When the weapons of mass destruction turned up missing, you knew it had to happen: Someone would ask the Watergate Question. Not surprisingly, it was feisty Howard Dean, who attacked President George W. Bush in Iowa the other day by demanding, “What did he know and when did he know it?” The implication: that Bush lied so he could drag us into a distracting, counterproductive war in Iraq.

I’M SURE DEAN felt good taking the jab, and his audience loved it. But if the Democrats want to beat Bush next year, they aren’t going to do it by turning him into Nixon of Arabia. If the president is vulnerable on terrorism — and he may be — the real question will be, “Are we safer than we were on 9/11?” If Bush can’t answer “yes,” then he’ll be in jeopardy and Iraq will look like a misadventure — no matter what the president knew when.

Howard Fineman makes an interesting point on why "Where's the WMD's" is the wrong question.