erroneous statements served to support the President's policies, and that they never made that kind of mistake that "accidentally" cast doubt on those policies. They would want you to believe that the established policy of the administration is to deceive, to manipulate information. But when you listen to those people, you should keep in mind what the President so articulately said:

What you're reading is wild speculation, which is -- it's kind of a -- happens quite frequently here in the nation's capital.