While Late Final was pre-empted:

Carl Bernstein took to USA Today this week to compare the Nixon Administration and Watergate to the Bush Administration and the war in Iraq.

He referred to the pre-war arguments by the Bush Administration and said it was based on "ginned up intelligence:"

Today, the issue may not be high crimes and misdemeanors, but rather Bush's failure, or inability, to lead competently and honestly.

"Ginned up intelligence?" He must mean the same sort of "ginned up intelligence" the Washington Post used, when he dogged the Watergate story with Bob Woodward.

Surely he remembers the woefully incorrect story - recounted briefly in this essay by Ben Bradlee - that almost destroyed his career.

Here's how it went: Woodward and Bernstein wrote a story that a Nixon campaign finance official, Hugh Sloan, testified before a grand jury that Nixon Chief of Staff H.R. Haldeman controlled a secret slush fund that was used to pay for the Watergate break-in. It was a flat-out falsehood.

Sloan never told the grand jury any such thing. The Post never admitted it made a mistake, and it never apologized.

The truth: Haldeman did control the fund. Prosecutors, though, never asked Sloan about it when he testified before the Watergate grand jury.

The Post ignored a noteworthy error in its coverage of Watergate because of the larger truth - Nixon and his inner circle were all crooks.

So when the Bush Administration said intelligence suggested Saddam Hussein sought uranium from Niger, but was in error, some (including Bernstein) ignore the larger truth: Iraq was hellbent on gaining weapons of mass destruction.

On Fox News Channel's "Hannity and Colmes" earlier this week, Bernstein dismissed charges he was a liberal and, instead, referred to himself as an "iconoclast." The problem, though, is that to many who jumped into journalism as a career, Bernstein has become an icon.

So it's particularly noteworthy when he makes this statement:

Like Nixon, this president decided the Constitution could be bent on his watch.

Is iconoclasm still iconoclasm if it's selective?

Bernstein never compared Clinton to Nixon. (Clinton invoked executive privilege more often than any other president in history, his administration mishandled and misused FBI files and he wrongfully sought to deprive Paula Jones of her day in court.) By contrast, President Bush has yet to be rebuffed on any significant constitutional issue by the U.S. Supreme Court (Clinton was, as was Nixon).

Like Sen. John Kerry's and his supporters' attempted use of Vietnam as a template for the Bush Administration and the Iraq war, Bernstein attempts to use Nixon and Watergate as a template.

Does it work? Only if you ignore history, or have selective memory.