The hypothetical:

You are in your home.  Someone tells you that the next person that comes to your door is going to kill you.  They show you the evidence.  Papers that clearly show that your neighbors believe that the next person coming to your door spent a considerable time researching you and spent the last few weeks at a gun range.  There are satellite photos showing this person and they clearly show he has that intent.  This someone tells you in a post-9/11 world you should fight for your life and your family, your precious family, To-To too.  Do you decide to fight for your life or sit down and die?  A man knocks at the door.  He is all dressed in a dark navy blue suit, has a forbidding posture, and looks a nightmare...plus it was dark out.  He has an odd accent, seems to skip a few syllables in every other word.  You make out something like "I know you are there, I'll get you in the end.  You may as well answer the door"  You answer the door.  It is inevitable, he won't stop knocking, and in the process of analyzing the entire situation you decide to strike first and kill the man.  

Later, many years even, you find that the person that told you this guy was going to kill you was lieing the whole time.  The guy at the door was just a persistant salesman.  A marine recruiter.  

It wasn't simply errors, the person lied.  He wanted you to kill the next person that came to your door.  Is it your fault?  Did you commit murder or was it self defense?  Should you be mad at the person that came to your door or the person that convinced you to kill him?  Did the person that lied commit a crime?

Now its not a perfect hypothetical.  But the point is the same.  The point is you didn't do anything wrong.  You did what you had to do based on everything you were told.  It all fit so perfectly.  Well, maybe you should have been more skeptical of the people you have around you (glasses would help too).  Especially if they hang with Bush, Cheney, Rove, Libby, Rummy, DeLay, Hastert, and Ashcroft (you know, shady screwballs).  But how could you know that they got to your neighbors before you.  They had that nice guy down the street Powell saying the same things.  He's so trustworthy and keeps a good lawn.  And what about that bucktoothed black lady two streets over.  I mean shes not all that great to look at but lets face it, shes black and she hangs around with all these white guys.  They must be good people.

I just think that some effort needs to be made to explain what happened (in a more politically correct manner than me).  To do so in a way that reaches a vast number of people to immunize them from the coming spin.  Dems are slowly coming out but it is going to be so easy to call them flip-floppers ( a term that even in its origins was bogus but effective).  Yes, I recognize that some simply went with the flow.

Once people recognize that the Dems were lied to they will be more ready to recognize the people in general were lied to in speech after speech and every interview by this administration.  Even Anne Coulter, that saint of a woman, got in the mix [sarcasm...yeah in a post 9/11 world I feel I need to point that out].  Give people an entertaining 30 second commercial.  We all love movies, action, violence. Make a point in the process.