First of all, let me explain that I happen to believe that there were terrorists in Saddam Hussein's Iraq. After all, retired CIA personnel have admitted to working with some members of the opposition to Saddam and helping them construct car bombs to validate their ability to organize and plan. And there's little doubt that the United States sent in special operations forces whose endeavors were, no doubt, considered terroristic by some people.

What we are now certain of, and which our own intelligence agencies have verified, is that, as Saddam asserted, there were no Islamic or al Qaeda terrorists active in Iraq during his tenure in office. That he had no weapons of mass destruction in his arsenal either is another matter, since he pretended to have them as a bluff. The truth is that Iraq didn't have what the Bush/Cheney administration claimed in either case. And yet the claim about the terrorists persists. Why?

The answer came to me the other day in a discussion of the usefullness of the Congress approving programs and making appropriations of money for functions that Bush/Cheney is not inclined to carry out. I was reminded that, under the Constitution, the executive is constrained to carry out only those activities that have been specifically permitted and funded in the law.

However, there is some leeway (extensively employed by both Reagan/Bush and Clinton/Gore before the advent of Bush/Cheney) in simply not carrying out the functions and not spending the money. In addition, the executive has some latitude in re-allocating funds from one permitted function to another permitted function to satisfy the intent of the law.

And this latter strategy is what seems to have been employed in shifting the three hundred million dollars, that were appropriated for "fighting" Islamic terrorists (Taliban/al Qaeda) in Afghanistan, for planning the invasion of Iraq. No doubt, this re-allocation was justified under the guise of fighting the terrorist where they were being bred. Except they weren't. And not only do we now know there were no Islamic terrorists in Saddam's Iraq. We also know that Bush/Cheney knew it too, because the belated release of the Senate Intelligence Committee report tells us so.

Why is that still so significant that Bush/Cheney continue to repeat the lie? We all know they lied to the American public and to the Congress. But that's not what's important. What's important is that they not only lied but that they misdirected the funds to start planning an invasion for which there was no justification in the law.

If the money was designated to be spent fighting terrorists and there were no terrorists in Iraq and they knew there were no terrorists in Iraq, which they did, then the expenditure was unlawful, a misappropriation of funds. And that's a crime, even if the President certified the expenditure to be appropriate.

Remember "no tickee; no washee?" In this case it's "no terrorists; no money."

UPDATE: This would seem to be an elaboration of Rep. Kucinich's point #5. He refers to misspending funds. Misappropriation might be more accurate in that the funds weren't wasted but spent on something that wasn't authorized.